Finally, Wall Street’s excited about Robinhood — thanks to Sam Bankman-Fried.
Robinhood shares rallied Friday after the FTX CEO disclosed in an SEC filing that he has acquired a 7.6% stake in the online brokerage. Robinhood’s stock was up about 20% in early trades, pushing the stock back up above $10.
The shares are still off more than 40% year-to-date, amid growing worries about the company’s sluggish growth. Robinhood recently posted a whopping 43% year-on-year drop in revenue, and announced that it was laying off 9% of its workforce.
Bankman-Fried’s move quickly raised eyebrows. CNBC’s Jim Cramer wrote that a Piper Sandler analyst “has no idea what Sam is doing.”
Bankman-Fried, who leads one of the world’s major crypto exchanges, recently became controversial after a Bloomberg interview in which he implied that "yield farming" in crypto was essentially a Ponzi scheme.