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Robinhood rallies back

Good morning! This Thursday, Robinhood had a roller coaster week, Facebook loses another chief to Instacart, and the vaccine mandate question keeps getting more complicated.
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And on the third day, HOOD rose again.
Robinhood's shares sank 8% below its initial public offering price in last week's disappointing debut. But three trading days after what was technically deemed a "broken IPO," the shares of the controversial online brokerage have come roaring back.
The stock rallied to $47 Tuesday, finally rising above its $38 IPO price. And it has kept surging, closing at $70 on Wednesday, up 100% for the week. There was so much demand for HOOD, trading had to be halted several times.
It's a puzzling turnaround for a company whose debut was marred by growing questions about its business model and regulatory hurdles.
Why the sudden change of heart on Wall Street? What happened is "very unusual, but explainable," said Rob Siegel, a Silicon Valley investor and Stanford Graduate School of Business management lecturer.
Then there's Cathie Wood. The CEO of ARK Invest, known as a star stock-picker, has been called the "high priestess of the weird finance era." And she was there when things got weird for Robinhood.
"I don't think we've seen something like this," Siegel said. There have been stock rallies in the past "driven by day traders and institutions piling in" usually because something changed in the company. But in the "weird finance era," driven by social media and mobile apps — a crazy time for investing that Robinhood helped create — that's not always the case.
"Nothing has fundamentally changed for the company to explain this volatility," Siegel said. "Today was all about craziness."
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