Roblox rises following upgrade and price target hike from Roth Capital as growth in older players boosts optimism

Shares of Roblox are up in early trading on Monday following a price target hike and an upgrade from “neutral” to “buy” from Roth Capital.

Roth bumped its price target up from $78 to $84, with analyst Eric Handler citing the company’s “sustainable virtuous circle where continuously improving creator/development tools are producing higher quality games, which enhances the user experience, and drives higher engagement.”

Handler also noted Roblox’s success in growing its 18-plus player base, which increased 50% last year and, per Roth, “monetized 40% higher than under-18-users.”

The platform surged after reporting its fourth-quarter earnings last week, with stronger-than-expected full-year bookings guidance. Still, the stock remains below levels in January, before the debut of Google’s AI interactive worlds generator, Project Genie.

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Oracle rises as DA Davidson gives it a “buy” rating because of OpenAI positivity

Oracle rose after receiving an upgrade to start the week. Analysts at DA Davidson bumped up their view on the stock from “neutral” to “buy” and kept their $180 price target on the shares. That’s about 27% higher than Friday’s close.

Their shift isn’t so much about Oracle but about OpenAI, which Davidson folks now think is increasingly likely to be able to make good on billions of dollars’ worth of planned spending on computing power at Oracle and other hyperscalers. They wrote:

“We are now more positive on OpenAI, based on changes in strategy, new frontier models, the pressure on Google’s competitors from its recent ascent, and progress on its fundraising efforts. Most importantly, we believe OpenAI already has as much as $40B of cash on hand and may be raising as much as another $100B by the end of the quarter, which should help pay for the data centers Oracle is building for OpenAI. Since the market is currently assigning the OpenAI relationship a negative value, we believe the fundraise will serve as a catalyst for outperformance.”

For OpenAI’s part, CEO Sam Altman just told employees that the company was “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” according to CNBC reporting.

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AppLovin jumps after CapitalWatch announces “significant revisions” to negative report but says stance on company “remains unchanged”

AppLovin is trading to the upside on Monday morning after a financial research agency issued a “correction and apology” regarding some of the claims in its negative report on the company and its principals.

Shares of the ad tech firm tumbled in January as CaptialWatch called it “the ultimate monument to 21st-century new-type transnational financial crime.”

But after “a rigorous internal review,” CapitalWatch determined that the allegations of money laundering directed at one of AppLovin’s largest shareholders, Hao Tang, were based on a judicial document that was interpreted erroneously, and that his connections with other parties in the report “were inaccurate and failed to meet our publication standards.”

However, the outlet still argues that it’s right on the company, but just didn’t have enough evidence to single out Tang individually. Per CapitalWatch:

“Our review concluded that while the macro data and transaction structures highlighted in the original report warrant market scrutiny, the information currently available is legally insufficient to attribute these complex capital operations directly and exclusively to Mr. Tang. We have chosen to retract the allegations directed at Mr. Tang personally out of strict adherence to evidentiary principles, not as a denial of the objective market phenomena observed.”

“Our stance regarding the complex financial structure of AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) remains unchanged.”

AppLovin forcefully denied the original report, saying it was “rife with false, misleading, and nonsensical allegations.”

The firm, like most in the software space, has floundered recently amid potential disruptive threats from AI tools and new entrants.

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Novo sues Hims, alleging patent infringement

The Department of Health and Human Services’ top lawyer said last week that it referred Hims to the Department of Justice.

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Crypto-linked stocks slide as bitcoin tumbles back below $70,000

Bitcoin is back to singing the blues, pulling a host of crypto-adjacent stocks lower in premarket trading.

Strategy, MARA Holdings, Riot, and Coinbase are all down roughly 2% or more as of 5:50 a.m. ET.

The crypto asset rose 11.5% on Friday, its biggest daily gain since March 2023, and crept higher over the weekend before starting a sharp retreat overnight that’s carried forward through Monday morning.

Volatility in crypto has spiked relative to that of the US stock market. As of Friday’s close, realized 20-day annualized volatility for the iShares Bitcoin Trust was running 66 points above the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, the widest such premium since August 2024 and roughly double the average gap since the inception of the former fund in early 2024. In May 2025, the short-term volatility of SPY briefly exceeded that of IBIT amid the prior month’s tariff-induced plunge in stocks and start of the V-shaped recovery.

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