Financial Exchanges & Data

S&P Global announced on September 17, 2026 that it has acquired OpenZeppelin, the industry standard for smart contract security, in a move that extends the ratings firm's risk-assessment mandate into the technology-risk layer of digital assets. OpenZeppelin's libraries underpin over $37 trillion in cumulative transfers and power 8 of the top 10 stablecoins, including USDC, and 10 of the top 10 tokenized money market funds, such as BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin Templeton's BENJI. OpenZeppelin will operate as a separate business unit led by CEO Demian Brener, who will report directly to Yann Le Pallec, President of S&P Global Ratings. The deal lands on the same day the SEC granted a 5-year exemption for tokenized NMS stock trading, aligning with the broader GENIUS Act framework, and ahead of the DTCC Tokenization Service launch in October 2026. S&P Global is positioning itself as the gatekeeper of the technical standards regulators are expected to require for tokenized markets.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission introduced a provisional, conditional exemption allowing certain tokenized U.S.-listed equities to trade on-chain under specified conditions, while S&P Global agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, a firm specializing in smart contract security infrastructure. The SEC measure, set out in a "Statement on Innovation Exemptions" signed by Commissioner Mark T. Ueda, guarantees holders of equity tokens the same rights as holders of conventional shares and requires third parties to notify the issuer of the underlying stock in writing before dealing in tokenized shares. According to S&P Global, OpenZeppelin's technology has supported the transfer of more than $37 trillion in value cumulatively, including major stablecoins and tokenized funds. Following these announcements, the market capitalization of DeFi-related tokens rose about $7 billion on Friday, climbing 8.8% to $79.8 billion, while the total market capitalization of the broader crypto market rose 4% to $2.7 trillion. Hyperliquid's HYPE jumped 10.8% to an all-time high of about $90.46, giving it a market capitalization of $20.12 billion; Uniswap's UNI rose 29.1% over 24 hours to about $9.00, for a market capitalization of $5.59 billion; and Aave's AAVE gained 9.5% to about $135.28. Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said the SEC is trying to put in place as much of a crypto regulatory framework as it can under its existing authority, and described tokenization as a massive tide.

The SEC announced a five-year conditional Innovation Exemption allowing eligible platforms to trade tokenized U.S. equities without standard exchange registration, sending shares of Robinhood up 7.6% and Coinbase up 10.5%. According to Reuters, the temporary framework lets digital asset brokerages and trading platforms support tokenized equity trading while the agency solicits public comments to shape permanent regulatory policies for on-chain securities. Tokenized equities represent traditional corporate shares as digital tokens on a blockchain, potentially enabling 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, and more efficient settlement. The move reduces compliance hurdles and waives full exchange registration requirements for qualifying participants, opening the door for platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood to launch new asset offerings and capture additional trading volume. The rally was further supported by a rebound in the broader cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin trading up roughly 2% near $78,000. Coinbase remains down 17.7% since the start of the year and trades at $194.63 per share, 49.7% below its 52-week high of $387.27 from October 2025.

Tradeweb Markets reported second-quarter revenues of $558.9 million, up 9% year on year, in line with analysts' expectations, as the ten financial exchanges and data stocks tracked by the report beat consensus revenue estimates by 1.6% as a group. Tradeweb, which was founded in 1996 as one of the pioneers in electronic bond trading, posted a decent beat of analysts' EBITDA estimates, but the market seemed disappointed and the stock is down 5.6% since reporting, currently trading at $102.07. Among peers, Morningstar was the strongest performer with revenues of $663.2 million, up 9.6% year on year and 2.2% above expectations, while S&P Global was the weakest, reporting revenues of $4.15 billion, up 10.4% year on year and 1% above expectations, but posting a significant miss of analysts' EBITDA estimates and full-year EPS guidance slightly missing expectations, with its stock down 7.9% since the results. FactSet reported revenues of $622.9 million, up 6.4% year on year and 1.1% above expectations, and Nasdaq reported revenues of $1.5 billion, up 14.9% year on year and 3% above expectations. Share prices of the companies in the group have held steady, up 3.6% on average since the latest earnings results.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Sept. 17 Innovation Exemption creates a five-year, conditional pathway for certain tokenized U.S. stocks to trade on blockchain-based Tokenized Securities Venues, a framework that could benefit Robinhood Markets. The exemption permits trading through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools, but requires tokenized shares to give holders the same rights and privileges as conventional shares, including dividends and voting rights, while issuers can block third-party tokenization by objecting within 30 days of receiving notice from the trading venue. Robinhood cannot simply bring its existing Stock Tokens to the United States, since the company describes them as tokenized debt securities backed 1:1 by underlying shares that provide economic exposure rather than legal or beneficial ownership and are unavailable to U.S. residents. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has said the company plans to add one-for-one share redemption and voting rights after AMC CEO Adam Aron criticized the Stock Tokens for lacking traditional shareholder rights, though the SEC's allowance for issuer objections diverges from Tenev's stance. Coinbase Global is the most direct rival given its U.S. stock-trading business and international tokenized-equity efforts, while Intercontinental Exchange is developing a 24/7 digital venue for tokenized equities through the NYSE. Robinhood's first-half 2026 revenues climbed 24% year over year to $2.38 billion, earnings rose 23% to $1.00, and the company ended August with 28.6 million funded customers and $384 billion in total platform assets, up 26% year over year.

