HOUSTON -- Thirty minutes before Robinhood Markets Chief Executive Vlad Tenev took the stage, the crowd was already buzzing.
Some 1,500 individual investors were packed into the seats of a Houston convention hall, snapping pictures and fiddling with their neon-green name tags. They came from different walks of life -- plumbers and small-business owners, mingling with corporate middle managers and stay-at-home parents. But many had something in common: investment portfolios that had grown so large in recent years they had quit their jobs to play the market full time.
Back on Wall Street, investors have been sweating higher oil prices and a global bond selloff that pushed Treasury yields to fresh two-decade highs. But at Robinhood's Hood Summit, the party was still raging.
Robinhood's conference for active traders is the largest of the brokerage's annual events. For two days in September, hundreds of everyday investors descend on a conference center in cities like Miami, Las Vegas and Houston to attend training sessions, swap trading tips and swarm the open bar.
The conference also offers an up-close view of a generational shift in financial markets: The do-it-yourself investor is playing a bigger role on Wall Street than ever before.
Everyday traders have gained access to new, riskier assets, from event contracts and private companies to leveraged perpetual futures and even tokenized stocks. They powered market rebounds, rushing in to buy the dip when share prices swooned. Many made massive bets on popular tech names such as Tesla, Alphabet or Palantir -- and, as the artificial-intelligence rally blew past record after record, got richer than they ever imagined.
In recent weeks, professional money managers have grappled with a punishing bond selloff, rising fuel costs and a stock-market rally that is increasingly dependent on a handful of tech stocks.
In Houston, nobody was all that worried.
"The trend is always going to be up and to the right," said Sara Brescia O'Rear, a former pharmacist who retired in her 40s thanks to her investing success. "I'm willing to take on risk because I know it can pay off."
The Wall Street Journal spent two days talking to individual investors at Hood Summit, asking them about their riskiest investing moves, their concerns about the current market and what it means to make "life-changing money" by betting it all.
Markese Johnson said he never considered buying stocks until well into adulthood, when a childhood friend started showing him the ropes while Johnson was serving in the U.S. Army. His lucky break came when he bought several thousand shares of cloud computing company IREN when its share price was roughly $4. The stock is now trading around $35.
"It's helping me live a lifestyle I never dreamed I would live," he said. Now, Johnson said he can afford experiences that once felt out of reach, like vacations to the Dominican Republic, or courtside seats to a Washington Wizards game.
"I want [my children] to see you can build wealth the right way," he said.
Alexander Bittan made millions betting on Tesla shares back in 2017 and has been a fan of going all-in on just a few stocks ever since. Most of his investments are still tied up in a couple of tech names.
"If you have a couple high-conviction names, that's all you need to become extremely wealthy," he said. "But you have to be right."
Six years ago, Sara Brescia O'Rear started buying as many shares of Palantir as she could afford, eventually tying about a third of her portfolio to the company's shares. Since then, the stock has surged nearly 2000%. "Life-changing money," she called it.
Brescia O'Rear said she is holding on to a little more cash these days, but the fears of a potential AI overbuild don't keep her up at night.
"I'm very pro-technology," she said. "Every successful business from the beginning of time -- they're going to have to take on debt."
James Chen, who was born in China, lost his job about a year and a half ago and decided to focus on investing full time. Since then, he has made about five times his former salary trading options and stocks like Alphabet, Tesla and Robinhood.
"In the past, my goal was to make it in corporate America," he said. His new aim? "Trade myself into the new American dream."
It isn't something he would recommend to other traders. But in 2024, Colin Edsman bet half of his savings on a stock trading for less than a dollar a share. A year later, the company, mineral provider United States Antimony, saw its share price climb into the double digits. Edsman made more than $13,000 -- and has made several similarly successful trades since.
"I've never relied on luck," he said. "I figured I could make my own."
In March 2020, Lance Zakrzewski put every dollar he had into the market, even taking early withdrawals from his retirement account, to plow more money into tech and dividend-paying stocks. His net worth tripled during the monthslong rebound that followed. The steady gains in his portfolio have allowed for some splurges, like the nine-day Caribbean cruise he booked for him and his mother, Kitty Zakrzewski, once Hood Summit wrapped.
Zakrzewski said he is somewhat concerned about the market's reliance on a handful of AI companies. But should stocks suddenly tank, he has a plan.
"Probably just buy more."