HOOD Underperforms Peers on the Week as Analysts Keep Raising Targets

Robinhood Markets fell 11.1% over the past week, a steeper drop than most of its closest peers, while a cluster of analyst upgrades and target increases pushed the Street's consensus target well above the current price.

Among the peer group, the losses were broad but HOOD's slide stood out. IBKR shed 5.2% on the week and COIN lost 6.0%, while GEMI fell hardest at 23.5%. HOOD's 11.1% decline puts it in the middle of a bad week for the group, though notably worse than the largest names. The stock last changed hands at $98.21, down 18% over the past month, leaving it roughly 37% below the average analyst price target of $134.90.

Analyst activity this week has been unusually active and almost uniformly constructive. Rosenblatt opened coverage with a Buy and a $135 target on Wednesday. Needham raised its target to $126 from $123, keeping its Buy rating. JP Morgan lifted its target to $115 from $103 while holding at Neutral. Earlier in the fortnight, Morgan Stanley went to $160 from $150 at Overweight, Bank of America raised to $156 from $140, Barclays moved to $132 from $105, and Evercore ISI initiated at Outperform with a $130 target. The lone dissenter was Wells Fargo, which trimmed to $120 from $125 at Equal-Weight. That is nine separate price-target actions in two weeks, with eight of the nine moving higher. The analyst recommendation differential factor ranks in the 97th percentile across the universe, a rare level of bullish Street alignment. EPS momentum scores reinforce the picture: 86th percentile on a 30-day basis and 94th percentile over 90 days.

Short interest continues to build, but the lending market puts that in context. SI has reached 5.4% of the free float, up roughly 2.6% on the week and 19% over the past month, continuing the trend flagged in last week's note. Bears have added around 10 million shares since mid-September. That pace is worth watching, but the borrow itself remains cheap and plentiful. Cost to borrow is just 0.45%, slipping slightly on the week. Availability is 1,214%, meaning roughly 12 shares remain available to borrow for every one currently lent out. That is tighter than the 2,200% reading seen in late September, but still among the loosest conditions in the lending market for any stock with short interest above 5%. There is no mechanical squeeze pressure here. The put/call ratio at 0.69 is mildly elevated relative to its 20-day average of 0.68, about 1.2 standard deviations above the mean, and close to but not at the 52-week high of 0.72. Options are cautious, not alarmed.

The ownership picture adds one detail worth noting. CEO Vladimir Tenev sold roughly 375,000 shares on October 5 at around $114, collecting approximately $43 million. All of the sales were executed under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan, so they represent scheduled liquidations rather than discretionary judgment calls. Co-founder Baiju Bhatt shows a minor reduction in his last filing as well. At the institutional level, BlackRock added 4.3 million shares in the quarter to September 30, bringing its stake to 7.5%. FMR added 10.3 million shares in the same period. T. Rowe Price added 5.3 million. The buying at the institutional level runs in the opposite direction to the insider plan sales, and both run counter to the short-side accumulation.

Retail attention has also picked up. ORTEX's Wikipedia-and-page-view signal, which measures how much attention the company is drawing relative to its own 90-day history, registered a z-score of 1.86 as of October 9, a notably elevated reading. That is attention, not a revenue signal, but it points to higher-than-usual retail engagement ahead of next Tuesday's Q3 print.

Q3 results are due on October 27. The last earnings release in late July produced a one-day decline of 6.6%, followed by a near-flat five-day outcome. The question for the coming week is whether the gap between a still-constructive analyst community and a stock that has given back 18% in a month closes through the print, widens, or stays stuck where it is.