S&P Global announced on September 17 that it has agreed to acquire blockchain security firm OpenZeppelin. The purchase price was not disclosed, and the deal is subject to customary conditions. S&P Global said the acquisition complements its risk assessment and ecosystem development capabilities in the digital asset market, with President Yann Le Pallec stating that OpenZeppelin's technology and expertise complement the company's ability to assess risks in on-chain technology. Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin runs an open-source smart contract library regarded as the de facto industry standard, along with security audit services. More than 37 trillion dollars in value has been transferred through the library, which has over 900 audits to its name and has detected more than 10,000 vulnerabilities. After the acquisition, OpenZeppelin will continue as an independent business unit, with Demian Brener remaining as CEO, and the library will continue to be freely available on GitHub. S&P Global also led an investment in crypto market data firm Kaiko on September 14, while rival Moody's began providing ratings data on Solana in June, underscoring intensifying competition among the major ratings agencies over on-chain services.

Robinhood Markets Inc. rose 2.26% intraday after the SEC issued an order creating a pathway for trading venues to issue tokenized versions of US stocks, effective immediately. The order, which arrived two days after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate, requires that stock tokens give holders the same rights as the underlying securities, including dividends and voting, and allows companies to block tokenization of their own shares. Under the rules, a platform must notify the issuer and wait 30 days, and if the company objects within that window, the token cannot trade; the exemption runs five years and carries volume limits. The conditions are close to what AMC's Adam Aron demanded earlier this month, when he called Robinhood's stock tokens contemptible and argued they stripped investors of shareholder rights while bypassing the company entirely. Robinhood said this week it will let token holders redeem for underlying shares one-for-one and will add voting rights, while Coinbase Global Inc., Gemini and Payward's Kraken have all launched tokenized equities offshore without offering them to US customers.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a five-year regulatory framework for the "Innovation Exemption," legalizing the trading of blockchain-based tokenized stocks in the United States for the first time. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev hailed the decision, saying "Tokenization Is Coming to America." The framework runs for five years and marks the first time tokenized equities can be traded under U.S. regulation.

Intercontinental Exchange announced the launch of a new reference data service for private credit instruments, building on its recently introduced ICE IDs, the first foundational identifiers for private credit. The service, ICE Private Credit Reference Data, uses ICE IDs assigned at origination that persist throughout the full asset lifecycle, delivering private credit data directly to clients through ICE's reference data infrastructure. The offering is a foundational component of ICE Private Credit Intelligence, an industry-wide initiative started by ICE and Apollo to build the foundational data infrastructure for the private credit market. As anchor originator, Apollo has contributed deal-level data relating to over 5,000 deals and ICE IDs, totaling over $1.3 trillion in notional cover data. Chris Edmonds, President of ICE's Fixed Income and Data Services, said the dataset builds on over 25 years of ICE experience working with partners like Apollo, while Apollo Capital Solutions Partner and Head Eric Needleman said data standardization is an essential building block for stronger investor confidence as private credit grows.

