对话Robinhood创始人：散户的意志，胜过所有“聪明钱”

Source: Master Investor

Compiled by Odaily (@OdailyChina); Translated by Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Editor's Note: Robinhood recently launched Robinhood Chain, and the new wave of Meme hype based on this network has reignited the long-dormant cryptocurrency market, even being seen by some active investors as the start of a new industry cycle.

Last week, Robinhood's founder and CEO, Vlad Tenev, participated in the Master Investor podcast. During the show, Vlad Tenev outlined Robinhood's development history and path to success. He discussed everything from Meme stocks to Meme tokens, looked ahead to the investment value of asset tokenization and private equity markets, and emphasized that "retail investors are the real smart money."

Below is the full transcript of Vlad Tenev's conversation on the Master Investor podcast (with some abridgements for readability), compiled by Odaily.

Opening Remarks

Host: Welcome to the Master Investor podcast. I'm your host, Wilfred Frost. In this program, we engage in conversations with the world's most successful investors, business leaders, and political figures, sharing the experiences and insights behind their success, hoping to provide our listeners with more investment perspectives.

Today's guest is Vlad Tenev, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Robinhood. Robinhood is a financial trading app that truly popularized commission-free trading and has brought many industry innovations based on that.

Robinhood was founded in 2013 and completed its IPO in July 2021, with a market cap of around $32 billion at the time. However, less than a year later, in 2022, during a broader market correction, the company's stock price fell about 80%, shrinking its market cap to roughly $6 billion. Today, Robinhood has made a comeback, with a market cap approaching $100 billion, currently slightly above $90 billion, and platform assets under custody reaching $380 billion.

They're back, and stronger than ever. It's a great pleasure to welcome Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to Master Investor.

Vlad Tenev: I really enjoyed that trip down memory lane.

Host: Which part did you enjoy more? Was it the upward journey, or...?

Vlad Tenev: Probably the present (laughs). Yeah, right now is the most interesting time.

Historical Review: The 2022 Correction

Host: Let's start with the big correction back then. It's not just Robinhood's history, but the history of the entire market.

You have a very clear insight into the behavior of almost all traders, especially retail traders. During that market correction, which also impacted Robinhood's own stock price, had you already seen signs of a bubble from your customers' trading activity before it happened?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, during the pandemic, I personally had my doubts, though I wouldn't directly call it a "bubble."

If you recall, in 2020, the U.S. government started printing money on a massive scale, directly sending fiscal stimulus checks to households. But at the same time, if you looked at various indicators predicting inflation levels, no one thought inflation would rise significantly.

For instance, the long-term inflation expectations reflected in the 10-year Treasury yield were still roughly around 2%. I was thinking at the time, how is this possible? The government keeps printing money, but inflation doesn't rise.

The government didn't invent a perpetual motion machine; it can't defy economic laws. So, one of those assumptions had to break eventually. So, personally, what happened later wasn't really a surprise, even if it might have been one for the overall market.

By the end of 2021, inflation began to rise noticeably, eventually hitting multi-decade highs, surpassing any period in the last 30 years. And when you see inflation go from near zero to 9%, 10%, a policy response is inevitable – raising interest rates, tightening monetary policy.

From my perspective, this was almost inevitable and entirely foreseeable.

Host: So, can we simply put it that the main cause of the market correction was the subsequent high inflation and interest rate hikes? Or were there signs of overvaluation before that?

I'm mainly referring to the Meme Stock mania. Looking back, shouldn't we have realized that these companies weren't profitable, yet their stock prices were doubling in a very short time?

Vlad Tenev: I think these things are essentially interconnected.

Looking back at the timeline, the most famous round of Meme Stock mania happened in January 2021, just weeks after a massive round of U.S. fiscal stimulus. We could see this clearly in Robinhood's data too.

Every time the government issued stimulus checks, within days or weeks, we'd see a massive inflow of money into the market. Looking back at Robinhood's huge growth during the pandemic, there are a few important reasons.

First, people had almost nowhere to spend money. Almost all offline activities were shut down. Everyone was at home, so various digital activities – including investing in the stock market – became one of the few options still available.

Second, people had more time. They could learn about investing, follow YouTubers and various financial content creators.

