Robinhood Markets stumbled in the first quarter of 2026, missing Wall Street’s targets on both revenue and profit as its hood stock trade lost some of the momentum that had driven earlier gains. The trading app operator posted revenue of $1.07 billion, short of the $1.14 billion expected, and earnings of 38 cents a share, below the 39-cent estimate.
The miss snapped a four-quarter beat streak and sent a sharper signal than the headline numbers alone. Robinhood’s cryptocurrency revenue fell 47% from a year earlier to $134 million, underscoring how much of the company’s recent momentum had been tied to a segment that has cooled. At the same time, operating expenses climbed 18% while revenue rose 15%, a gap that helped push management to raise its 2026 adjusted operating expense outlook by $100 million, to between $2.70 billion and $2.825 billion.
Robinhood said the higher spending plan is meant to fund Trump Accounts infrastructure, a reminder that the company is still building for products it expects to matter later. But investors are judging the business now, and the timing is unforgiving: the shares were down 33.02% for the year in the article and traded at 36 times trailing earnings and 38 times forward earnings, rich multiples for a company that pays no dividend and has been priced more like a growth bet than a mature broker.
That is where Charles Schwab comes in. While Robinhood absorbs the cost of growth, Schwab is showing the kind of scale and consistency that makes it a different kind of market bet. Schwab earned $1.43 a share in the first quarter of 2026, ahead of the $1.3883 estimate, and reported GAAP net income of $2.479 billion, up 29.86% from a year earlier. Net interest revenue rose 16% to $3.144 billion, and client assets reached $11.77 trillion.
Schwab also ended the quarter with 39.1 million active brokerage accounts, brought in $140 billion of core net new assets and opened 1.3 million new brokerage accounts. Chief Executive Rick Wurster said: “Schwab's strong business momentum continued into 2026 as investors opened 1.3 million new brokerage accounts and brought $140 billion of core net new assets to the firm during the first quarter.”
The contrast matters because the two companies sit on opposite ends of the brokerage spectrum. Robinhood has been the higher-beta name, the one that moved fastest when crypto was booming. Schwab is the lower-multiple incumbent, steadier and far less dependent on one volatile revenue stream. Schwab also raised its quarterly dividend to 32 cents from 27 cents a share, extending a payout policy that had already gone through eight years of steady increases, and added $2.4 billion in buybacks after repurchasing 24.3 million shares.
For investors, the quarter leaves Robinhood with a familiar problem: it still has to prove that new products can replace the revenue surge that crypto once delivered. Schwab, by contrast, is using strong fundamentals to reward shareholders now, not later.
