Wire

I let AI trade $100 of my money and it bought Red Cat (RCAT)

By David Han · Swing Trader / Site Operator · July 1, 2026

Disclosure: I (David Han) own 9 shares of $RCAT (Red Cat) in the Robinhood account I write about here. This is my own money and my own opinion. I am a swing trader, not a financial advisor, and nothing here is investment advice. Do your own research.

Key points

I funded Robinhood's new Agentic AI account with $100 and let the bot trade for me.
Its first buy was Red Cat (RCAT) at $10.68, a beaten-down Army drone name I would not have grabbed myself.
Two days in, the position is barely green, and I still could not tell you why it chose this one.

So Robinhood built this Agentic thing, and the pitch is simple. An AI trades your account for you. You hand it money, and it goes to work while you go make a sandwich.

I had to try it, but I was not about to give a robot my rent.

So I gave it $100. That is it, a hundred bucks. My whole hedge fund fits in a birthday card.

Why only $100? Because I am not crazy

Here is the honest reason. I am not rich, and I do not trust a computer with real money yet. A hundred bucks is my "if this thing catches fire, it is one bad dinner" number. Nobody is refinancing the house so a robot can throw the savings into drones.

Then the robot called me broke

I asked it about options, because I like a good lottery ticket. It looked at my hundred bucks and basically said, buddy, no. The hot names cost too much, and the only contracts I can afford are hail marys that expire worthless while I sleep. It told me to just buy shares like an adult. I got financially fat-shamed by a chatbot, and the worst part is that it was right.

So shares it was, and its very first pick was Red Cat, ticker $RCAT. It bought 9 shares at $10.68 and left me under four dollars in the tank. Four bucks. I could not buy the robot a coffee with what it left me.

Here is the funny part. I actually love drone stocks, and we ran a piece on the AVAV and ONDS rally just this week, so the space is right in my wheelhouse. But Red Cat is not the name I would have grabbed. It makes small drones for the Army, it is way off its highs, and half of Wall Street is short it. If you had handed me the hundred, I probably chase something that is already moving. The robot went bargain-bin shopping instead, and honestly, that is the whole point. If I just wanted my own picks, I would not need to pay a robot to make them.

So how is it going?

It did not exactly come out swinging. Day one, it closed a couple pennies red, and I thought, oh perfect, the machine already owes me money and it has been on the job for six hours.

Then day two, it popped over $11 in the morning, and then it started handing some of that back. As I write this, RCAT is around $10.85, still a little above the $10.68 the bot paid, so my $100 sits at about $102. I am not shopping for a boat, and I am barely green, but green still beats red.

Now the part I have to say out loud, so nobody does anything dumb. This is one pick, and it is two days old. It means absolutely nothing yet. It can hand all of this back tomorrow and make me look like a clown. One good call is not a track record, it is a coin flip that landed heads once.

The plan from here is boring on purpose. If RCAT pops for real, we take the money and run. If it rolls over and loses the bounce, we cut it and move on. No falling in love with a drone stock, and no bag holding.

I am going to keep posting these, win or lose. If the robot torches my hundred bucks, you will absolutely hear about it. If it turns a hundred into two hundred, you will never hear the end of it. And while I babysit my hundred, if you want to see where the actual whales park real money, I track that on our hedge fund page.

For now, the score is robot 1, human 0, and I am weirdly okay working for the machine.

Disclosure: I own 9 shares of Red Cat (RCAT) in the Robinhood Agentic account described here. This column is my personal opinion as a swing trader. It is not investment advice or a research report. Prices are intraday and as of about 10:40 a.m. ET on July 1, 2026, and move fast. Do your own research and size your own risk.

Frequently asked questions

What is Robinhood's Agentic AI account?

Agentic is a Robinhood feature that lets an AI agent place trades in a dedicated account on your behalf, instead of you entering each order yourself. In this experiment the account was funded with $100 and used to buy small-cap stocks. It is a cash account, so trades settle the next business day.

Why did the AI buy Red Cat (RCAT)?

The agent's stated reasoning was that Red Cat (RCAT), a maker of small drones for the U.S. Army, was heavily shorted and trading well below its highs, and looked like it was starting to turn higher. It bought 9 shares at $10.68 on June 30, 2026, during a week when drone stocks rallied broadly.

How much money do you need to trade options on Robinhood?

There is no fixed minimum, but with a very small balance such as $100 the value is poor. A single option contract on a popular high-volatility stock can cost more than that, leaving only far out-of-the-money contracts that usually expire worthless. For small accounts, buying shares is generally the more practical choice.

Is Red Cat (RCAT) a good stock to buy?

This is not investment advice. Red Cat (RCAT) is a small, volatile and heavily shorted stock, which means it can move sharply in both directions. As of July 1, 2026 it traded around $11. Anyone considering it should weigh that volatility and do their own research.

David Han · Swing Trader / Site Operator

David Han runs AIStockWire and trades the market himself. He's a swing trader and chart reader who writes about AI and tech stocks, shares the positions he holds, and is honest about the wins and the losses. He's not a financial advisor, and nothing he writes is investment advice.