Donnelley Financial Solutions rolled out AI Document Translation and AI Document Summaries inside Venue, its virtual data room for deal teams, on September 14. The tools translate documents across more than 130 languages and generate shareable summaries of PDFs and Office files without the material leaving Venue's secure walls. The launch follows a second quarter in which Donnelley Financial Solutions reported net sales of $224.2 million, up 2.8% from $218.1 million a year earlier, with software solutions posting a record $99.4 million, a 7.8% jump that lifted software's share of total revenue to 44.3% from 42.3%. Adjusted EBITDA climbed to $82.3 million, a margin of 36.7% and about 170 basis points wider than the prior year, while free cash flow rose 18.4% to $61.2 million, and the company bought back 763,451 shares for about $34.7 million. Print and distribution net sales fell 15.0% to $34.6 million, and third-quarter guidance calls for total net sales of just $175 million to $185 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 26% to 28%, well below the 36.7% just delivered. Donnelley Financial Solutions also named Ken Napolitano as its new Chief Revenue Officer during the quarter.

Morningstar's PitchBook private markets data was integrated into OpenAI's newly launched ChatGPT for Financial Services platform in September 2026, enhancing AI-assisted analytical tools for finance professionals. The collaboration underscores the growing importance of high-quality private market datasets as foundational inputs for advanced AI models serving institutional investors. The integration, alongside Morningstar's Game On campaign, could act as a near-term catalyst for data licensing and deeper platform adoption, supporting the case for current buybacks and dividends. Morningstar still faces key risks around its high debt load, relatively modest growth outlook and share price performance that has lagged broader markets. Seven Simply Wall St Community fair value estimates for Morningstar range from about US$161,000 to over US$329,000, reflecting sharply divergent views on the payoff from the company's expanding AI integrations.

CME Group announced that its S&P UBS USD Liquid Leveraged Loan Index futures began trading on September 14, 2026. The new contracts track the S&P UBS index and offer a centrally cleared, capital-efficient tool for relative value trading, according to the Chicago-based derivatives marketplace. Ted Carey, Executive Director of Rates and OTC Products at CME Group, said the futures give institutions risk management tools beyond investment grade and high-yield markets, with cross-margining benefits within a single clearing house. Cameron Drinkwater, Chief Product and Operations Officer at S&P Dow Jones Indices, called it the first-of-its-kind exchange-traded futures contract linked to a transparent and representative leveraged loan benchmark. CME Group credit futures launched in June 2024, and since then over 1.5 million contracts have traded across the complex, with open interest exceeding $2 billion in September 2026. The contracts can provide automatic margin offsets against CME Group's interest rate and equity futures, part of the $95 billion in daily efficiencies the company delivers to clients across asset classes, and are available to trade on CME Globex and eligible for submission to clearing via CME ClearPort.

Robinhood Markets says it will offer share redemptions and voting rights on its tokenized stocks, a move that comes as the online brokerage faces mounting criticism over its plans to put U.S. stocks on blockchain rails. "In-kind redemption and voting are coming for Robinhood Stock Tokens," CEO Vlad Tenev said in a social media post on Sept. 14, and the company later said it is actively working on redemptions for shares 1:1 with voting for eligible Stock Token holders. Robinhood has come under fire from movie theatre chain AMC Entertainment, which has called on the brokerage to stop offering a tokenized version of its stock, saying it never approved the tokenized version and that token holders lack the rights of other shareholders. Providing in-kind redemptions would let investors exchange a tokenized stock for a corresponding share, while voting rights should help ease investor concerns and give tokenized-stock holders the same rights as other shareholders. Crypto exchange Coinbase Global is also adding voting rights to its tokenized stock offerings, and its tokenized equities already support one-for-one redemptions with traditional shares.

Moody's has agreed to acquire a minority stake in Philippine Rating Services, known as PhilRatings, a domestic credit rating agency in the Philippines. The investment expands Moody's Asia-Pacific network of domestic rating agency affiliates. Wendy Cheong, Managing Director and Regional Head of Asia Pacific at Moody's Ratings, said strong domestic debt markets are essential to supporting sustainable economic growth, adding that PhilRatings has built deep insight into the local market and that its ratings serve as a strong complement to Moody's global views on credit for investors in the Philippines. Following Moody's investment, PhilRatings will continue to operate independently with its own management, governance, and credit rating processes.

