Futu, Robinhood and Webull dominate Chinese-language finance chatter online, yet they manage 94, 39 and 600 times less money than BlackRock respectively.
In Chinese-language corners of YouTube and X, the brokers with the loudest voices are Futu and Robinhood.
But weight in asset management is not measured by volume; it is measured by how much money you hold for other people. The author runs the numbers:
The league table
BlackRock manages $15 trillion. Vanguard and Schwab sit at $13 trillion each, Fidelity at $8 trillion, Merrill at $4 trillion.
Further down: IBKR at $900 billion, Robinhood at $380 billion, Futu at $160 billion, Webull at $25 billion.
How many orders of magnitude
Robinhood trails BlackRock by 39 times, Futu by 94 times, Webull by 600 times.
A commenter asks: if you buy VOO through Robinhood, whose assets is that money counted in? Both, comes the reply.
Why it matters
It is easy to mistake marketing volume for industry standing. Selling a slick app to retail investors and managing other people's money are two different businesses: one competes for attention with ads, the other collects fees on scale. The gap between them is several orders of magnitude, so do not confuse the buzzy broker with the main event on Wall Street.
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