Fintech rotation heats up

Money has been rotating into online broker stocks in April, with Robinhood, Interactive Brokers and Webull drawing attention even as the biggest index funds kept climbing. (google.com) Robinhood was at $90.75 on April 17, while Webull closed at $6.72 and was up 36.31% over five trading days; SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, the fund behind the S&P 500, was up 1.21% that day and 4.43% year to date. (google.com) (finance.yahoo.com 1) (finance.yahoo.com 2) Interactive Brokers closed at $81.86 on April 17 after reporting 4.411 million daily average revenue trades in January, up 27% from a year earlier, with client equity at $814.3 billion. (interactivebrokers.com) (businesswire.com) Robinhood’s own operating data showed 27.4 million funded customers and $314 billion in total platform assets at the end of February, up 68% from a year earlier, with $5.6 billion of net deposits for the month. (robinhood.gcs-web.com) A brokerage stock rally is different from a broad market rally because these companies make more money when customers trade more, borrow more and keep more assets on platform. Robinhood said March month-to-date equity trading volume reached about $196 billion, options volume hit 187 million contracts and crypto notional volume was about $16 billion through March 27. (docs.publicnow.com) Webull’s setup is newer in public markets but similar in theme. The company began trading on Nasdaq under the symbol BULL on April 11, 2025, and says it now operates in 14 markets with more than 23 million registered users. (sec.gov) (webullcorp.com) Crypto-linked equities have not moved in lockstep with that broker trade. Coinbase says it handled $1.2 trillion in annual trading volume and held $376 billion of assets on platform as of Dec. 31, 2025, while Strategy describes itself as a Bitcoin treasury company whose primary reserve asset is Bitcoin. (investor.coinbase.com) (strategy.com) That leaves Coinbase and Strategy more directly tied to Bitcoin’s swings than brokers whose revenue comes from stocks, options, margin loans and cash balances as well as crypto. Bitcoin was around $75,867 on April 18, still about 39.88% below its Oct. 6, 2025 all-time high of $126,198, according to CoinMarketCap. (coinmarketcap.com) Sentiment gauges show investors leaning optimistic but not euphoric. CNN’s Fear & Greed Index for U.S. stocks was 68 on April 17, and CoinMarketCap’s crypto Fear and Greed Index was 54 when its page was last crawled, after showing 57 the previous day and 42 a week earlier. (cnn.com) (coinmarketcap.com) Some of the strongest recent moves have come from the higher-risk corners of the tape. Aave rose from $89.91 on April 12 to $101.42 on April 18, while Drift Protocol was up 40.59% over seven days when CoinGecko’s page was crawled on April 19. (coinmarketcap.com) (coingecko.com) The next test for the trade is whether the operating data keeps confirming it. Robinhood is scheduled to report first-quarter 2026 results on April 28, and Strategy is set to hold its first-quarter 2026 webinar on May 5. (investors.robinhood.com) (strategy.com)