November 3, 2026
Bonus Content: Robinhood’s Options Boom Made Less Money Than Expected
Dear Reader,
The U.S. national debt is now past $40 TRILLION.
How does America get out of this mess?
When you look at the options one by one… there really aren’t many.
Cut spending?
About 75% of the budget is mandatory spending and interest. That’s the part politicians won’t touch.
Raise taxes?
Could help. But it would take years of large tax hikes to make a dent. Good luck getting those through Congress.
Print the difference?
After the 2020-22 stimulus, inflation hit a 40-year high.
Which leaves one final option.
America needs to GROW its way out.
But normal growth won’t do it. The debt is already growing faster than the economy.
America needs something capable of adding TRILLIONS of dollars in GDP…
And Washington is betting on AI to do it.
And AI is already starting to spend money on its own.
There’s ONE little-known asset class sitting right at the center of Washington’s AI bet.
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To your wealth,
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Decentralized Masters
P.S. Cut, tax or print… none of them fixes $40 trillion. See the ONE asset class tied to the option that’s left →
Robinhood’s Options Boom Made Less Money Than Expected
Hey there, bargain hunter. Options volume at Robinhood just hit all-time highs. Stocks trading revenue jumped 41%. Prediction markets exploded sixfold. And the stock still fell around 7% to 9% in premarket the morning after earnings. That gap between activity and profit is exactly where the real story lives.
Scoreboard
Q3 2026, reported October 27:
- Revenue: $1.42 billion, up 12% year over year
- Diluted EPS: $0.51 vs. $0.57 expected (miss)
- Net income: $476 million, down 14% from a year ago
- Options revenue: $399 million, up 31%
- Crypto revenue: $120 million, down 55%
- Net interest revenue: $415 million, down 9%
- Operating expenses: $739 million, up 16%
What Actually Happened
The business generated record gross activity but got squeezed from three directions simultaneously. Crypto trading revenue cratered 55% to $120 million as volumes dried up. Net interest revenue dropped 9% to $415 million as lower rates and tighter spreads flowed through the interest and lending lines. And expenses grew at 16%, outrunning the 12% revenue gain.
Then there was the $67 million in unrealized losses from Robinhood’s venture fund, which punched straight through to the bottom line. Strip that out and adjusted EPS was $0.60. Still below what the street was modeling, but far less ugly than the GAAP number suggests.
The Core Problem: Take Rate, Not Volume
Robinhood is not short of trading activity. The firm now counts 14 separate revenue lines each generating over $100 million annually. The prediction-markets exchange hit that threshold in its first full quarter. These are not signs of a broken business.
The problem is that rate moves can compress net interest revenue quickly, while crypto, which has been a high-take-rate product historically, contributed almost nothing this quarter. Options are growing fast, but options take rates are thinner than crypto. Volume records do not automatically translate into margin records.
Robinhood is not the only platform where prediction markets are rewriting the revenue model. DraftKings faces the same question of whether prediction-market volume can offset pressure on its legacy take-rate business.
Is It Cheap?
At a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of roughly 39 and a forward multiple near 29, Robinhood is priced for the growth version of itself. The business has $396 billion in platform assets, up 19% year over year, and Gold subscribers reached about 5.2 million. That recurring subscription base matters, but it does not yet move the profit needle enough to justify a growth premium when earnings are going the wrong direction.
Robinhood is not the only platform where prediction markets are reshaping how the market assigns a valuation multiple. DraftKings faces the same split between a legacy revenue engine and a fast-growing prediction exchange that the market has not yet learned to price.
Bull / Base / Bear
- Bull: Crypto rebounds, rate cuts pause, and prediction markets scale into a $500 million annual revenue line by mid-2027.
- Base: Options keep compounding, expenses stabilize, and adjusted EPS climbs back toward $2.50 for full-year 2027.
- Bear: Retail trading cools, crypto stays dormant, and additional rate cuts keep pressuring the interest line.
Cheap Investor Checklist
- Does crypto revenue recover above $200 million per quarter?
- Does net interest revenue stabilize as rate cuts slow?
- Do operating expenses stay inside the $2.675 to $2.75 billion full-year guidance band?
- Do Gold subscribers cross 6 million, adding predictable recurring revenue?
- Does the venture fund stop generating mark-to-market noise in quarterly earnings?
Bottom Line
If crypto stays cold and rates keep falling, the Q3 miss becomes a trend. If even one of those two reverses, Robinhood’s activity numbers suggest the profit follows fast. Watch the crypto and interest line together. That pair, not options volume, is the actual earnings engine right now.
