Robinhood CEO discusses the brokerage's evolution leading up to another ride on the meme stock wave

abcnews.go.com:

Meme stocks like GameStop are hot again, reviving memories of early 2021 when they turned into a craze that ended up burning many investors along with Robinhood Markets

SAN FRANCISCO — Meme stocks like GameStop are hot again, reviving memories of early 2021 when they turned into a craze that ended up burning many investors along with Robinhood Markets. The online brokerage was especially popular among younger generations helped propel the meme stock boom until it became so overwhelmed that it suddenly clamped down on trading. That move outraged many customers who blamed the brokerage for losses, sparking inquiries by lawmakers and triggering lawsuits.

Robinhood has enjoyed a far more stable ride on the latest meme stock wave, an improvement that CEO Vlad Tenev credits to the brokerage becoming more mature and diversified as it expanded into retirement and credit card accounts.

Tenev, 37, recently discussed Robinhood's evolution and the challenges of running a publicly held company that has seen its stock price fall about 40% below its July 2021 IPO price of $38). He also brushed off the threat of a federal regulatory investigation into Robinhood's cryptocurrency arm that is now expanding with a $200 million acquisition of the crypto exchange Bitstamp.

Q: How are you feeling about the investing environment now compared to a few years ago?

A: I felt a little nervous in 2021. Not only were we growing so quickly that I didn’t think our infrastructure could handle it, but we were also spending so much of our resources just trying to keep up with our growth that we couldn’t really build new products that would serve as our next growth drivers. The foundation is much better now. You are seeing this with the latest meme stock