In this article we present the list of 10 Most Popular Stocks on Robinhood.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) are a few of the most popular stocks on Robinhood that have delivered strong returns for the platform’s users since the end of 2020.
The Robinhood app has been a game changer for retail investors, allowing them to quickly and easily trade stocks and build a portfolio of assets while avoiding the hefty fees that have traditionally plagued the investment space.
In place of charging users fees on their trades, Robinhood utilizes a process called payment for order flow, which directs all of the app’s trades through larger entities which can then leverage the power of their increased order sizes to receive more favorable trades. In return, those entities pay a small fee to Robinhood for the use of their trades, the volumes of which can be significant when it comes to the most popular stocks on Robinhood.
The app skyrocketed to popularity during the pandemic, nearly tripling in size from 4.3 million monthly active users in 2019 to 11.7 million a year later. There was another seismic jump to 17.3 million MAUs in 2021 during the height of the meme stock craze, which Robinhood played a noteworthy role in. However, activity on the platform has fell substantially in 2022, declining back to 11.4 million MAUs, though the number of funded accounts inched up to a new high of 23 million.
Robinhood clearly appeals to a younger user base that wants to dip its toes into stock trading but doesn’t have the assets or wherewithal to invest tens of thousands of dollar with brokerage firms like Charles Schwab. The average user account value on Robinhood was just $4,000 in 2021, compared to $234,000 in Charles Schwab’s case.
Given its users’ penchant for small positions and bets on riskier growth stocks, it’s worth looking into the best penny stocks on Robinhood to see which under-the-radar stocks the platform’s users have identified as potential gems. Given that one of the most popular stocks on Robinhood is a cannabis stock, it’s unsurprising that several cannabis-based companies also feature prominently among the best penny stocks on Robinhood according to its users, including Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NASDAQ:ACB) and Jupiter Wellness, Inc. (NASDAQ:JUPW).
On the other end of the spectrum, the most popular stocks on Robinhood feature several of the best stocks to invest in 2023 according to hedge funds and analysts alike, including Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) (the most popular stock among Robinhood users), and Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F).
When it comes to the performance of Robinhood users’ most popular stocks, it’s been quite a mixed bag as you’ll see in the below results. Five of the ten stocks have been big winners for Robinhood investors, while the other five have been losers, four of them being significant losers, with losses in excess of 23% dating back to January 1, 2021.
Read on for all the details about the 10 most popular stocks on Robinhood and how they’ve performed for their bullish retail investors over the past two-and-a-half years.
WAYHOME studio/Shutterstock.com
Our Methodology
To compile the following list of Robinhood most popular stocks, we analyzed the top holdings among Robinhood’s users as of the beginning of each quarter during 2021, as well as their top holdings at the beginning of 2022 and the current top holdings on the platform. We then took the top 10 holdings from each of those six periods and assigned them a points value: ten points for first place, nine for second, and so on, down to one point for tenth.
Finally, we added up the points to create a final list of the top ten most popular stocks on Robinhood over the past two-and-a-half years. We have ranked and ordered those ten stocks based on their stock performance since January 1, 2021 to determine which popular Robinhood stocks delivered the biggest returns for the platform’s users.
Unlike the Robinhood Investor Index, which trails the market since its inception, Insider Monkey has developed several easy-to-follow, market-beating investment strategies. We follow a select group of hedge funds because our leading independent research has uncovered that their consensus stock picks can deliver outstanding returns over the long-term.
All hedge fund data is based on the exclusive group of 900+ funds tracked by Insider Monkey that filed 13Fs for the Q1 2023 reporting period.
10 Most Popular Stocks on Robinhood
10. NIO Inc. (NYSE:NIO)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 15
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 6th (19 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): -84.4%
Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) are some of most popular stocks on Robinhood that turned out to be good investments for the platform’s users.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is NIO Inc. (NYSE:NIO), which has been nothing short of a disaster for Robinhood investors, losing 84.4% of its value since the end of 2020. Nonetheless, it remains one of their top 10 holdings to this day. On the other hand, numerous hedge funds were cutting their losses and abandoning their NIO long positions in Q1, as there was a 38% decline in smart money ownership of NIO.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management was one of the most prominent funds to sell off its NIO Inc. (NYSE:NIO) stake during Q1, one of 12 stocks the influential money manager is selling in 2023.
