Another Stock Getting Me Excited Is Robinhood

Robinhood is already in the Top 30 portfolio, but I want to have another look at a company which has the makings of a superstar. It is a company on a mission.

Robinhood Markets, Inc. (NASDAQ: HOOD) transformed financial services by introducing commission-free stock trading and democratizing access to the markets for millions of investors. Today, Robinhood, through its subsidiaries, lets you trade stocks, options, futures (which includes event contracts), and crypto, invest for retirement, earn with Robinhood Gold, and access an expert-managed portfolio with Robinhood Strategies. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Robinhood puts customers in the driver’s seat, delivering unprecedented value and products intentionally designed for a new generation of investors. Additional information about Robinhood can be found at www.robinhood.com.

Robinhood website

Robinhood is an incredibly ambitious company, much more than just a zero-commission stockbroking platform. CEO, Vladimir Tenev, put it succinctly.

Second quarter, I think we really kept raising the bar with industry-leading product velocity across our 3 focus areas: #1 in active traders, #1 in wallet share for the next generation and the #1 global financial ecosystem.

Vladimir Tenev, CEO and co-founder, Robinhood, Q2 2025, 31 July 2025

What does he mean by No. 1 global financial ecosystem. I have been listening to a long conversation between Tenev and Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Investment Group. In this, Tenev discusses Robinhood acting at the interface of capitalism and democracy. Specifically, he mentions the role that Robinhood can play in making people owners, giving them a vested interest in the status quo. As he say owners look after stuff in a way that doesn’t otherwise happen.

The group is almost like a financial conglomerate with fingers in many pies.

As we’ve said over time, we want to be the place to custody all of our customers’ assets and process all of their financial transactions. And I think lending plays right into this. You may have seen that through a partnership with Sage Home Loans, Gold members now have access to really great rates on mortgages. And one of the reasons they’re able to deliver such great rates and we’re able to deliver such great rates to customers is we’re passing all of our share of that — of the economics on to customers. And the early feedback has just been really tremendous.

Jason Warnick, CFO, Robinhood, Q2 2025, 31 July 2025

Tenev had this to say in answer to an analyst’s question.

I mean, first of all, compared to just a few years ago, we’re far more diversified. If you take just even the crypto business, that’s diversifying. We launched a number of products, staking in the U.S. is now taking off, tokenization of U.S. equities in international locations. But that — what we’re seeing in crypto is happening across our business. And you’ve heard me say that we have nine businesses with over $100 million of revenue, and we have a number of businesses that have a lot of momentum towards being the 10th and beyond. The other thing that I would say about kind of in the topic of like protecting your business against cyclical movements, really two things.

The first is that the way we manage our business, and we talk about being lean and disciplined positions us in a place where when cyclicality hits. We aren’t like some companies that really have to pull big on levers because all along, we’ve been disciplined. And you saw that we grew revenues 45% year-over-year, and adjusted OpEx plus SBC [stock based compensation] was up 6%. And so it’s really kind of shining through, and I think it puts us in a position of strength should those kinds of situations happen.

The other thing that I would say is I would caution us from not overreacting to those situations. The market opportunity and the TAM [total addressable market] that we talked about in this — actually in this venue back in December, is massive. We have a massive TAM ahead of us. And I wouldn’t want to over react in a moment of cyclicality when the market opportunity in front of us is so big.

Vladimir Tenev, CEO and co-founder, Robinhood, Q2 2025, 31 July 2025

I asked AI about Robinhood’s nine business lines.

Robinhood is building out nine revenue streams by expanding beyond its core trading business, though not all are currently confirmed to be over $100 million in revenue each. These business lines include cryptocurrency, equities, options, futures, event contracts, net interest income, and subscription services like Robinhood Gold. The company’s long-term strategy involves further growth through asset tokenization, which could create new revenue opportunities in areas like custody, settlement, valuation, and liquidity for private and digital assets. 

Here are the specific business lines identified:

Cryptocurrency: A significant revenue driver, with the goal of becoming Robinhood’s largest revenue source, according to Linas’s Newsletter. 

Options and Event Contracts: These products contribute to revenue through commissions and other fees. 

Equities: Revenue from trading equities. 

Futures: Another area of revenue generation for the company. 

Net Interest Income: This primarily comes from margin lending activities. 

Robinhood Gold: The subscription service provides recurring, high-margin income. 

Asset Tokenization: The platform is developing infrastructure for tokenizing both public and private assets, which will create new avenues for revenue related to custody, settlement, and liquidity. 

Payment for Order Flow: This is a primary source of revenue, where Robinhood earns money by routing customer orders to market makers. 

International Expansion: The company is pursuing global expansion, potentially through strategic acquisitions, to diversify and grow its revenue base, notes Linas’s Newsletter. 

AI Overview

Robinhood has a premium paid membership service called Robinhood Gold. This helps stabilise revenues and has great potential.