Intercontinental Exchange reported record operating metrics for August 2026 across multiple asset classes and platforms. Total average daily volume rose 14% year on year and open interest climbed 19%, with strong contributions from energy, interest rates, equity indices and NYSE equity options. Agriculture and metals were particularly strong, with average daily volume up 92% and open interest up 52%. Interest rate futures open interest reached 14.4 million lots on August 31. Management highlighted broad-based growth in volumes and open interest as a sign of strong customer engagement across ICE markets in August.

Moody's Corporation has agreed to acquire a minority stake in Philippine Rating Services Corporation, or PhilRatings, a leading domestic credit rating agency headquartered in Manila. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Moody's Ratings becomes the first global credit rating agency to invest in a domestic credit rating agency in the Philippines, expanding its Asia-Pacific network of domestic rating agency affiliates. Following the investment, PhilRatings will continue to operate independently with its own management, governance and credit rating processes. Wendy Cheong, Managing Director and Regional Head of Asia Pacific at Moody's Ratings, said PhilRatings has built deep insight into the local market and its ratings complement Moody's global credit views for investors in the Philippines, while PhilRatings President Angelica B. Viloria said Moody's global standards and technical support will help advance its mission to strengthen the country's credit market infrastructure. The companies noted that domestic corporate bonds outstanding in the ASEAN region are more than twice the size of cross-border holdings, and that more than US$100 billion of planned infrastructure investment in the Philippines over the next three years highlights the market's potential.

Robinhood announced it will add the ability for Stock Token holders to convert their tokens into real shares and exercise voting rights, following heavy criticism over the rights of those token holders. Meanwhile, Bitcoin rebounded above 77,800 dollars and traded in a range of 76,636 to 79,600 dollars, still capped by key resistance at 80,000 dollars. Crypto markets and trading volumes have picked up again. Investors are watching the CLARITY Act draft legislation as well as the next meeting of the U.S. central bank, the Fed.

A new MSCI survey of 450 advisers in the United States and Europe found that 71% plan to increase their use of active exchange-traded funds within two years, while 87% already invest in active ETFs and 62% plan to raise their passive allocation. The ETF Intelligence Survey 2026 points to substitution as much as new money, with 58% saying a new active ETF from a manager they already use would most likely displace an existing mutual fund or a UCITS holding, and half of respondents saying they would switch to an active ETF version of a strategy they already hold. Regulators cleared the path earlier this year when, in March, the SEC granted the last piece of relief letting broker-dealers trade ETF shares of multi-class funds, allowing asset managers to run mutual fund and ETF share classes inside one portfolio. Advisers drew a firmer line on private markets, with 49% saying they would access private or less liquid assets through an ETF but only 16% considering private markets a good fit for the wrapper, citing liquidity mismatch at 62%, valuation transparency at 50% and lack of track record at 44%. MSCI global head of index Jana Haines said passive ETFs remain the foundation of most adviser portfolios but active ETFs are increasingly becoming mainstream, and demand is moving beyond home markets, with 45% expecting to broaden equity allocations and, among them, 39% favoring emerging markets against 24% for developed ones.

Robinhood Markets reported resilient customer and asset growth in its August 2026 operating metrics, though trading activity across products remained mixed. Funded customers reached 28.6 million, up about 120,000 from July and 1.9 million year over year, while total platform assets as of Aug. 31, 2026 jumped 8% sequentially and 26% year over year to $383.7 billion. Net deposits totaled $4 billion, down from $5.6 billion in July and $4.8 billion in August 2025. Equity notional volumes rose 1% month over month and surged 68% year over year to $335.4 billion, with average daily volumes rising 6% sequentially to $16 billion, and crypto notional volumes climbed 61% from July to $17.5 billion, though they remained 38% below the prior-year level. Options contracts traded declined 10% sequentially to 292.5 million despite increasing 50% year over year, event contracts fell 23% from July to 4.7 billion, and margin balances rose 4% sequentially and 72% year over year to $21.5 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Robinhood's 2026 earnings suggests a year-over-year increase of 2.9%, with earnings expected to jump 33% next year, and estimates for 2026 and 2027 were revised higher in the past week to $2.11 and $2.81 per share, respectively.