While NIO Inc. (NYSE:NIO) still has intriguing long-term prospects in the EV space, having now expanded its deliveries into Europe, the company has been plagued by supply chain and production problems that have crushed the stock in the near term. The company’s also facing increasing EV competition in its Chinese home market. While 2023 deliveries are up by 22% year-over-year through April, they’ve been sliding in the wrong direction on a monthly basis and are about to come up against tougher comps.
9. SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ:SNDL)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 5
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 5th (27 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): -69.4%
SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ:SNDL) was also one of the 5 Meme Stocks Redditors are Buying in April of 2022. Unfortunately for both Redditors and Robinhooders alike, the Canadian pot stock has destroyed the value of their investments in a puff of smoke, losing 69% of its value since the end of 2020. Just five hedge funds were long SNDL on March 31, down from seven a quarter earlier and the lowest total since the final quarter of 2020.
SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ:SNDL)’s struggles are by no means unique among Canadian cannabis companies, which have majorly failed to live up to expectations. The legal Canadian cannabis market simply hasn’t developed anywhere near the extent that was anticipated for a variety of reasons, including consumer dissatisfaction about the quality and cost of legal pot. Industry sales were just $3.7 billion in the first ten months of 2022 according to StatsCan, well below earlier projections that had the industry raking in $7 billion annually by this point.
SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ:SNDL) has attempted to mitigate its exposure to the disappointing Canadian cannabis market by expanding into the U.S. market and into the liquor retail space. The latter now accounts for the majority of SNDL’s revenue, which gained an impressive-at-first-blush 1,170% year-over-year in 2022. However that growth was almost entirely through acquisitions and the company continues to remain unprofitable, so it doesn’t look overly promising for SNDL shareholders in the near-term.
8. The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 97
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 10th (15 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): -49.8%
Large-cap stocks dominate most of the remaining list of the most popular stocks on Robinhood, beginning with The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS). Disney shares soared in late-2020 and looked like a strong bet to continue performing well in the coming years as the pandemic’s impact on its theme parks faded and the subscriber count for its Disney+ streaming platform continued to grow.
That’s been anything but the case however, as The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) shares have lost just over half their value since the end of 2020. Disney+ lost 4 million subscribers in the company’s fiscal Q2 and it warned that it could experience further subscriber weakness during the current quarter. That’s not a great sign for the division, which is also losing money, though its losses narrowed in fiscal Q2. Hedge fund ownership of Disney is down by over 50% since the end of 2020.
VGI Partners took advantage of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS)’s share weakness in 2022 and believes the company still has substantial earnings power according to the fund’s 2022 annual investor letter:
“The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is a diversified media conglomerate operating media networks, theme parks, film and TV studios and direct-to-consumer streaming services. It is the global leader in theme parks with hotels and cruise lines aimed at families. Key assets within Disney are the instantly recognisable entertainment franchises that have multiple avenues of monetisation such as Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, ABC and Marvel’s Avengers.
Disney’s share price declined due to a number of factors in 2022, presenting us the chance to purchase a long-admired business and its unique collection of valuable intellectual property assets at what we consider to be a very attractive valuation. Summarily, the EPS of Disney has declined from US$7 in 2018 to ~US$2.60 in 2022 but we believe that the earnings power of the assets has not diminished to anywhere near this extent.
Disney is currently undergoing a business transition within the Media and Entertainment Distribution division (DMED) from traditional media property distribution via third parties (i.e. cinemas and broadcast networks) to a Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) model via the Disney+ streaming service. A key element of our thesis is that the earnings power of the company is currently being masked by the marketing and content investments within Disney+ and that this will normalise over the next several years. To put this in perspective, Disney+ (DTC sub-segment) currently generates operating losses of over US$3.3bn (a negative 14% operating margin) compared to operating margins at its nearest streaming competitor, Netflix, of +15.5%…” (Click here to read the full text)
7. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 244
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 9th (17 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): -23.1%
The ninth-most popular stock among Robinhood investors since the start of 2021 is Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which has lost 26% of its value during that time. Normally one of the safer picks on the market in recent years, Amazon struggled at various times throughout the pandemic, being unable to meet the initial surge in demand, and then having too much capacity once the demand began waning again.
