对话Robinhood创始人：散户的意志，胜过所有"聪明钱"

Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator: Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Editor's Note: Robinhood recently launched Robinhood Chain. The new wave of Meme frenzy based on this network has reignited the long-dormant cryptocurrency market and is even regarded by some active investors as the beginning 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 history and path to success. He discussed topics ranging from Meme stocks to Meme tokens, looked ahead to asset tokenization and the investment value of private equity markets, and emphasized that "retail investors are the true smart money."

The following is the full transcript of Vlad Tenev's conversation on the Master Investor podcast (edited for readability), compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.

Opening Remarks

Host: Welcome to the Master Investor podcast. I'm your host, Wilfred Frost. In this program, we talk 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 insights.

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 since.

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

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

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

Host: Which part did you enjoy more? The time when everything was going up, or...?

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

History Revisited: The 2022 Major Correction

Host: Let's start with that major correction. It's not just Robinhood's story; it's the story of the entire market.

You have clear insights into the behavior of almost all traders, especially retail traders. Before that market correction, which also impacted Robinhood's own stock price, could you already see signs of a bubble in your customers' trading activity?

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 massively, sending stimulus checks directly to households. But at the same time, if you looked at various indicators predicting inflation, no one thought inflation would rise significantly.

For example, long-term inflation expectations reflected in the 10-year Treasury yield were roughly around 2%. I was thinking, 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 was bound to break. For me personally, what happened later wasn't surprising, even if it might have been a shock to the broader market.

By the end of 2021, inflation began to rise noticeably, eventually hitting multi-decade highs, surpassing any period in the last 30 years. When you see inflation go from near zero to 9%, 10%, a policy response becomes inevitable—rate hikes, monetary tightening.

To me, this seemed almost inevitable and entirely foreseeable.

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

I'm mainly referring to the Meme Stock frenzy. 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 fundamentally interconnected.

Looking at the timeline, the most famous Meme Stock rally occurred in January 2021, just weeks after a massive fiscal stimulus package was rolled out in the U.S. We could see this clearly in Robinhood's data.

Every time the government sent out stimulus checks, we would see a massive influx of funds into the market just days or weeks later. Looking back at Robinhood's massive growth during the pandemic, there are several key reasons.

First, people had almost nowhere to spend their 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, pushing the federal funds rate to over 2%. But in 2020, with the onset of COVID-19, the Fed quickly cut rates back to zero.

On top of zero interest rates, multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus were added. All these factors were jointly 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 and massive fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy, the outcome could have been very different.

Host: Very interesting. I was at CNBC at the time, and our ratings also soared 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 else was closed; only the market was open.

Retail Investors and Smart Money

Host: I chose this topic because later I want to discuss another question—whether you see similarities between today's market and back then. But before that, I want to touch on something else.

I've heard that your customers—largely retail investors, which Robinhood is known for—have actually performed better in the market compared to other institutions. We've interviewed many guests over the past few weeks who talked about "Smart Money" and "Dumb Money."

Now, more and more people believe that the real "smart money" is actually the retail investor. They successfully bought the dip in October 2022, April 2025, and March 2026. Does this trend still exist? Are your clients still seeing the market more clearly and willing to buy when prices are low?

Vlad Tenev: Absolutely. I've always believed this. A lot of the time, what's called "smart money" might actually be a bit too clever for its own good, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Institutional investing today has become increasingly indirect and abstract. Fund managers are more focused on observing the macro environment, constantly adjusting their 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 simply because of macro factors like tariffs. Tariffs force them to reallocate more capital, so you get a counterintuitive situation where they sell companies like Palantir, even though that company might not be affected by tariffs at all, or might even benefit from them.

Retail investors' thinking is much simpler. They buy or sell stocks because they believe a specific company will do well in the future. Therefore, 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?", "Are revenues growing?", "Are margins improving?", "How is the Rule of 40 performing?"...

These are still relatively professional analyses, but they won't immediately dump all stocks and move into fixed-income assets just because "the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out," which is exactly what many institutional investors would do.

Is the Current Stock Market Experiencing a Bubble Like 2022?

Host: Let's talk specifically about Robinhood. As mentioned, you went public in July 2021, and shortly after, the entire capital market entered a very difficult period.

Do you feel like you just caught the last train? Because in the following years, the capital market wasn't very friendly to IPOs like Robinhood's.

Vlad Tenev: Yes. The IPO window was basically closed for several years. Since we later launched the IPO Access product, we had more firsthand observations of the entire IPO market.

After the IPO window closed, it took a few years before a crack finally appeared. The IPOs of ARM and Instacart were arguably the first to reopen the market. I believe it was in 2023, and they were, to some extent, precursors to the full market recovery that followed.

