Robinhood & Say Technologies

There's a lot of similarity between the stock market debut of Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ:HOOD) and the IPO of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) over 9 years ago: both were met with a chill from investors, Robinhood shares started trading at $38, the same as Facebook in May 2012, although today Facebook is trading at nearly $361 per share, but what lies ahead for the online brokerage platform, says CNN Business.

Robinhood's first days on the market can be compared to a rollercoaster ride: the online brokerage's shares fell 8% on the first day of trading and then hit $33.25 on the second day. But they later rose more than 40% above the IPO price and are now trading around $54, even briefly peaking at $85 last week.

The head of Alpha Esports Tech said that the Platform, on which the meme stock movement is based, has itself turned into a meme stock, which can sometimes be to Robinhood's advantage and sometimes to Robinhood's detriment.

Robinhood now has a market valuation of over $45bn.

To that end, Robinhood announced on Tuesday that it was buying Say Technologies for $140m.

Both platforms share the democratic belief that everyone should have the same access to the financial markets as Wall Street professional investors.

A deal that comes so soon after the company went public, similar to the one Facebook made in 2012 shortly before going public by buying Instagram (NASDAQ:FB) for $1 billion (which was considered too expensive at the time), could suggest that the company has decided to "play big".

Facebook, like Robinhood, also struggled at the start. Its debut was expected to be an even bigger failure, as FB shares fell around 50 per cent below the IPO price in the first few months of trading before hitting rock bottom, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg ended up having the last laugh: by making a lucky bet on Instagram's young audience, Facebook became a major player on mobile and attracted even more users, which advertisers craved. The upshot of this calculation was that nine years later, Facebook is already worth over $1 trillion.

According to the director of online brokerage firm Skilling, Robinhood needs to attract more affluent customers while fending off big competition over the next decade.