There was a 14% drop in hedge fund ownership of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) during Q4, with fewer hedge funds now being long AMZN than there’s been since 2019. Nonetheless, the company remains the third-most popular stock among smart money managers as of March 31.
Arch Capital built a new stake Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) during Q1, describing it as a rare opportunity to buy such a special company at a discount, as the fund revealed in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“Replacing our Wix investment is Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a company we are sure you have heard of before. We believe the company’s long-term growth runway, profit potential, and competitive advantages were being vastly underrated in early January when its market cap was well below $1 trillion. We think early January was one of those rare times you could buy a special business like Amazon at a discounted valuation. Our hope is that – if we are right about its competitive advantages in retail and cloud computing – our Amazon stake will end up being a permanent holding in the limited partnership.”
6. Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 82
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 2nd (56 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): -6.3%
Closing out the first half of our list of the most popular stocks on Robinhood is Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), their second-most popular stock overall. It also represents the last of their top ten stock picks that lost money since the start of 2021. Hedge fund ownership of Tesla dipped by 9% in Q1, with John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Louis Bacon’s Moore Global Investments being some of the funds to offload their TSLA stakes.
Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) shares are still down during the specified period, but are certainly trending in the right direction this year, having more than doubled in value. Some of the biggest concerns that weighed heavily on the stock in 2022 have generally been resolved, including the state of the EV market (which grew by over 60% in the U.S. last year) as well as Elon Musk’s ability to lead the company (he’s since found a new leader for Twitter, allowing him to focus more on what’s happening at Tesla).
On the other hand, the company’s profitability is coming somewhat into question now following Q1 price cuts that helped drive deliveries growth but also severely hurt the company’s gross margin, which fell by 9.8 percentage points to 19.3% during the quarter.
The Baron Opportunity Fund, which had several managers and analysts attend Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s latest investor day in March, walked away impressed and more bullish on the company than ever, as detailed in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) designs, manufactures, and sells EVs, related software and components, and solar and energy storage products. Following a sharp decline at the end of 2022, Tesla’s stock rebounded in the first quarter of 2023 on investor expectations that Tesla will continue to grow vehicle deliveries and maintain solid gross and operating margins despite a potential recession, competition in China, and vehicle price reductions. We wrote a long piece on Tesla last quarter and refer readers back to it, because for long-term investors not much has changed over the last three months. Tesla did hold its first Investor Day in March, and several Baron analysts and portfolio managers attended. We toured the Austin Gigafactory, drove in a Cybertruck, boarded a Semi truck, and spoke with a wide swath of Tesla senior managers. During the formal presentation, Tesla highlighted, among other things: (1) its broad and deep bench of executive talent supporting CEO Elon Musk; (2) its “Master Plan 3–Sustainable Energy for All of Earth,” which featured EVs, renewable power from solar and wind, and stationary electric storage; (3) its vehicle assembly innovations, including massive casted parts (building Model Y bodies with single front and rear castings, replacing a substantial number of parts and fastening steps), a stainless steel exoskeleton (for Cybertruck), and its next-generation highly efficient “unboxed process” for its next-gen $25,000 vehicle; (4) a future permanent[1]magnet electric motor that will not require any rare earths; and (5) the massive untapped market opportunity for commercial stationary electric storage, branded Megapack, as the world steadily shifts to renewable energy. As long-term shareholders, we have witnessed Tesla exploit its innovative Model 3/Y now-global mass-market platform to increase vehicle deliveries from barely a standing start to over 1.3 million units, while achieving industry-leading margins and reinforcing its iron-clad balance sheet to almost $23 billion in cash (and effectively no recourse debt). We expect Tesla’s next-generation EV and Megapack products to have a similar impact on company results.”
Click the link below to see how Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) performed for Robinhood investors over the last two-and-a-half years.
5. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 132
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 1st (58 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): +38.4%
Hedge funds have never been quite as bullish on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) as the general public, as evidenced by Apple’s position atop the Robinhood popularity charts, while it doesn’t even crack hedge funds’ top 10 stock picks. In this case, the retail investors came out the winners, as Apple shares have gained a solid 32% since the beginning of 2021.
Investors have been particularly bullish on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) this year thanks to the potential for a sturdy demand rebound in China as well as the company’s extremely strong gross margin guidance for its current fiscal year, which is being driven in part by the growth of Apple’s much more profitable services segment. That should insulate Apple’s bottom line from any potential decline in iPhone sales going forward, which is certainly a possibility given the global smartphone market has been declining in recent quarters.
Alger Spectra Fund laid out the details of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s fiscal Q1 results in the fund’s Q1 2023 investor letter:
“Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a leading technology provider in telecommunications, computing, and services. Apple’s iOS operating system is the company’s unique intellectual property and competitive strength. This software drives particularly tight engagement with consumers and enterprises, which is fostering the growing purchase of high margin services like music, apps, and Apple Pay. While iPhone sales were down year-over-year (YoY). services revenues grew 7% YoY which was slightly above analyst estimates. Company earnings were also better-than-anticipated due to lower input costs, such as memory chips and cost control initiatives. Aside from production disruptions, negative sentiment had also weighed on shares as investors questioned how an economic slowdown would affect consumer demand for Apple products in 2023. However, management projected an acceleration in earnings for the fiscal first quarter, where they noted that iPhone and services growth should remain strong, along with encouraging impacts around product mix, lower input costs, and continued cost controls.”
4. Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 37
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 3rd (38 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): +43.2%
Hedge fund ownership of Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) hit a ten-year high in the middle of 2021, but has fallen by 36% since. Robinhood retail investors on the other hand, which are bullish on two different EV makers, also like Ford, which previously ranked as the second-best selling EV maker in North America. Their investments paid off, as F shares have gained 38% since January 1, 2021.
The automaker’s EV sales are starting to slip however (it fell behind GM to rank as the third-best selling EV maker in North America during Q1) and it’s losing a significant amount of money on EV sales (the company projects to lose $3 billion this year on its consumer EV sales). Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) does expect EVs to be profitable by 2026, by which time it’s projecting an 8% profit margin on them compared to a 40% operating margin loss in 2022.
Leaven Partners discussed the earnings outlook for Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) in its Q3 2022 investor letter:
“In our last quarterly letter, I briefly mentioned that the consensus estimates for corporate profits appeared to be a bit too sanguine. I referenced a Reuters article that reported, as of June 17, Wall Street expected S&P 500 earnings to grow by 9.6% in 2022, which was up from 8.8% in April and from 8.4% in January. That tune began to change at the end of July and accelerated in August and September, as major players, such as Ford (NYSE:F), has recently issued profit warnings and/or have withdrawn guidance. In response, Wall Street has altered its outlook: lowering third-quarter profit growth to 4.6%[2] from 7.2% in early August and slashing full-year profit growth to 4.5%.”
3. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 292
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): T-7th (18 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): +51%
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is hedge funds’ single-most popular stock ticker and hit an all-time high in hedge fund ownership during Q1. It also consistently ranks among the top ten of Robinhood investors’ holdings. Those bullish positions have worked out very well for both money managers and retail investors alike in recent years, as MSFT shares have gained 50% since the end of 2020.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) continues to deliver strong growth across its offerings both old and new, including Office and Cloud, which both grew revenue and EPS at a double-digit rate in Q1. The tech giant is also incorporating AI into both of those products through its partnership with ChatGPT creators OpenAI, which could further bolster their utility and drive greater adoption. Customers are rapidly latching onto its integration of AI into Azure, as the number of customers utilizing the platform’s OpenAI language models increased ten-fold quarter-over-quarter in Q1.
