After Countless Snubs, HOOD Storms the Colosseum and Steals Caesars’ Crown in S&P 500 Shake-Up

"It's been 84 years…"

After what feels like waiting an eternity and getting turned away more times than Vlad could count, Robinhood is finally getting the call to the big leagues. Shares popped about 6% in after-hours trading after news dropped that everyone’s favorite brokerage app to lose everything on 0DTE options will be replacing Caesars Entertainment in the S&P 500… a pretty savage blow to Caesars considering the NFL season just kicked off.

The swap goes into effect September 22, which means all those index-tracking funds and ETFs have to run out and buy HOOD whether they want to or not. And trust me, they want to. That’s the beauty of being in the S&P 500… instant credibility. It’s like finally getting invited to sit at the lunch table with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley instead of eating with the freshmen in the hallway.

It’s wild to think how far Robinhood’s come since the pandemic meme-stock circus, when every bored twenty-something with a stimmy check decided they were the next Michael Burry. The app built its brand on free trades, YOLO bets, and that confetti animation that made buying Dogecoin at 74 cents feel like a great idea. And somehow, here we are: Robinhood has a market cap north of $90 billion, its stock has nearly tripled this year, and second-quarter trading revenue jumped 65% from a year ago. Crypto trading volume in July alone more than tripled. Vlad really went from “sorry, we had to turn off the buy button” to getting measured for an S&P varsity jacket.

(Source: Reuters)

Meanwhile, Caesars has to sit in the corner and watch Robinhood steal its spot on the index… talk about poetic. A casino operator getting replaced by an app that critics still call a casino for stocks? You can’t write irony better than that. Caesars had the football season lining up like a perfect parlay ticket, and then boom, the committee hit them with the bad beat.

Vlad Tenev himself had been asked about this back in June at the company’s annual meeting. He tried to play it cool, saying “It’s a difficult thing to plan for. Hopefully it happens.” What he really meant was: I’ll sacrifice as many goats as necessary to make it happen. Well, looks like the offering worked. Robinhood finally has a seat at the big table, and you know Vlad’s probably getting a celebratory haircut this very moment.

So this one’s for Robinhood… for not giving up after the meme-stock hangover, the lawsuits, the buy-button fiasco, and every analyst who swore the company was toast. For taking all the punches, eating all the bad headlines, and still clawing its way into the S&P 500. It’s legitimacy, it’s redemption, and it’s proof that sometimes the underdog actually does break through. And the way it happened? Well, you couldn’t script it any better if Christopher Nolan himself wrote the ending… the casino just got replaced by the casino app.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Robinhood as mentioned in the article.