Original Title: 《Robinhood Sees a Fresh Wave of New Investors—Biggest at 1 Year Old, Smallest at -3 Years Old》

Original Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

On April 6 local time, the U.S. Department of the Treasury officially announced the latest developments regarding “Trump Accounts”—Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) has been selected as the designated financial agent of the U.S. government, responsible for managing the initial accounts; Robinhood will work with BNY to serve as the securities broker for “Trump Accounts” as well as the initial trustee.

All parties will jointly support the Treasury’s goals to ensure that every eligible American newborn can quickly and conveniently access “Trump Accounts.”

What Is a “Trump Account”?

So-called “Trump Accounts,” also known as 530A accounts, are a tax-deferred investment savings account program authorized by then-U.S. President Trump under the “Build Back Better” bill on June 9, 2025. The program is designed to establish government-funded savings accounts for children of U.S. citizens born between January 1, 2025, and January 1, 2029.

The initial funding for “Trump Accounts” mainly comes from government allocations, private donations, and family deposits. The federal government will provide $1,000 of initial funding for each account; last December, Michael Dell and his wife announced a donation of $6.25 billion to open accounts for 25 million children in households with a median regional family income below $150k, injecting $250 into each account. Parents, friends, and other specific individuals can also deposit into designated accounts, but each year the maximum per child is $5,000.

Odaily Note: Michael Dell and his wife, who donated $6.25 billion, said this was “one of the most generous acts in American history,” according to Trump.

From an investment standpoint, “Trump Accounts” will be limited to low-cost index mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track broad equity price indices such as the S&P 500 index. They cannot be used to invest in specific industry indices or specific sector indices.

Funds are also restricted in terms of usage. Before the child turns 18 and becomes a legal adult, funds in the account may not be withdrawn for any reason (unless the child dies or the money is transferred to another similar restricted account). After the child turns 18, the account’s treatment will be the same as a traditional individual retirement account (IRA).

Under the current plan, “Trump Accounts” are tentatively scheduled to begin accepting first deposits on July 4, 2026 (the 250th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence). At that time, it will be just before the start of the 2026 midterm elections, and it is expected to become an important policy “killer move” for Republicans to win voters.

How Big Could It Be?

According to Statista data, since 2020, the number of births in the U.S. has fluctuated around roughly 3.6 million per year.

Using this as a baseline, during the coverage period from January 1, 2025, to January 1, 2029, the number of newborn children in the U.S. is expected to reach about 14.4 million. If the federal government opens a “Trump Account” with $1,000 for each child, that means a massive $14.4 billion in funds;

With potential private donations and family deposits added in, this figure will continue to grow to the scale of several tens of billions of dollars;

If the program can continue to be pushed forward as a long-term plan after 2029, its potential scale would be even more staggering.

Due to its operating characteristics—long-term lockup, passive investing, continuous new additions—at its core, “Trump Accounts” will become a potentially multi-trillion-dollar long-term passive capital pool. Compared with merely being a child welfare attribute, it is more like establishing a long-term channel for funds to flow from fiscal policy and capital markets, directly bringing the next generation into the stock market system.

Biggest Beneficiary: Robinhood?

After the “Trump Accounts” program was made public, financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab, and Robinhood began competing intensely around related services. And with the U.S. Treasury formally designating Robinhood yesterday as the securities broker and initial trustee, Robinhood—which has effectively secured the “entry ticket”—is already poised to become one of the most direct beneficiaries of the program.

The most straightforward upside is on the user side. Based on estimates using the current policy coverage, “Trump Accounts” will correspond to tens of millions of newborn accounts. The interaction entry for these accounts will be handled through a unified application—in other words, Robinhood will gain a batch of potential users who have been tied to the platform from birth. The largest of these users is only 1 year old, and the smallest may not even be born yet… More importantly, these users are not one-time traffic, but potential customers with extremely long lifecycles.

After children turn 18, their accounts will convert into long-term investment accounts similar to an IRA. This means Robinhood has an opportunity to directly carry these users’ investment behavior into adulthood, further extending into more business scenarios such as ETFs, options, and even crypto assets. From a lifecycle perspective, this is nearly the longest user journey path a broker can obtain.

The upside on the asset side is also not to be ignored. “Trump Account” funds have a clearly long-term lockup feature. Before children reach adulthood, they almost never flow out, and the investment scope is limited to index funds. For brokers, this type of money is high-quality custody capital—low volatility, long retention, and predictable scale.

In addition, Robinhood’s core label in the past has been a “retail trading platform,” with growth highly dependent on market conditions and trading activity. What “Trump Accounts” brings in is low-frequency, long-term, passive investment capital—this is much closer to the capital attributes of traditional wealth management business. As the share of such funds increases, to some extent it will also enrich Robinhood’s business diversification and help fill relatively weaker areas.

At the same time, the endorsement at the policy level also carries symbolic significance. By participating in a Treasury-led account program, Robinhood enters the U.S. government’s financial infrastructure system for the first time. This not only boosts its institutional-level credibility, but also creates new narrative space for it to expand into retirement accounts, long-term investing, and wealth management businesses in the future.

From a political perspective, “Trump Accounts” are an important policy bargaining chip for the Republican Party ahead of the midterm election; and from a capital markets perspective, this program introduces a domesticated, long-term source of funds for the U.S. stock market. Robinhood happens to sit right at the intersection of the two: when millions of newborns who have not yet entered society are “automatically opened,” this policy design around votes also quietly lays a growth curve for Robinhood that could last more than ten years.

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