Robinhood is starting to behave like a meme stock.
Shares of the free stock-trading app popped more than 20 percent Tuesday morning despite a lack of news, befuddling traders and drawing comparisons to the wild movements of shares like GameStop and AMC.
The Silicon Valley-based company’s stock on Tuesday surged as high as $45, or 21 percent from the previous day’s close. The shares recently changed hands at $43.18, up 16 percent, giving the company a market capitalization of more than $36 billion.
That marks a bold comeback for the popular trading app, whose shares fell by more than 10 percent moments after its highly anticipated Nasdaq stock debut last week.
“I don’t think anyone knows why the market does what it does, but the markets think Robinhood is barely valued for now,” Howard Lindzon, venture capitalist and early Robinhood investor told The Post. “We’ll know more about stock performance in a month but people love the product and the data suggests people want to be left alone and invest.”
Some market watchers speculated that the stock price could foreshadow a coming short squeeze. Heavily shorted stocks can be pushed higher as traders buy up shares in anticipation of a massive short squeeze. But experts on short selling brushed away the theory.
“There’s not nearly enough short interest to affect a stock price that significantly,” Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners told The Post. “This is a long buying not a short covering rally.”
Others think the increased buying could be a copycat trade. Controversial stock picker Cathie Wood, who runs Ark Invest, has snatched up millions of HOOD shares the past few days — and acolytes could be following in her footsteps.
“It could be a reaction to the headlines that Cathie Wood bought it the first two days it traded,” Tim Anderson, managing director at TJM Investments speculated.
Users of Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum — where chatter about shorting Robinhood stock reached a fever pitch last week — also seemd baffled by the stock’s surge on Tuesday.
“Holy f–king hood,” wrote one user. “Lmao at those who laughed at HOOD going down on IPO,” wrote another.
Trading in Robinhood kicked off at $38 a share around 12:30 p.m. on Thursday after the firm’s Wall Street bankers had priced the stock at the low end of its $38-to-$42 IPO range in an effort to secure a successful first day of trading.
The shares fell to as low as $33.35 before recovering slightly to end their first session down 8.4 percent at $34.82 a share.