Also, interest rates were at zero. If you recall, in 2019, the Fed was raising rates, and the federal funds rate was above 2%. But in 2020, after COVID hit, the Fed quickly brought rates back down to zero.

On top of zero interest rates, multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus were layered. All these factors were collectively driving the stock market up.

Of course, in March 2020, the U.S. stock market experienced a sharp crash. However, it was a very short-lived crash, quickly forming a classic V-shaped recovery. Without such rapid, large-scale fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy, the outcome could have been very different.

Host: Very interesting. I was working at CNBC at the time, and our ratings also skyrocketed during that period. As you said, people had nothing else to do, so their attention naturally turned to the capital markets.

Vlad Tenev: Exactly. Everything was closed, except the market.

Retail Investors and Smart Money

Host: The reason I started with this topic is that I want to discuss another question later – whether you see similarities between today's market and that time. But before that, I'd like to touch on another thing.

I've heard that your customers – Robinhood is largely retail-focused – have actually performed better in the market compared to other institutions. We've interviewed many guests in the past few weeks, and they've all talked about the concepts of "Smart Money" and "Dumb Money."

Now, more and more people are starting to believe that the real "Smart Money" is actually the retail investor. Whether it was in October 2022, April 2025, or March 2026, they successfully bought the dip during market downturns. Does this trend still exist? Are your customers still seeing the market more clearly than others and willing to buy when prices are cheap?

Vlad Tenev: Yeah, I've always thought so. A lot of the time, what's called "Smart Money" might actually be overthinking things, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Institutional investing today has become increasingly indirect and abstract. Fund managers are more about observing the macro environment, constantly adjusting portfolios based on various macro indicators. Many times, they sell a stock for reasons completely unrelated to that company's fundamentals.

For example, they might sell solely due to macro factors like tariffs. Tariffs force them to reallocate more funds, leading to a seemingly counterintuitive situation where they sell companies like Palantir, even though that company might not be affected by tariffs at all or could even benefit.

Retail investors, on the other hand, have a much simpler thought process. They buy or sell stocks because they believe a specific company will do well in the future. So, when facing macro events like tariffs or interest rates, retail investors often show more resilience.

They focus on things like: "How is this company doing?" "Do I like its products?" "Is revenue growing?" "Are margins improving?" "How's their Rule of 40?"

These are still relatively professional analyses, but they won't just dump all their stocks and move into fixed income just because a conflict started somewhere in the world, which is what many institutional investors might do.

Current Stock Market: Is There a Bubble Similar to 2022?

Host: Next, I'd like to talk specifically about Robinhood. As mentioned, you went public in July 2021, and not long after, the entire capital market entered a very difficult period.

Do you feel that you managed to catch the last train? Because for the following years, the capital market wasn't very friendly to IPOs like Robinhood's.

Vlad Tenev: Yes. The IPO window was essentially closed for several years. Since we later launched our IPO Access product, we had a closer look at the IPO market.

After the window closed, it was years before a crack appeared. The IPOs of ARM and Instacart were arguably the first to reopen the market. I think it was in 2023, and in a way, they were precursors to the full market recovery later.

It wasn't really until last year that the IPO market fully reopened.

Host: The reason I took this long detour is that I want to ask if you feel a sense of déjà vu regarding SpaceX's public listing, similar to Robinhood's situation? You went public just before the market closed. If you had been a bit later, you might not have had that chance because the market experienced a two-year downturn.

Now SpaceX has successfully listed, and everyone is watching to see if all these other companies can follow suit. OpenAI has now indicated they might not try to go public for a while. Does this feel a bit like the past? How do you see the current market dynamics compared to back then?

Vlad Tenev: Everyone is discussing the question: "Are we in an AI bubble?"

I think what makes this question complex is that a lot of companies are pouring massive amounts of money into AI right now, and at the same time, the AI industry has developed relatively clear business models.

These foundational model companies sell tokens to enterprise clients and individual users. OpenAI also has a subscription business that's already quite substantial. So, unlike many past bubbles, AI companies today have genuine business models and continuously growing revenue.

