Picture a dermatologist who opened a brokerage account in 2019, set up automatic monthly purchases of a few index funds, and has logged in perhaps twice a year since. If she opened the app this week, she’d find buttons she has never seen: futures, crypto, prediction markets, overnight trading, an AI assistant. She’d also find, if she looked closely at her statement, that the interest she pays to borrow and the interest she earns on idle cash may now be far worse than what a competitor offers.

A great deal has changed at brokerage firms in the past twelve months. Firms that once sold stocks and mutual funds have added products that used to require specialist accounts. Regulators scrapped one of the oldest rules for active traders. And the price of borrowing against a portfolio now differs by more than double from one firm to the next. I keep a running log of these changes because I trade every week. Here is what changed, explained without the jargon, and what it means for where your money should live.

Futures moved into everyday accounts

A futures contract is an agreement whose value rises and falls with something else, such as a stock index, oil or bitcoin, without you owning the thing itself. For decades futures were the territory of specialist firms and professional traders. In 2026 the large retail brokers moved in, and the contracts themselves got smaller.

  • June 2: Schwab added round-the-clock crypto futures on its thinkorswim trading platform, along with the ability to buy fractions of a share by dollar amount.
  • July 2: MetroTrade added options on futures.
  • July 27: NinjaTrader announced futures on individual stocks, listed by CME.
  • July 31: TradeStation added eight new CME futures, including contracts on the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, bitcoin and ether.
  • August 5: Interactive Brokers opened Brazilian futures, traded on Brazil’s B3 exchange, to eligible clients outside Brazil.
  • August 24: CME launched E-nano index futures, one-tenth the size of the previous smallest contract. Interactive Brokers, NinjaTrader, Robinhood and tastytrade offered them on day one; MetroTrade followed on August 26, and Webull added the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 versions on September 14.

Robinhood made the boldest move. In November 2025 it formed a joint venture with the trading firm Susquehanna to buy MIAXdx, a regulated exchange, giving Robinhood its own venue for futures and prediction markets. A consumer investing app owning an exchange would have been hard to imagine a few years ago.

The E-nano launch has its own article: E-Nano Futures: Wall Street’s Smallest Index Contract, Explained.

Prediction markets arrived almost everywhere

A prediction market lets you buy a contract that pays a fixed amount if a specific event happens, such as a particular inflation reading, an interest rate decision or the result of a game, and pays nothing if it doesn’t. The price moves between zero and that payout as opinion shifts. These are formally called event contracts, and they are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In the past year nearly every app-first broker added them.

  • December 16, 2025: Robinhood added contracts on individual players’ statistics and combinations of outcomes.
  • January 27, 2026: Webull launched commission-free sports prediction markets with Kalshi, a regulated event-contract exchange.
  • July 27: tastytrade added prediction markets.
  • September 23: Public launched AI agents that can trade Kalshi event contracts.

Interactive Brokers runs its own venue, ForecastEx, and Tradovate and Ironbeam offer event contracts too. Schwab doesn’t. One point worth knowing before you experiment: crypto and event-contract accounts generally sit outside SIPC, the federal-backed protection that covers stock accounts if a brokerage firm fails.

The established firms embraced crypto

For years, buying bitcoin meant opening a separate account at a crypto exchange, with a separate login and separate tax forms. That is fading.

  • September 25, 2025: Fidelity launched its Trader+ platform, and on October 23 Fidelity Crypto added solana.
  • March 2026: Public allowed crypto inside Traditional and Roth IRAs.
  • May 12: Schwab launched bitcoin and ether trading at a 0.75% fee.
  • July 16: E*TRADE launched bitcoin, ether and solana at 0.50%, through the crypto provider zerohash.

The choice still varies enormously. Robinhood offers about 90 coins and Public more than 60, while Schwab offers two. If crypto matters to you, compare two numbers: the list of coins and the fee. On fees alone, a $10,000 bitcoin purchase costs $75 at Schwab’s 0.75% and $50 at E*TRADE’s 0.50%.

The market never closes

The regular US stock market is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern. Twenty-four-hour trading, once a novelty, is now a standard feature at Robinhood, Webull, Public, Schwab, E*TRADE, tastytrade and Interactive Brokers. The menus differ: Interactive Brokers offers more than 10,000 securities overnight, Schwab about 1,300.

There is a cost. At 2 a.m. there are far fewer buyers and sellers, so the gap between the price buyers offer and the price sellers ask, known as the spread, is wider. The price you get at 2 a.m. is usually worse than the one you’d get at 2 p.m. Overnight access is useful for reacting to major news, but it’s an expensive time for routine orders. If you do trade overnight, use a limit order, which sets the worst price you’ll accept, so a thin market can’t fill you far from the last price.

AI moved into the account

Three brokers now let artificial intelligence touch real money in some form. On June 1, Interactive Brokers let clients link their accounts to Claude, an AI assistant, which drafts stock and fund orders that the client approves one at a time. Robinhood’s Agentic Trading, announced May 27, goes further: a connected AI agent can trade in a dedicated account and, if you allow it, without asking first. Public’s September launch lets agents trade event contracts.

How much control you keep varies a great deal between these setups. I cover each one, and the safeguards I’d insist on, in Should You Let AI Trade for You? What Brokers Now Allow.

The day-trading rule disappeared

For more than twenty years, anyone who bought and sold the same stock on the same day four or more times within five business days, in an account worth less than $25,000, was labeled a “pattern day trader” and restricted. It frustrated many people with smaller accounts who simply wanted to correct a trade quickly.

The SEC approved new standards from FINRA, the industry’s self-regulatory body, on April 14, 2026, effective June 4. The $25,000 minimum is gone, along with the label and the counting of day trades. The catch is timing: brokers have until October 20, 2027 to put the new standards in place, so your firm may still be using the old system. Schwab stopped counting day trades on June 8, 2026. Ask yours where it stands.

Borrowing costs split apart

Most brokerage accounts let you borrow against the investments in them, much like a home equity line of credit. This is called a margin loan. Several firms changed their rates in mid-September 2026, and they didn’t move together. On a $25,000 balance, published rates now run from 5.15% at Public to 12.20% at E*TRADE, with Schwab and Fidelity both at 11.575%. That’s roughly $1,760 a year in extra interest on the same loan. I covered the gap, and the matching gap in what firms pay on idle cash, in Your Broker May Be Charging You Double to Borrow.

What it means for you

Across all of this, the app-first brokers and Interactive Brokers moved fastest. The established firms followed in some areas and held back in others. The result is a wide spread between firms, on price and on features, and a good reason for anyone who hasn’t looked in a few years to take an hour and compare.

  • Review your firm against what you actually use. If you never touch crypto or prediction markets, those launches don’t matter to you. Borrowing rates, the interest on your cash and the quality of customer service probably do.
  • Check on the new day-trading rules. If the $25,000 minimum held you back, find out whether your firm has made the change.
  • Read the fine print on sign-up offers. tastytrade and Schwab are running sign-up or referral bonuses this fall, and each requires keeping the money in the account for about a year.

I track every launch by date, with a source for each, on the BrokerNimble what’s-new page. For the bigger decision of which firm fits you, start with my full guide to choosing and using a broker.

Disclosure: Peter Agro runs BrokerNimble.com, an independent broker comparison site that plans to join broker affiliate programs and may earn referral fees in the future. Figures were checked in October 2026 and change often; confirm current terms with the provider. The dermatologist above is an illustrative example. This article is for information only and is not investment, tax or legal advice. Futures, margin and options trading involve substantial risk of loss, including losses greater than your deposit.