Nasdaq and Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, announced on September 10, 2026 an expansion of their partnership on tokenized equities, built on three pillars: a $100 million investment by Nasdaq Ventures, continued work by both companies on the framework for Nasdaq Equity Token, or NET, and a market surveillance agreement. NET is a tokenized equity designed with the involvement of listed companies themselves, and its launch is planned for the second quarter of 2027. Payward will use the xStocks mechanism to make NET available on public blockchains, will handle trade settlement in eligible countries for an initial period, and its B2B unit Payward Services will take charge of user identity verification and anti-money-laundering measures. As of September 2026, xStocks covered 715 tickers, with cumulative trading volume rising from more than $25 billion as of March 2026 to more than $40 billion as of September 1, while holders grew from more than 85,000 to more than 200,000. Holders, however, do not have shareholder rights and are not entitled to voting rights or dividends. Nasdaq's rule change for tokenized trading, filed in September 2025, was approved by the SEC on March 18, 2026, and DTC's service is scheduled to begin in October 2026.

A survey of 450 advisers across the U.S. and Europe by MSCI Inc. found that 71% expect to increase their use of active ETFs over the next two years, with 87% of respondents already investing in them. The ETF Intelligence Survey 2026 also showed that 58% of advisers say a new active ETF allocation from a manager they already use would most likely displace an existing mutual fund or UCITS holding, while 62% plan to increase passive ETF allocations. Half of respondents would likely switch to an active ETF version of a strategy they already hold, and 85% of those involved in fund selection are open to an ETF share class of the same strategy. Thematic and megatrend ETFs drew the strongest demand at 47%, and 45% of respondents expect to broaden their equity allocations beyond their home markets over the next two years, with 39% of those favoring emerging markets versus 24% for developed markets. On private markets, 49% of advisers are open to accessing private or less liquid assets through an ETF, but only 16% consider private markets a good fit for the structure, with 62% citing a liquidity mismatch between the ETF and its underlying assets as the main reason.

According to monthly operating data for August published by Robinhood on September 10, nominal cryptocurrency trading volume rose 61% month-over-month to $17.5 billion. Although it rebounded from a sluggish July, it was still 38% below the $28.1 billion recorded in the same month a year earlier. Breaking it down, Bitstamp, the European exchange acquired in June 2025, accounted for $10.1 billion, up 53% month-over-month, while trading through the company's own app came to $7.4 billion, up 72%. The figures do not include volume on Robinhood Chain, the company's own layer-2 network. Meanwhile, event contracts, which are bets on prediction markets, were traded 470 million times in August, roughly 15 times the 300 million times in the same month a year earlier, but down 23% from July. In its April-to-June quarterly results, revenue from event contracts reached $156 million, surpassing the $100 million from cryptocurrency, marking three consecutive quarters of declining revenue for crypto.

CME Group sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on June 18 to classify perpetual futures as swaps rather than futures, after the CFTC accepted KalshiEX's bitcoin perpetual contract as a futures contract on May 29. Bank of America estimates crypto perpetual trading will reach over $93 trillion in 2025, almost five times the size of the underlying crypto spot market, with CoinGecko putting combined centralized and decentralized perpetual volume at roughly $92.9 trillion. Bank of America rates CME Underperform with a $230 price target, but argues the exchange could benefit whether it wins, loses, or merely slows the regulatory process, since a win would impose swap-dealer registration and stricter margin standards on perps while a loss would leave CME's exclusive futures license agreements for the S&P 500, Nasdaq-100, and Russell 2000 protecting its index franchise. The bank names Intercontinental Exchange its top exchange pick with a Buy rating and $232 price target, citing its institutional client base and March investment in crypto platform OKX at a $25 billion valuation, and rates Cboe Neutral with a $354 price target after the stock fell about 30% between May 15 and June 30.

