Financial Market News

Morgan Stanley's Robinhood Upgrade Comes Down to One Number: 93%

That's the share of Robinhood's funded customers who have never traded a prediction market, according to the bank's own math behind a fresh price-target increase. Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys upgraded Robinhood to Overweight from E…

Morgan Stanley's Robinhood Upgrade Comes Down to One Number: 93%
Morgan Stanley's Robinhood Upgrade Comes Down to One Number: 93%

That's the share of Robinhood's funded customers who have never traded a prediction market, according to the bank's own math behind a fresh price-target increase.

Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys upgraded Robinhood to Overweight from Equal Weight earlier this month, raising his price target from $124 to $150. The thesis rests on prediction-markets economics specifically: fewer than 2 million of Robinhood's 28 million funded customers, roughly 7%, have ever traded a prediction-market contract, yet that narrow cohort generated $156 million in second-quarter revenue, reportedly exceeding what the company generated from both crypto trading and equity trading combined.

The note also points to Robinhood's acquisition of Rothera, a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse, as a margin-economics catalyst. Owning that infrastructure lets Robinhood capture both exchange and clearing margin on prediction-market contracts directly, instead of splitting per-contract revenue with an outside operator such as Kalshi.

The math is straightforward enough to check against future disclosures: if a 7% share of Robinhood's customer base already drives revenue exceeding two established business lines, the thesis implies substantial headroom simply from expanding adoption within Robinhood's existing user base, without needing new customer growth at all. Whether that adoption curve actually plays out, and whether Rothera's margin capture shows up in reported financials the way the note assumes, are the two things worth tracking against Robinhood's next several quarters.

This note is now roughly ten days old, and whether it remains the prevailing Street view or has since been revised is unclear. The specific figures should be read as a snapshot of the thesis at the time of the upgrade, not as a live, current rating.

More articles from FinancialMarkets.com