Robinhood Gold is a premium, paid membership that offers enhanced features over a standard Robinhood account, including access to higher interest rates on uninvested cash, higher instant deposit limits, professional research tools like Morningstar reports and Level II market data, and lower-cost margin investing. The membership costs $5 per month and can also provide a 3% match on Roth IRA contributions, offering potentially greater value to active investors who contribute to their retirement accounts. 

AI Overview

CFO Jason Warnick talks about the company’s plans for Gold.

Vlad mentioned in his prepared remarks that new customers are joining and multiples the rate [very rapidly]. I think it was 35% of our Q2 new customers joined Gold. In terms of upper balance, one of the things that we like to do is benchmark and some of the best subscription products out there, whether it’s Amazon or others are substantially higher than where we’re at today and it inspires us as an opportunity to keep investing in the program and then continue to work on making sure customers are aware of the value proposition. And I’m personally really excited about the Banking product that’s about to come out, and that will be another great addition to the Gold proposition.

Jason Warnick, CFO, Robinhood, Q2 2025, 31 July 2025

Tenev added to that.

The only thing I’d add is you should think about Gold as — if you’re a Gold member, then you’re a member of a really high- quality exclusive financial club, but it’s also available to everyone. So we’re trying to toe the line between it being premium but also accessible to the mass market. And I don’t think anyone — I don’t think very many people can toe that line. I think it’s been working very, very well. And a couple of the products that are very, very nascent are ones that we’re very excited about.

Jason mentioned Banking. We also have the Gold card. Cortex, I mean, Cortex has gotten amazing reviews in its first iteration. That’s a Gold-only offering, and we’re just going to keep iterating on that and making that better and better. So I think we see tons of tailwinds to continue to make Gold better and making the subscriber account increase as a result of that.

Vladimir Tenev, CEO and co-founder, Robinhood, Q2 2025, 31 July 2025

And Warnick summed up.

At $5 a month, Robinhood Gold is just the best deal in finance. So if you’re not a Gold member, jump on that. [Tenev says he has no plans to increase the rate any time soon].

Jason Warnick, CFO, Robinhood, Q2 2025, 31 July 2025

The comparison above between Amazon Prime and Robinhood Gold is interesting because Prime has between 200 million and 230 million subscribers. In Q2 2025, Robinhood Gold had 3.5 million subscribers, up 1.5 million or 76% from a year earlier. It makes a great deal of sense for Robinhood to make its subscription service super attractive to recruit as many subscribers as possible.

A key characteristic of Robinhood is that it is an incredibly lean, tightly run business. It is all about technology and a million miles from the old-school picture of a stockbroker.

Robinhood had approximately 2,300 employees in 2024 and around 2,507 employees as of mid-2025. The company’s employee count fluctuated, declining significantly from about 3,800 in late 2021 to ~2,300 by the end of 2022, and has since seen modest growth. 

AI Overview.

Despite the rapid growth, the company has sharply reduced employee numbers since late 2021 and adds new people very sparingly. You need to be a superstar to get a job at Robinhood, and the top management, Vladimir Tenev, Jason Warnick and Baiju Bhatt are incredibly impressive people. They are one of the main reasons why I think Robinhood is such an extraordinary company.

There are so many growth levers at Robinhood.

Fueling deposits and engagement in Robinhood is the company’s dizzying array of products. Relatively new launches, like the Gold Card and retirement accounts, are seeing their membership bases multiply on a year-over-year basis. Per CEO Vlad Tenev’s remarks on the Q2 earnings call:

Robinhood Strategies. We’ve grown that by multiples, now over 100,000 funded customers and over $0.5 billion in assets. So just a few months after launch there. We’ve tripled Robinhood Gold cardholders year-to-date. So over 300,000 cardholders. We continue to like what we’re seeing, and we’re going to keep accelerating the rollout from here.

Retirement assets are now over $20 billion, over $20 billion in assets. So this is customers entrusting us with their most long- term serious money. And that’s more than doubled in the past year.

Of course, the most important metric for Robinhood’s growth is that customers continue to steer deposits into their Robinhood accounts. As most investors are aware, Robinhood posts its key metrics on a monthly basis. After the close of the second quarter, we note that monthly deposits in the month of July (the first month of Q3) spiked 28% y/y to $6.4 billion, representing nearly double the deposits relative to the prior two months.

Seeking Alpha, 24 August 2025, Gary Alexander.

Robinhood reports growth rates monthly. As you can see below year on year-on-year growth rates are impressive.

