On Monday, shares of Robinhood Markets surged by more than 12% to trade near $92.76, marking the ninth consecutive week of gains and pushing the stock to levels not seen since its ostensible heyday 【finviz.com】. What began as a modest rebound has evolved into a full-fledged rally, with HOOD up over 200% since early April and eclipsing its April 2024 lows by more than tenfold. Once derided for its rocky debut and its lingering post IPO slump, Robinhood now finds itself at the center of a bull run fueled by a confluence of product innovation, robust trading volumes, and broader shifts in market structure.
Robinhood’s journey has been nothing if not dramatic. The company priced its shares at $38 apiece when it went public on July 28, 2021, raising nearly $2 billion and valuing itself at roughly $32 billion 【investopedia.com】. However, enthusiasm quickly waned: fluctuating regulatory scrutiny, platform outages, and fallout from the meme stock saga sent shares tumbling. By late 2023, HOOD had hit lows around $8, a decline of nearly 80% from its IPO price. For years thereafter, the stock bobbed along in the low $20 range, frustrating early investors and underscoring broader skepticism about the sustainability of Robinhood’s commission free model. The current upswing represents not just a technical rebound, but a potential reckoning regarding Robinhood’s long term viability.
A key driver of the rally has been Robinhood’s aggressive expansion of tradable products and markets. On June 30, the company officially rolled out tokenized U.S. stock trading and perpetual futures in the European Union, allowing qualified EU customers to trade U.S. equities and ETFs around the clock on a blockchain based platform 【fxleaders.com】. This move places Robinhood alongside peers like Kraken and Gemini in pioneering “tokenized” assets and opens a vast new customer base to its ecosystem. Simultaneously, Robinhood introduced micro futures contracts for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Solana (SOL), and XRP, enabling clients to engage with crypto derivatives in far smaller, more accessible increments than traditional futures contracts allow 【finance.yahoo.com】.
Underlying these product expansions is a powerful set of operating metrics that speak to the health of Robinhood’s core marketplace business. In May 2025 alone, total platform assets climbed to $255 billion—up 10% from April and a stunning 89% year over year—while net deposits topped $3.5 billion, representing an 18% annualized growth rate relative to April’s balances. Equity notional trading volume reached $180.5 billion (up 14% sequentially and 108% year over year), options contracts traded hit 179.8 million (up 7% monthly, 36% annually), and crypto notional volume surged to $11.7 billion (up 36% from April, 65% year over year) 【globenewswire.com】. Margin balances doubled year over year to $9 billion, and securities lending revenue climbed 43% year over year to $33 million. These figures illustrate that it’s not merely speculative fervor driving the stock; genuine customer engagement and deposit growth are powering Robinhood’s revenues and profitability.
Indeed, Robinhood’s resurgence has dovetailed with a broader shift in market structure favoring retail participants. According to Jefferies, retail investors now account for 20.5% of daily U.S. equity trading volume—more than double their share in 2010—and have outstripped both hedge funds and traditional institutions in recent months. Stocks popular among retail traders but under owned by institutions, including Robinhood itself, have been among the top performers this year. Goldman Sachs has even lifted its price target for HOOD to $91, citing stronger than expected equity and options volumes and noting that retail investors are increasingly momentum driven rather than valuation sensitive 【barrons.com】.
At the helm of this transformation is co founder and CEO Vlad Tenev, who has shepherded Robinhood from its 2013 commission free trading beta to a 25.9 million user platform managing $255 billion in assets. After enduring regulatory fines, outages, and backlash from the meme stock frenzy, Tenev pivoted strategically into crypto trading, private banking services, and a subscription based Gold tier. These initiatives helped Robinhood achieve profitability in 2024, driven largely by crypto revenues. Looking ahead, Tenev has set his sights on positioning Robinhood as a “financial superapp” for Millennial and Gen Z investors, betting on AI driven personalization and the long term wealth transfer from Baby Boomers to younger cohorts. A recent partnership with the “Invest America” initiative underscores Robinhood’s ambition to normalize investing from an early age and cement its role in the broader financial ecosystem 【marketwatch.com】.
Analysts echo the bullish sentiment. Beyond Goldman’s $91 target, the Zacks Consensus Estimate projects 2025 and 2026 earnings growth of 12.8% and 21.3% year over year, respectively, reflecting high expectations for continued product monetization and operating leverage from scale 【finance.yahoo.com】. However, skeptics caution that regulatory headwinds—particularly regarding payment for order flow economics—and increased competition from incumbents like Fidelity and Schwab, which have both adopted zero commission models, could cap upside over the medium term. Moreover, elevated valuations leave HOOD vulnerable to market corrections should retail trading volumes ebb.
Looking forward, Robinhood’s future appears to hinge on its ability to sustain the momentum of new product rollouts—especially in the EU and crypto derivatives—and to deepen customer engagement through features like fractional shares, cash management, and AI powered insights. If Tenev can maintain robust deposit growth and trading volumes while navigating regulatory scrutiny, Robinhood could cement its status not just as a trading platform but as a full service digital bank for the next generation. For now, the market seems willing to bet that the company’s best days lie ahead.