Robinhood Markets announced on September 8 a multiyear agreement to route select event contracts through OG.com's CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse infrastructure, while taking equity stakes in both Crypto.com and OG.com. The deal adds a source of event contracts and institutional-grade clearing beyond existing partners Kalshi and Rothera, and Robinhood plans to expand its football offerings to include customized combinations. Prediction-market contracts generated $156 million in revenue during the second quarter, and customers have traded approximately 45 billion contracts on the platform, including more than 30 billion through August this year, across roughly 28.5 million funded customers. The company still faces regulatory uncertainty over the respective authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and state gaming regulators, plus execution and liquidity risk tied to OG.com and the potential seasonality of event-driven trading. According to the Insider Monkey database, 87 hedge funds held Robinhood positions at the end of the second quarter, up from 84 in the first quarter, with Newlands Management the largest holder at approximately $2.42 billion and ARK Investment Management cutting its position by 13% to approximately $525.1 million.

Nasdaq, NYSE Arca and Cboe EDGX plan to extend US equities trading to 23 hours a day, five days a week beginning Dec. 6, subject to final SEC approval. Seeking Alpha analysts Luca Socci and Jack Bowman weighed the pros and cons of near-continuous trading. Socci said the shift toward a 24-hour market is a matter of when, not if, arguing that more activity will be regulated and exchange structures will improve, that non-US residents will see the time-zone mismatch reduced, and that price discovery could become more continuous, narrowing gaps at the opening bell. He cautioned that longer hours do not necessarily mean more liquidity and that companies will have to figure out how to release earnings while the market is open, noting Berkshire's Saturday reporting strategy could find followers. Bowman said the main benefit for retail investors is no longer being bound to traditional market hours, but warned overnight demand is thin outside institutions and that spreading liquidity across 23 hours will fragment it further. Both flagged exchanges as beneficiaries, with Socci naming Cboe Global Markets, Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange, Equinix, Digital Realty Trust, Broadridge Financial Solutions and Virtu Financial, while Bowman cited Nasdaq, the NYSE, Cboe Global Markets and CME, expecting derivatives volume to rise as cross-security hedging becomes more viable.

Robinhood Markets is pursuing a strategy centered on expanding access to financial asset ownership, with priorities spanning active trading, broader consumer financial services and international infrastructure, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Vlad Tenev said during a discussion hosted by Goldman Sachs. Tenev reiterated the company's longer-term goal for half of its revenue to come from outside the U.S. and half from institutional customers, and said tokenization could accelerate progress toward those targets. Robinhood Chain, the company's tokenization platform, offers roughly 200 tokenized U.S. stocks, called stock tokens, that Tenev said are backed one-to-one and available in more than 120 countries outside the U.S., with additional assets planned. He said recent activity on the chain has included billions of dollars of daily trading volume and gross revenue that reached as high as $6 million in a single day, though he declined to annualize that figure. Tenev also described wealth management as an expanding opportunity, pointing to managed accounts through Robinhood Strategies, human advice through TradePMR, banking products, credit cards and retirement accounts, and said the company expects more than $100 trillion in wealth to change hands from older generations to younger generations over coming decades. Robinhood is serving as the initial broker and trustee for Trump Accounts, which he described as accounts intended to allow children to invest in an S&P 500 exchange-traded fund, with accounts for children born in 2025 receiving a $1,000 contribution from the U.S. Treasury. The company is also broadening its agentic-trading tools, which let artificial-intelligence agents connect to a customer's Robinhood account through an interface known as the Robinhood MCP, and plans to announce additional active-trader products at an event in Houston later in the month.

Jim Cramer spotlighted Robinhood Markets' generational grip on younger investors during the September 8 episode of Mad Money, noting that three quarters of its clientele are under 45 years old with a median age of 35. Cramer cited deposits growing at a 28% clip and 28.4 million funded customers, figures that reflect a structural advantage traditional brokerages have struggled to capture. As of the second quarter, total platform assets reached $369 billion, driven by record net deposits of $21.7 billion, while the Robinhood Gold subscription service surpassed 4.8 million subscribers. On September 8, StoneX analyst Mark Palmer initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $170 price target, and on September 9, Mizuho raised its price target by $10 to $140 while maintaining an Outperform rating. The article also flags bear-case risks including exposure to retail trading activity, regulatory scrutiny of prediction markets and payment-for-order-flow economics, and a valuation of 44.6 times forward earnings, while noting that 87 hedge funds held a stake in the second quarter and short interest stood at 4.24% of float.