Robinhood Markets, Inc. (“Robinhood”) (NASDAQ: HOOD) today reported select monthly operating data for August 2025. Funded Customers at the end of August were 26.7 million (down approximately 10 thousand from July 2025, up approximately 2.4 million year-over-year). In August, Funded Customers growth was offset by the impact of required escheatment of approximately 180 thousand low-balance accounts. Total Platform Assets at the end of August were $304 billion (up 2% from the end of July 2025, up 112% year-over-year). Net Deposits were $4.8 billion in August, or a 19% annualized growth rate relative to July 2025 Total Platform Assets. Over the last twelve months, Net Deposits were $61.6 billion, or an annual growth rate of 43% relative to August 2024 Total Platform Assets. Equity Notional Trading Volumes were $199.2 billion (down 5% from July 2025, up 107% year-over-year). Options Contracts Traded were 195.5 million (roughly flat to July 2025, up 33% year-over-year). Robinhood App Crypto Notional Trading Volumes were $13.7 billion (down 18% from July 2025, up 154% year-over-year). Bitstamp Exchange Crypto Notional Trading Volumes were $14.4 billion (up 21% from July 2025). Margin balances at the end of August were $12.5 billion (up 10% from the end of July 2025, up 127% year-over-year). Total Cash Sweep balances at the end of August were $34.1 billion (up 1% from the end of July 2025, up 50% year-over-year). Total Securities Lending Revenue in August was $53 million (down 13% from July 2025, up 165% year-over-year).

Robinhood, 11 September 2025

I am back listening to the interview with Vlad Tenev, and he is stunningly bright. Whatever this guy turns his mind to is going to be a giant success. He was talking about the coming intergenerational wealth transfer, aka the great wealth transfer, amounting to $124 trillion. Older generations like me and many of you will be passing on our wealth to the next generation, and these new generations won’t have the same loyalty to existing financial institutions; quite the contrary.

Tenev pointed out that Robinhood is not competing with the top technology businesses, the Palantirs and Andurils, except for talent, and it is well placed to do that. It is competing with old school financial businesses whose products in five years’ time will be similar to the ones today and unlikely to have great appeal to 🆕tech-savvy generations. By contrast, Robinhood is endlessly innovating, and it is not a bank; it is a banking superapp with endless flexibility to meet more of its customers’ needs in more user-friendly and cost-effective ways. It is a predator in a world of dim, sleepy herbivores. In less flowery language, Robinhood is a tech-centric business versus companies rooted in traditional financial behaviour patterns; it is a Tesla versus General Motors.

As subscribers know, I am super excited about Coreweave, a company which outsources the building of state-of-the-art AI-enabled data centres and is growing at an explosive pace on the back of huge spending by the hyperscalers. There is a school of thought that Coreweave is fundamentally unprofitable and will be unable to generate returns for shareholders. I am always ready to run with management on arguments like this until they are proved to be wrong.

The shares have suffered a significant setback recently, which often happens post-IPO, but that period appears to be ending, and the shares look ready to move ahead again. The chart has built an impressive rolling around base pattern, and all the fundamental news coming from the company has been exciting.

Coreweave has a key relationship with OpenAI, one of the biggest operators of data centres and the power behind ChatGPT, and this is becoming stronger all the time.

CoreWeave, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWV), the AI Hyperscaler™, today announced an expanded agreement with OpenAI to power the training of its most advanced next-generation models, reinforcing its position as the essential cloud platform for the most demanding AI workloads. The contract value of this deal is up to $6.5 billion.

In March 2025, CoreWeave announced an initial agreement with OpenAI with a contract value up to $11.9 billion, followed by an expanded agreement worth up to $4 billion in May 2025. The agreement announced today brings the total contract value with OpenAI up to approximately $22.4 billion.

“We are proud to expand our relationship with OpenAI, a company consistently at the forefront of advancing artificial intelligence,” said Michael Intrator, Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CoreWeave. “This milestone affirms the trust that world-leading innovators have in CoreWeave’s ability to power the most demanding inference and training workloads at an unmatched pace.”

“CoreWeave has become an important partner in OpenAI’s broader infrastructure platform,” said Peter Hoeschele, VP of Infrastructure and Industrial Compute. “By delivering compute at unmatched speed and scale, they’re helping us advance the frontier of intelligence and ensure AI’s benefits reach everyone.”

The agreement with OpenAI builds on a series of recent CoreWeave milestones that underscore the company’s role in driving AI innovation. This month, CoreWeave announced a £1.5 billion commitment to powering UK AI innovation and growth, as well as the launch of CoreWeave Ventures, a new initiative committed to backing founders and companies developing the platforms and technologies shaping the AI ecosystem. Through its recent acquisitions of OpenPipe and Weights & Biases, CoreWeave is expanding its platform by adding innovation up and down the technology stack.

Coreweave, Investor Relations, 25 September 2025

Share Recommendations

Robinhood HOOD

Coreweave CRWV

Strategy – Have Faith in My Top 30 Approach

In a small way, Quentinvest is a little like Robinhood, continually innovating to try and find the best strategies for subscribers, that tiny band of thought leaders who actually engage with what I do. The best rebuke to those who do not read QV is that those who do should become insanely wealthy, so keep taking the pills, guys.

The key parameter underpinning the Top 30 portfolio is excitement. I want the portfolio to consist of the most exciting companies in the world, the businesses creating the modern world. If I can get that right, dramatic value creation should follow.

What will Robinhood and Coreweave be doing in five years? I don’t know, but I am sure their businesses will be dramatically different and most likely much bigger than they are presently, and that is what drives a rising share price.