Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
The stock price performance of Robinhood (HOOD) has been quite strong recently, even briefly returning above $100 last night, though it unfortunately failed to close at that level. However, I remain personally optimistic about HOOD's future performance.
During this downturn cycle, HOOD has been one of the few targets I have been consistently accumulating (including rebalancing), so I've wanted to write an article about HOOD for a long time. In previous Odaily Tea Chats, I briefly shared my accumulation logic. Today, I want to take advantage of the good stock price movement to discuss it in detail. It must be stated that this is not investment advice, nor does it represent the platform's view; it's just some of my personal thoughts when accumulating HOOD.
Multi-dimensional Analysis of Positive Catalysts
Regarding the reasons for HOOD's recent rise, you can find many bullish explanations across different dimensions.
First, looking at the fundamentals, Robinhood announced its May operational data last week, details as follows.
- Total Assets: $377 billion, a record high;
- Funded Customers: 27.7 million, a record high;
- Margin Book: $19.5 billion, a record high;
- Event Contracts Volume: 3.9 billion, a record high;
- Cash & Deposits: $18.6 billion, a record high;
- Options ADV: 11.6 million contracts, matching the historical record;
- Equity Volume: $315 billion, the second-highest point historically;
- Options Contracts Volume: 231 million contracts, the second-highest point historically;
- The only "underwhelming" data point is Crypto Volume: $12.2 billion, ranking only 16th in historical monthly data......
Some positive factors on the news front might be even more stimulating for investor sentiment.
- First, regarding the fastest-growing prediction market, Robinhood has begun intercepting Kalshi's flow by building its own prediction market, Rothera. Afterwards, related revenue is expected to no longer need to be shared with Kalshi. For details, please refer to the article we published yesterday, "The First Prediction Market Concept Stock Has Emerged!".
- Second, on the IPO front, SpaceX's historic IPO brought record-level traffic to Robinhood. More critically, Robinhood's brokerage and clearing business unit, Robinhood Securities, was approved last week to act as an IPO underwriter. This means Robinhood is expected to play a more central role in future IPO activities (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI).
- Then, Robinhood has been selected by the U.S. Treasury Department to act as the brokerage firm and initial trustee for the "Trump Account." The so-called "Trump Account" is a tax-deferred investment account plan established on June 9, 2025, by U.S. President Trump under the authorization of the "Big and Beautiful" Act. It aims to set up government-funded savings accounts for children of U.S. citizens born between January 1, 2025, and January 1, 2029. This means that in the coming years, tens of millions of newborn Americans will default to using Robinhood as their brokerage platform. Details can be found in "Robinhood Has a New Batch of Stock Investors, the Oldest is 1 Year Old, the Youngest is -3 Years Old".
Regarding market dynamics, there are some more direct signals.
- Robinhood director Meyer Malka has been continuously increasing his holdings of HOOD recently. Over the past week or two, Malka has accumulated purchases of HOOD worth over $50 million.
- Institutions have also given HOOD more positive price targets. Goldman Sachs maintains a "Buy" rating and has raised its target price from $105 to $108; Mizuho's target price is $115; Piper Sandler is the most optimistic, giving a target price expectation of $135.
Personally, the initial reason for accumulating HOOD was mainly optimism about its Q2 earnings performance. Firstly, anticipating a massive explosion in stock trading-related revenue this quarter under the epic U.S. stock market trend. Secondly, the potential surge in prediction market trading volume due to the World Cup, coupled with the revenue interception effect of Rothera.
However, the reason for later switching a larger portion of my portfolio (mainly some remaining crypto assets) to HOOD follows another logic, which is the real point this article wants to discuss.
The Alternative to Altcoins
In early May, a friend asked me what I had been buying recently, and I mentioned HOOD. But at that time, HOOD had just fallen from above $90 due to disappointing Q1 earnings (mainly an unexpected $100 million expense related to the "Trump Account"), and the short-term trend looked quite poor.
My friend asked me why, and I briefly explained the above reasons. He thought about it and said, unfortunately, his positions were mostly trapped, and he didn't have much ammunition left. I asked him what he was holding; unsurprisingly, it was mostly altcoins.
I said to him at the time: "Instead of still being obsessed with altcoins, you might as well directly switch to HOOD."
The context for this judgment is that for a long time, cryptocurrency-related revenue has been a significant component of Robinhood's total revenue, and HOOD's stock price movement has had a strong correlation with cryptocurrencies. However, recently, there have been signs that Robinhood is breaking free from its dependence on the cryptocurrency business and is positively shedding this correlation.
First, let's look at Robinhood's cryptocurrency-related revenue over the past five quarters. It's not hard to see that the overall proportion of this revenue stream is showing a downward trend, and the Q1 proportion has dropped to a new low since 2025.
- 2025 Q1, Total Revenue $927 million, Crypto Revenue $329 million, share 35%;
- 2025 Q2, Total Revenue $989 million, Crypto Revenue $160 million, share 16%;
- 2025 Q3, Total Revenue $1.274 billion, Crypto Revenue $268 million, share 21%;
- 2025 Q4, Total Revenue $1.283 billion, Crypto Revenue $221 million, share 17%;
- 2026 Q1, Total Revenue $1.067 billion, Crypto Revenue $134 million, share 13%.
Now, look at the intuitive comparison between HOOD and BTC price movements. Since the beginning of the year, HOOD has mostly maintained a trend similar to BTC, but a significant divergence has recently appeared.
Emphasizing these two points mainly aims to illustrate that the valuation logic surrounding HOOD is beginning to change. In the past, HOOD was often seen as a "shadow stock" of the crypto market, with its business performance showing clear cyclicality alongside the crypto bull and bear markets — when the crypto market soared, retail investors rushed into Robinhood to frantically trade altcoins, commission income surged, and the stock price took off; when the crypto market was sluggish and retail investors exited, Robinhood's revenue would rapidly decline.
But now, Robinhood is no longer as heavily reliant on its cryptocurrency business as before. Even if the crypto market continues to remain in its current half-dead state, its stock trading, prediction markets, Pre-IPO, and newly added underwriting business are still expected to support its earnings growth.
This doesn't mean the cryptocurrency market won't affect HOOD anymore. On the contrary, if the crypto market returns to a bull market in the future, Robinhood's cryptocurrency trading revenue will likely explode simultaneously, and HOOD can still enjoy the dividends brought by industry growth.
Put more bluntly: the crypto circle will still affect HOOD, but HOOD no longer depends on the crypto circle — if the crypto bull market returns, HOOD will still rise with it; if the crypto circle remains half-dead, HOOD doesn't care.
For all those who still hold hope for altcoins but are increasingly worried about liquidity drying up, narrative failure, and value capture problems, instead of continuing to pin hopes on some token that doesn't know when its next narrative will arrive, the current HOOD might be an option with higher safety margins.