The real question has shifted to whether the enterprises paying heavily for AI will transition from a "willing to learn, not too focused on costs" stage to a stage more focused on Return on Investment (ROI). If they start rigorously measuring ROI, will the revenue from each client continue to grow in the future, or will it decline?

On the other hand, there's another very important factor: a massive number of enterprises haven't really started using AI yet, and the same goes for consumers. For example, look at a product like Claude Code. Its user base is probably in the tens of millions, far from hundreds of millions or billions. So, the entire market still has a very long growth runway. That's why, despite having real revenue today, I still feel the entire AI industry is in its very early stages.

So, I think the logic for judging IPO timing differs from the past. Another thing I've realized over the years is that no matter what era we're in, we always feel we're standing at a very important historical juncture, as if what's happening is unprecedented, on the brink of some massive transformation.

But if we look back, these market cycles are actually getting shorter. For instance, we just mentioned the IPO window closed at the end of 2021 and started reopening around 2023. If you zoom out, you see it's just a cyclical fluctuation resembling a sinusoid.

No phase is permanent. Even if the IPO window closes temporarily, it doesn't necessarily mean it takes ten years to reopen.

Host: Based on the customer behavior you observe, are you currently seeing warning signs similar to those before the 2022 market correction?

Of course, SpaceX is obviously not a Meme Stock. It's a multi-trillion dollar company. But some people might draw an analogy, saying it, too, is being pushed to very high valuations without sufficient profitability, and it could fall again.

I'm not comparing it to GameStop. My point is, are you seeing any signs in your customers' trading behavior that remind you of the period leading up to the 2020-2021 run-up and the 2022 correction?

Vlad Tenev: I think the vast majority of companies our customers invest in today are large enterprises with real profitability and are at the forefront of their respective industries.

You mentioned SpaceX, and besides that, there's Nvidia, Tesla, and other chip companies. The entire chip sector has performed quite well recently, and our customers are very interested in it.

So, I think the biggest difference between today and 2020/2021 is the investment sentiment then, which I'd call "nostalgia." Many Robinhood users are millennials. Back then, they invested in companies they felt were "unfairly suppressed" by pandemic-era policies, like retailers such as GameStop, movie theater chains, airlines, car rental companies, etc. Even in the most optimistic scenario, it's hard to say those businesses were at the cutting edge of technological innovation. In fact, influenced by market conditions, COVID, and trends like online entertainment and streaming, they were, in a way, industries being disrupted by the times.

Today is completely different. Our customers are now primarily investing in innovative companies that are actively disrupting their industries, standing at the forefront of their respective sectors. Of course, everyone can argue about P/E ratios and other valuation metrics, but I think there's one thing hardly anyone disputes: these companies are genuinely changing the world.

The Founder's Perspective on the Path to Success

Host: Let's bring the focus back to Robinhood. Before discussing Robinhood today and its future, I'd like to look back.

In retrospect, what do you think was the fundamental reason Robinhood could quickly break into the market and gain user recognition in its early days? I know commission-free trading is certainly one reason.

Vlad Tenev: I believe three factors combined to make the Robinhood product resonate so widely.

First, as you mentioned, commission-free trading. Back then, other brokerages charged $7 to $10 per trade. We were completely free. This allowed us to not only reach a new user base – mainly young people who might not have had one or two thousand dollars to start investing.

Later, we also attracted a significant number of active traders to the platform. For these active traders, if they were making a hundred or even a thousand trades a month, even if our platform had some shortcomings in features or tools compared to other professional brokerages, they would still use Robinhood. The economic value of zero commissions was just too great. So, at least in terms of the business model, we won the competition.

Second. Besides pioneering commission-free trading and establishing the business model now standard across the industry, we also pioneered mobile-first trading. Robinhood was truly the leader in the brokerage industry's shift to mobile. Before Robinhood, while some brokerages had mobile apps, the mobile platform was an afterthought, a supplementary product.

We bet that mobile internet was the future and that people would primarily manage their financial lives through their phones. Not just because phones are more portable, but because the mobile platform inherently has many practical advantages. So, from the very beginning of product design, we built it around mobile. I believe Robinhood truly created the mobile brokerage industry and pushed it to become the mainstream format