Barclays and Morgan Stanley raise Robinhood price target by up to 50% as crypto bet pays off

Wall Street is warming up to the idea that Robinhood is no longer just a retail brokerage that survived the meme stock era. Barclays raised its price target on Robinhood Markets from $82 to $122 on July 9, 2026, a jump of roughly 49%, while keeping an Overweight rating. One day later, Morgan Stanley followed with its own revision, lifting its target from $95 to $124 and reaffirming a positive stance on the stock.

Both upgrades landed within 48 hours of Robinhood Chain posting a record $563.9 million in daily decentralized exchange volume on July 8, 2026. The surge was driven largely by memecoin trading, particularly a token called Cash Cat.

From payment for order flow to perpetual futures

Robinhood built its early reputation on commission-free stock trading, a model that disrupted the brokerage industry and forced competitors to follow.

Now the company is pivoting toward crypto infrastructure rather than just crypto trading. Robinhood Chain is the company’s own Layer 2 blockchain, and its mainnet launch came bundled with a suite of products including stock tokens, perpetual futures contracts, and staking options.

Crypto transaction revenue has historically been a meaningful share of Robinhood’s total transaction-based income, swelling during bull markets and compressing when volatility dries up. The company’s move into DeFi products is partly an attempt to smooth that cycle by capturing revenue from on-chain activity regardless of whether the broader crypto market is trending up or down.

What the analyst upgrades actually signal

A 49% price target increase from Barclays is not a routine adjustment. Analysts typically revise targets by 10% to 15% when updating models after earnings. A near-50% revision suggests the analysts fundamentally changed how they are modeling the business, not just plugging in new quarterly numbers.

Morgan Stanley’s revision to $124 from $95 represents a 30% increase. The record DEX volume on Robinhood Chain almost certainly fed into those revised models. A single day of $563.9 million in trading volume is the kind of data point that makes an analyst update their assumptions about monthly active user engagement and the fee revenue those users can generate.

The risk side of the equation is real, though. Memecoin-driven volume is notoriously fickle. The $563.9 million single-day record likely reflects a specific speculative frenzy around Cash Cat rather than a stable baseline of organic trading demand.

Robinhood is also entering a DeFi market that is already crowded with established players including Uniswap and dYdX who have years of head start on liquidity, user trust, and developer ecosystems.

The global expansion angle adds another layer to watch. Crypto regulation varies dramatically across jurisdictions, and a company offering perpetual futures and staking products in multiple markets faces a complex patchwork of compliance requirements.