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

Host: The reason I took this long detour is to ask if you see a sense of déjà vu with SpaceX's IPO, similar to Robinhood's situation back then? You went public just before the market closed; if you had waited a bit longer, you might not have had the chance, because the market then experienced two years of downturn.

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

Vlad Tenev: Everyone is wondering right now: "Are we in an AI bubble?"

What complicates this question is that a huge number of companies are pouring massive amounts of money into AI, and the AI industry has already formed relatively clear business models.

These foundation model companies sell tokens to enterprise clients and individual users. OpenAI also has a substantial subscription business. So, unlike many past bubbles, AI companies today have real business models and growing revenue.

The real question has become whether the enterprises paying large sums for AI will transition from a "willing to learn, not too focused on cost" phase to one more focused on return on investment (ROI). If they start measuring ROI strictly, will revenue from each client continue to grow, or will it decline?

On the other hand, another important factor is that a vast number of enterprises haven't truly started using AI yet, nor have consumers. For instance, look at Claude Code. Its user base is probably in the tens of millions, far from hundreds of millions or billions. Therefore, the entire market still has a very long growth runway. This is why, despite having real revenue today, I still feel the entire AI industry is in a very early stage of development.

So, I think the logic here differs from judging IPO timing in the past. Another thing I've come to realize over the years is this: No matter what era we live in, we tend to feel we're at a very important historical juncture, that what's happening is unprecedented, that we're on the verge of some massive change.

But looking back, you realize these market cycles are getting shorter. For example, we just mentioned the IPO window closed at the end of 2021 and started reopening in 2023. If you zoom out, you see it's just a sinusoidal cycle.

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

Host: From the customer behavior you observe, do you currently see any warning signs similar to those before the 2022 market correction?

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

I'm not comparing it to GameStop. My point is, do you see any signs in your customers' trading behavior that remind you of the period leading up to the market adjustments in 2020, 2021, and 2022?

Vlad Tenev: I believe the companies our customers invest in today are, for the most part, large enterprises with real profitability at the forefront of their respective industries.

You mentioned SpaceX, and besides that, there's Nvidia, Tesla, and other chip companies. The entire chip industry has been performing 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, which I'd call "nostalgia." Many Robinhood users are Millennials. Back then, they invested in companies they felt were "unfairly penalized" by pandemic-era policies, like retailers (GameStop), movie theater chains, airlines, car rental companies, etc. Even under the most optimistic scenario, it's hard to say these companies were at the forefront of technological innovation. In fact, impacted by the market environment, COVID-19, and trends like online entertainment and streaming, they were, in a way, industries being disrupted by the times.

Today is completely different. Our customers now mostly invest in innovative companies that are actively disrupting their industries, standing at the very forefront of their sector's development. Of course, you can debate P/E ratios and various valuation metrics, but I think there's little debate that these companies are indeed changing the world.

The Founder's Perspective on the Path to Success

Host: Let's bring the focus back to Robinhood. Before talking about Robinhood today and its future, I want to look back.

In retrospect, what do you think was the fundamental reason Robinhood was able to quickly capture the market and gain user recognition in its early days? I know commission-free trading was one reason.

Vlad Tenev: I believe the broad resonance of the Robinhood product resulted from the combination of three factors.

First, as you mentioned, commission-free trading. At the time, other brokerages charged $7 to $10 per trade. We were completely free. Thus, we successfully tapped into a new user base—primarily younger people who didn't have the initial capital (one or two thousand dollars) to start investing.

Later, we also attracted a large number of active traders to the platform. For these active traders, even if our platform's features or tools had some shortcomings compared to other professional brokerages, they were still willing to use Robinhood. Because economically, the value of zero commissions was enormous. So, at least in terms of business model, we won the competition.

Second. Besides pioneering commission-free trading and establishing the business model now common across the industry, we also pioneered mobile trading. Robinhood was the leader in the entire brokerage industry's shift to mobile. Before Robinhood, some brokerages had mobile apps, but the mobile platform was an afterthought.

We bet that mobile internet was the future and that people would primarily manage their financial lives through their phones. This wasn't just because phones are more portable, but because mobile itself has many practical advantages. So, we designed our product from the ground up around mobile. I believe Robinhood truly created the mobile brokerage industry and pushed it to become the mainstream form in the market today. Robinhood has always been the leader in this space.

Third, and very importantly, is the set of values that Robinhood represents. If we go back to the 2008 global financial crisis, many of our users were at an important life stage. I graduated college in 2008 and entered graduate school. During my first month