HOOD Stock Drops Despite Price Target Hike — Robinhood Chain Beats ARB, HYPE, NEAR In DEX Trading

• Robinhood shares fell in morning trade on Friday despite Morgan Stanley increasing its price target to $124 while maintaining an 'Equal Weight' rating ahead of the firm's second quarter earnings.
• The downward movement also came after Robinhood Chain overtook Arbitrum, Near Protocol, and Hyperliquid in 24-hour DEX volume.
• The bulk of Robinhood Chain's early volume has been driven by a single memecoin, Cash Cat, styled after Robinhood's old mascot.

Shares of Robinhood (HOOD) slumped at market open on Friday after Morgan Stanley raised its price target on the stock, a call that landed the same week Robinhood's new blockchain network posted decentralized exchange (DEX) volume figures large enough to outrank established chains like Arbitrum (ARB), Near (NEAR), and Hyperliquid (HYPE).

HOOD’s stock dropped around 3% in morning trade. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the Vlad Tenev-led company improved to ‘neutral’ from ‘bearish’ territory over the past day, accompanied by chatter at ‘normal’ levels. 

Morgan Stanley raised its target on Robinhood to $124 from $95, and kept an ‘Equal Weight’ rating on the shares. "Brokers & Exchanges are expected to deliver slightly better-than-consensus Q2 earnings driven by stronger volumes and volatility, with brokers favored for attractive valuations, growth potential, and multiple upcoming catalysts," the firm told investors in a research note, according to TheFly. 

Robinhood Chain Climbs Into Top Five For DEX Volume

Robinhood Chain's mainnet launch is one of several catalysts feeding into that broader bullish view on the company, alongside its core brokerage business. The company officially launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum (ETH) Layer-2 built on the Arbitrum (ARB) stack, on July 1. 

Within roughly a week, the network's 24-hour DEX volume climbed high enough to place it fifth among all chains tracked, as per DefiLlama data. This puts it ahead of Provenance (HASH), Polygon, Hyperliquid L1, Arbitrum, and Near, networks that have operated for years and, in Hyperliquid's case, generated a record-setting $492.7 billion in quarterly volume as recently as Q1 2026.

HYPE’s price gained 1.28% in the last 24 hours, but still traded under the $70 mark. Meanwhile, ARB’s price rose over 8% to $0.09, and NEAR’s price edged 0.5% lower. 

Memecoin Trading Dominates Early Network Activity

The bulk of Robinhood Chain's early volume has been driven by a single memecoin, Cash Cat (CASHCAT), styled after Robinhood's old mascot, which alone accounted for close to $100 million of a daily total that peaked between $560 million and $570 million. 

CASHCAT’s price rose nearly 90% in the last 24 hours, with retail sentiment trending in ‘bullish’ territory over the past day, accompanied by ‘extremely high’ levels of chatter.

One retail trader on Stocktwits drew a comparison between Robinhood’s CASHCAT, Solana’s (SOL) The Black Bull (ANSEM), and BNB Chain’s (BNB) CZ (CZ) meme tokens, questioning which of the three would be the first to sustain gains and hit $1 billion in market capitalization. 

Tokenized stock trading, the feature Robinhood Chain was actually built around, with real-time trading on names like Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), and Google (GOOG/GOOGL), represents only about $12.6 million in on-chain value so far, a tiny fraction of the memecoin-fueled activity. 

The rally in HOOD’s stock also came alongside an uptick in Bitcoin’s (BTC) price to over $64,000 leady crypto-linked equities higher. BTC’s price rose over 2.7% in the last 24 hours to hit $64,400, marking a 10% gain for the apex cryptocurrency in the month of July. 

While HOOD’s stock has traded flat this year, it clocked gains of over 20% in the past 12 months. 

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