Robinhood share price rallies 9% after SEC greenights tokenized stock trading

Robinhood shares surged roughly 9.6% on September 18, closing near $120 after opening at $113. The catalyst: the SEC announced a five-year conditional “Innovation Exemption” that lets eligible platforms trade tokenized versions of US stocks on blockchain venues without full traditional exchange registration. What the SEC actually approved The Innovation Exemption, effective immediately, creates a regulatory sandbox of sorts for tokenized equities. Platforms that qualify can list blockchain-based representations of US stocks, sidestepping the full registration process that traditional exchanges must complete. There are guardrails. Platforms must inform the companies whose stocks are being tokenized, and they have to honor any objections those issuers raise. Volume limits also apply during the exemption period, preventing any single platform from becoming a shadow exchange overnight. The practical upside for retail investors is significant. Traditional US equity markets operate roughly six and a half hours per weekday. Tokenized versions could trade around the clock, every day. Fractional ownership also gets easier when a stock is represented as a divisible token rather than a whole ...