Discount broker Robinhood Markets (HOOD -7.53%) has quickly established itself as an important force in the brokerage industry. Offering free trades, for example, led to a massive change in the way brokers competed on cost. The stock has been getting investor attention lately, and it more than doubled over the past year, even after a large pullback during the market swoon.
Is that pullback an opportunity, or does it highlight a potential risk with Robinhood?
What does Robinhood do?
From a big-picture perspective, Robinhood is a discount broker. But it is more than that and has done an impressive job of expanding its reach. Robinhood now offers users stock, options, and cryptocurrency trading, select banking services, prediction markets trading, retirement investing, and more. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the company's assets under custody rose 88% year over year to $193 billion. There were multiple drivers of this. One was new deposits, and the other an even bigger one, was the increase in the value of the securities its customers own.
NASDAQ: HOOD
Key Data Points
That's great, but there's one more number here that has to be kept in mind. The average customer account size was just $7,700. That's not a very big number, but it makes logical sense. Robinhood is an attractive option for investors who are relatively new to investing. However, it is important to note that the company didn't actually hold its initial public offering until after the bear market and recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
These two facts are noteworthy, and you need to keep them both in mind as you assess the stock. The reason for that is the fact that Wall Street has a very short memory. The big news right now is that Robinhood had a really good year in 2024. Revenue increased 58%, and earnings per share came in at $1.56, up from a loss of $0.61 in 2023. The company is doing great right now.
What happens when adversity comes around
Robinhood has achieved great success, and it has opened up the world of investing to a new cohort of people who previously weren't investors. But it hasn't lived through a really bad market as a public company yet. So, Wall Street has no way of knowing what will happen when, not if, there is a deep downturn. The market correction in early 2025 is nothing compared to, say, the Great Recession, which had investors worried that the entire financial system would collapse.
Discount broker Charles Schwab (SCHW -2.01%) did live through that period. Its revenue and earnings both took a notable hit, which makes complete sense. The same is highly likely to happen to Robinhood when it faces similar adversity. However, there are some differences between these two companies.
Data by YCharts.
First off, Robinhood's stock has risen sharply, as noted above. That has pushed its valuation to a worrying level. To put some numbers on that, the company's price-to-earnings ratio is around 28.5 times today versus roughly 22.5 times for Schwab. Investors are placing a premium price on Robinhood, likely because of its strong growth as a business.
Data by YCharts.
But at the same time, investors are clearly worried about what might happen if the market goes south. As the chart above highlights, Robinhood has lost 30% of its value so far in 2025, most of which was lost during the correction, while Schwab is down less than 5%. The big question mark is likely the issue of what new investors will do when the market stops going up and starts going down in an ugly and frightening way. Note the change in Schwab's revenue in the chart highlighting the Great Recession period, which was partly driven by investors shocked by the market's performance.
Only the investors that Schwab had on its books at that point were likely more seasoned than the ones that Robinhood has today. With an average account size of just $7,700, it seems likely that Robinhood investors are young and relatively inexperienced investors. A deep bear market could result in many of them exiting the market, perhaps for good.
Robinhood is not for the faint of heart
There's no question that Robinhood has helped change the brokerage business. And it has opened up investing to many new people. However, having not lived through a difficult market as a public company, Robinhood as an investment comes with an elevated level of risk. Not only is it relatively expensive compared to one of the most prominent and successful discount brokers, but new to investing, Robinhood customers could find that a bear market, when it arrives, is too much to take. That could spell trouble for Robinhood, the broker, and lead Robinhood, the stock, to crumble. Be cautious if you are looking at Robinhood stock today.