Robinhood's notional crypto trading volume rose 61% in August to $17.5 billion, according to operating data the company released Thursday. The rebound followed a slow July, when volume sat at $10.9 billion, though August's total still came in 38% below the $28.1 billion Robinhood processed in the same month last year. Of that total, the Robinhood app handled $7.4 billion, up 72% from July but down 46% from a year ago, while Bitstamp, the exchange Robinhood bought in 2025, contributed the larger share at $10.1 billion, up 53% month over month, with the two platforms together averaging $565 million a day in trading. Crypto remains a small slice of a much bigger balance sheet: total platform assets reached $384 billion, up 26% year over year, funded customers grew to 28.6 million, and margin loans climbed to $21.5 billion, up 72% from a year ago. The standout number was event contracts, Robinhood's prediction market bets, which traded 4.7 billion times in August, down 23% from July but up roughly 15-fold from the 300 million contracts traded in August 2025, after the company's record July quarter showed event contract revenue surging more than tenfold year over year to $156 million and overtaking crypto as a source of transaction income. Robinhood shares slipped after Thursday's release, with HOOD falling 0.83% on the day even as analysts at Mizuho and StoneX raised their price targets this week, and the company's next quarterly earnings report is expected November 4.

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square has added Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, to its portfolio, wagering that artificial intelligence will increase the value of ICE's exclusive financial data rather than commodify it. Pershing's premise is that most of ICE's data cannot be scraped off the internet or recreated by a chatbot, a case ICE CEO Jeff Sprecher has made himself, describing the company's information as data that "cannot be scraped or synthesized." ICE reported $2.7 billion in second-quarter net revenue, up 5% year over year, with adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.90, also up 5%, while recurring revenue grew 8% to $1.35 billion. Within that, Fixed Income and Data Services earned $645 million in sales, up 8%, with recurring revenue in the business up 10% to $531 million, and ICE raised its full-year recurring revenue growth outlook for the segment to a range of 7% to 8%. The company produced $3.3 billion of operational cash flow through June and $2.6 billion of adjusted free cash flow, and its board recently raised ICE's share-repurchase authority to $4 billion starting July 1. ICE is also developing technology to make its data usable in AI applications, including a Model Context Protocol server, and in July said it was planning futures with NATIVX linked to GPU compute, treating processing capability as an asset corporations may want to hedge.

Robinhood Markets reported August operating data showing continued platform growth, with funded customers reaching 28.6M, up about 120K from July and 1.90M from a year earlier. Total platform assets climbed 8% month over month to $383.7B, while net deposits reached $4.0B. Equity trading volume rose 68% year over year to $335.4B and options contracts increased 50% to 292.5M, while event contracts reached 4.7B, up roughly 15 times year over year. Crypto trading volume jumped 61% from July to $17.5B, though it remained 38% below August 2025 levels, with app crypto volume up 72% month over month to $7.4B and Bitstamp volume up 53% to $10.1B. Margin balances climbed 72% year over year to $21.5B, pointing to stronger interest income potential.

Assets held on Robinhood Chain, the proprietary blockchain run by major U.S. online brokerage Robinhood, have reached about $900 million, hovering at a record high. Roughly two months after it went live on July 1, decentralized exchange trading volume hit about $11.1 billion over the past seven days, up more than 30% week over week, and on September 1 fee revenue logged a record $3.75 million, surpassing Ethereum itself and the layer-2 network Base. Yet although the chain was built to tokenize real-world assets such as stocks, the money actually flowing in is going to meme coins and stablecoins, with assets deposited in stock tokens amounting to just $150 million, a tiny fraction of the chain's total. In the stock token market, Ondo Finance leads with about $957 million, followed by Binance's bStocks at about $622 million and Kraken-owned xStocks at about $600 million, with these three firms accounting for roughly 77% of the market. Robinhood's share price rose about 36% in August and stood at around $111 a share as of September 11.