The Alger Spectra Fund believes Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has a first-mover advantage when it comes to its investments in AI, as the fund discussed in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a beneficiary of corporate America’s transformative digitization. Microsoft’s CEO expects technology spending as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to jump from about 5% now to 10% in 10 years and that Microsoft will continue to capture market share within the technology sector. The company operates through three segments: Productivity and Business Processes (Office. LinkedIn, and Dynamics), Intelligent Cloud (Server Products and Cloud Services. Azure, and Enterprise Services), and More Personal Computing (Windows Devices, Gaming, and Search). While the company reported decent fiscal second quarter results, their investment in OpenAl’s ChatGPT captured the attention of investors. contributing to positive performance. Throughout the quarter. Microsoft surprised investors with continual rollouts of new Al capabilities across the company’s portfolio (e.g., Bing, GitHub. Teams, Office 365). Furthermore, the company announced Microsoft 365 Copilot, which leverages GPT-4, a large language model, combined with the Microsoft Graph of data to provide Al virtual assistance. We believe Microsoft’s investment in OpenAl provides a first-mover advantage in the Al transformer model space. Despite challenges in the early days of Al-powered applications, the pace of Al innovation is faster than any other enterprise technology previously observed, in our view.”
2. General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 59
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): T-7th (18 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): +54.4%
General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) might be one of the biggest surprises to make Robinhood investors’ top ten stock picks, as it’s not exactly a trendy stock. Whatever their motivations were for adding GE to their Robinhood portfolios, the moves paid off, as General Electric shares have jumped by 52% since the start of 2021. Hedge funds haven’t been quite as bullish, with the number of them long GE falling by 20% since Q1 2021.
It would appear that Robinhood investors were bullish on General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)’s breakup plans, which have thus far proven to be successful. The company spun off its healthcare division early this year and plans to split off its power generation businesses next year, which will then leave its strongest division, aerospace, as GE’s core business moving forward. Just as importantly, its various business units have all enjoyed improved performance of late, with overall orders growing by 26% in the first quarter.
Vulcan Value Partners discussed some of the positive momentum over at General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) was a material contributor during the quarter. With the successful spin-off of GE HealthCare in early January, the company operates in two major markets: GE Aerospace and GE Vernova. GE Aerospace powers three out of every four commercial flights. GE Vernova helps generate 30% of the world’s electricity and has a meaningful role to play in the energy transition. The company’s service activities, which are higher margin and more resilient, represent approximately 60% of revenue and 85% of its backlog. The company reported strong fourth quarter 2022 results and management’s 2023 outlook is positive.”
1. AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AMC)
Number of Hedge Fund Shareholders: 19
Robinhood Popularity Ranking (Q1 2021 – Q2 2023): 4th (37 points)
Stock Performance (January 1, 2021 – June 6, 2023): +118%
One of the top five most popular stocks among Robinhood shareholders and the best performing stock out of their top ten holdings is AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AMC), which has more than doubled in value since the beginning of 2021. Hedge funds also began buying into AMC more heavily in the second-half of 2020 and have largely maintained their AMC holdings since.
While AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AMC)’s returns do look impressive, the meme stock actually shot up significantly higher in early 2021, having gained nearly 2,700% year-to-date at one point in mid-June. Shares have crumbled by 92% since then and have shown little evidence that they’re poised for another breakout any time soon.
AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AMC) has struggled in the wake of the pandemic, with movie attendance still skulking below pre-pandemic levels. The company did have its best first quarter since 2019 this year, with revenue growing by 21%. The quarter was also the second-straight in which it posted positive adjusted EBITDA, the first time it’s done that since just prior to the pandemic. Nonetheless, the company has a long road ahead of it to win back investors given its recent cash burn woes and how heavily it’s diluted its equity to stay afloat.
Insider Monkey focuses on uncovering the best investment ideas of hedge funds and insiders. Please subscribe to our free daily e-newsletter to get the latest investment ideas from hedge funds’ investor letters by entering your email address below. For more of the latest stock picks worth considering for your portfolio, check out Analysts are Upgrading These 10 Stocks and 10 Best Value Stocks to Buy in 2023 According to Billionaire Mario Gabelli.
Suggested articles:
- 15 Largest Potash Producing Countries in the World
- 13 Best Basic Materials Stocks to Buy Now
- 12 Trusted Bitcoin Investment Sites
Disclosure: None. 10 Most Popular Stocks on Robinhood is originally published at Insider Monkey.
