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SBF’s Robinhood stock stash: What is Emergent Fidelity Technologies, which holds Sam Bankman-Fried’s HOOD shares?

By Raphael Sanis

15:52, 15 November 2022

Robinhood's logo in a shopping trolley and in front of a price graph
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried bought 56 million shares of HOOD in May 2022 – Photo: Shutterstock

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder and ex-CEO, bought a 7.6% stake in the Robinhood brokerage earlier this year, but there are now fears from HOOD investors about its exposure to the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange.

The founder bought approximately 56 million shares or $648m at the time of filing. This purchase was completed through Bankman-Fried’s own investment company titled Emergent Fidelity Technologies.           

Robinhood’s stock price plunged during the beginning of FTX’s collapse. However, HOOD is starting to recover as Emergent Fidelity Technologies was not included in FTX Group’s bankruptcy filing.

Robinhood (HOOD) share price chart

What is Emergent Fidelity Technologies?

Emergent Fidelity Technologies is Sam Bankman-Fried’s holding company located in Antigua and Barbuda. It said in the Robinhood filing: “The principal business of Emergent is the making of investments in securities and other assets.”

At the time of writing, Emergent’s only investment is the HOOD shares, according to its Crunchbase profile.

After Bankman-Fried bought the shares, Bloomberg reported he was considering a takeover of the brokerage. The entrepreneur was exploring options to acquire Robinhood with his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

BTC/USD

70,587.75 Price
+2.510% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 106.00

BCH/USD

560.90 Price
+3.120% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 2.50

ETH/USD

3,578.65 Price
+1.930% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0616%
Short position overnight fee 0.0137%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 6.00

XRP/USD

0.63 Price
+1.740% 1D Chg, %
Long position overnight fee -0.0753%
Short position overnight fee 0.0069%
Overnight fee time 21:00 (UTC)
Spread 0.01168

However, this never materialised and FTX does not directly hold any HOOD shares.

While FTX eventually collapsed following a liquidity crunch, Emergent appears to be unaffected at the time of writing. It was not listed as one of the 134 companies on FTX Group’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Robinhood’s FTX exposure

As the FTX crisis began to unfold, HOOD’s stock plummeted. The brokerage’s share price opened at $11.93 on 8 November and stooped to a low of $8.16 the following day, according to Capital.com’s trading platform.

This fall followed speculation that Bankman-Fried would have to sell his HOOD shares to release personal liquidity.

But as FTX revealed Emergent was not one of its bankrupt companies, HOOD’s stock price began to recover.

As of 15 November, it had recovered to $10.17 and was down 12% over the past month, according to Capital.com.

Markets in this article

HOOD
Robinhood Markets Inc (Extended Hours)
20.38 USD
0.28 +1.400%

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The difference between trading assets and CFDs
The main difference between CFD trading and trading assets, such as commodities and stocks, is that you don’t own the underlying asset when you trade on a CFD.
You can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional trading you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the individual shares or the commodities for money, and you own this until you sell it again.
CFDs are leveraged products, which means that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of the CFD trade in order to open a position. But with traditional trading, you buy the assets for the full amount. In the UK, there is no stamp duty on CFD trading, but there is when you buy stocks, for example.
CFDs attract overnight costs to hold the trades (unless you use 1-1 leverage), which makes them more suited to short-term trading opportunities. Stocks and commodities are more normally bought and held for longer. You might also pay a broker commission or fees when buying and selling assets direct and you’d need somewhere to store them safely.
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