Nasdaq announced on Sep. 10 that its strategic investment arm, Nasdaq Ventures, is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of the Kraken crypto exchange, a deal that brings Payward's valuation to $21 billion. The two companies also announced a partnership to launch the Equity Token (NET) framework by the second quarter of 2027, advancing global distribution, trading, and post-trade capabilities to support broader adoption of tokenized equities. Nasdaq and Payward had announced the NET partnership in March to support the tokenization of equities within existing regulatory frameworks, giving public issuers more control over the tokenized versions of their companies' stocks. Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi said over $2 trillion worth of stock trades run through the U.S. clearing system daily, with buys and sells netting down by about 98% and the clearing house holding $10 billion-$20 billion of collateral while it waits a day to settle, adding that cutting that waiting time from two days to one in 2024 released $3 billion. Payward will also adopt Nasdaq's surveillance technology across its portfolio of trading venues, including crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures, and options, as part of Kraken's broader plan to expand beyond crypto into a multi-asset trading exchange.

Robinhood has officially landed its first-ever formal IPO underwriting role, joining a syndicate of 18 institutions listed on smart-ring maker Oura's recent S-1 filing. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase are acting as lead bookrunners, while Robinhood appears at No. 18 on the underwriting list, a position the company says gives it stronger leverage over share allocations for its massive retail trading user base. "We want to do more," co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev told Yahoo Finance from the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech Conference, adding that as an underwriter Robinhood will be able to represent retail in the room and hopefully secure bigger allocations. Tenev said the company had previously participated in IPOs only as a selling group member, distributing shares on behalf of underwriters, and that approval to serve as an underwriter changed that. He said Robinhood intends to be disruptive in the space, arguing the IPO process can be improved because issuers lack visibility into demand and price elasticity at different IPO prices. The push also cements Robinhood's efforts to become a one-stop shop for wealth management services, a strategy that has seen it venture into prediction markets and accrue more than $3 billion in banking deposits. Tenev declined to promise an underwriting position on an upcoming hot IPO such as Anthropic, saying only that the company is working hard across the board.

Nasdaq has invested $100 million U.S. in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, as part of a new funding round that valued Payward at $21 billion U.S. The company had been seeking new capital at a $20 billion U.S. valuation. Under the funding agreement, Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks on its own platform, aiming to let investors buy and own Nasdaq-listed stocks in a tokenized or digital format with the same voting rights as traditional shares traded on the Nasdaq exchange. Nasdaq announced plans in March of this year to work with Kraken on the infrastructure needed to put stocks onchain and launch tokenized equities, and the exchange is also developing tokenized market infrastructure and preparing for around the clock trading. Nasdaq is not alone in the push, as the New York Stock Exchange is building its own platform for 24-7 trading of digital stocks. Kraken remains privately held but is expected to go public within the next year.

Nasdaq, the U.S. exchange operator, is investing in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. The investment amounts to $100 million, or roughly 15.3 billion yen, Bloomberg reported on September 10, citing people familiar with the matter. The investment is being made through Nasdaq's venture investment arm, and it values Payward at $21 billion, or about 3.213 trillion yen. The move expands a partnership the two companies announced in March as they work to build infrastructure supporting tokenized trading of equities. On March 9, the two firms announced a partnership to connect regulated stock markets with blockchain-based markets, developing a framework linking Nasdaq's market infrastructure with Payward's tokenized equity platform, xStocks. At the time of the March announcement, Nasdaq indicated it expected to launch its equity tokenization program in the first half of 2027.

Robinhood Markets' newly launched Robinhood Chain platform is generating explosive early fee revenue, but Deutsche Bank cautions that the sustainability of this momentum remains uncertain. Daily revenue on the chain jumped from below $200,000 in mid-August to nearly $500,000 on August 29, then surged to almost $1 million on August 30, and continued climbing to $4.01 million by September 2. Deutsche Bank, which raised its price target on Robinhood stock to $136 from $115 on September 4, estimates the company could receive around $5.4 million in fee revenue from recent Chain activity, up from its previous forecast of $4.6 million for the entire third quarter. The bank believes the chain is on track to become a $100-million-plus business, but that outcome depends on sustained network activity. Meanwhile, institutional positioning shows mixed signals: hedge funds holding the stock increased to 87 in the second quarter from 84, with Newlands Management Operations remaining the largest holder at about 24.2 million shares, while ARK Investment Management cut its stake by 13% to 5.2 million shares and Marshall Wace boosted its position by 273% to 3.4 million shares. Short interest stood at 33 million shares, or 4.26% of the public float, as of August 14.