Investors are hot for just about everything right now, from the Magnificent Seven and meme stocks, to crypto, options and exchange-traded funds. That is bringing boom times to brokerages including Charles Schwab, Robinhood Markets and Interactive Brokers Group, which are all raking in revenue.
Individual investors poured a record $155 billion into stocks and exchange-traded funds in the first half of this year, according to Vanda Research, and margin debit balances have never been higher. That is also true for the brokerages’ own stock prices. Shares of Robinhood have nearly tripled in 2025.
“You have this huge wave of retail trading,” said Dan Dolev, a senior analyst at Mizuho Securities. “Being a broker means you’re at the center of it.”
Analysts expect second-quarter trading revenue at the digital brokerage Robinhood to climb 58% from a year earlier, according to FactSet, buoyed by higher revenue on options and cryptocurrency transactions.
The company’s results, due Wednesday, follow strong numbers by two of its biggest publicly traded rivals, Charles Schwab and Interactive Brokers. Earlier this month, Schwab and Interactive Brokers reported trading revenue gains of 23% and 27%, respectively.
Robinhood under Chief Executive Vlad Tenev has seen its stock price nearly triple this year.
Investors are bullish heading into the back half of 2025. About 81% of Robinhood users expect markets to continue climbing in the third quarter, according to a July survey from Morgan Stanley, compared with 66% of the broader population.
That widespread optimism among investors has been reflected in signs of increased speculation: Investors are crowding into such social-media darlings as Krispy Kreme, Kohl’s and the house flipper Opendoor Technologies.
While the recent resurgence of so-called meme stocks might have paled in comparison to the frenzy that enveloped the markets in 2021, it did remind some analysts of the sway individual investors can have over the markets.
A JPMorgan analysis showed that so-called retail traders now account for about a fifth of the options market, a number that has ticked up over the past few months. Margin account balances—money that brokerage customers have borrowed to purchase securities—blew past $1 trillion in June, according to Finra data.
“Five years ago the narrative was retail is here because there’s nothing else to do,” said Tom Bruni, editor in chief and vice president of community at the investing social-media platform StockTwits. “But retail has stuck around, and they’ve actually graduated from trading random junk to managing their wealth in a more sophisticated way.”
The good vibes on Wall Street can’t last forever, and money managers and day traders alike are already casting a skeptical eye at the sky-high valuations of megacap stocks.
Many investors expect volatility to continue through the end of the year, as the Trump administration irons out its trade policy and the Federal Reserve watches the economy for a green light on interest-rate cuts.
“When things go up and to the right, it creates fearlessness,” Dolev said. “It is a little bit of a danger zone…the risk is complacency.”
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