Tom Lee Picks JPM and ANET, Dumps HOOD for 2026

Tom Lee went on CNBC this week and did something rare: he named a stock to avoid. The Fundstrat strategist updated his core ideas list, adding $JPM (JPMorgan) and $ANET (Arista Networks) as top picks while putting $HOOD (Robinhood) on blast as a name to skip in 2026, citing valuation concerns. Cue the debate.

The pushback was immediate. CNBC panelists pointed out that Robinhood just posted 32% revenue growth to a record $1.13 billion, alongside 48% EPS growth. That's not a meme stock anymore. The counterargument is that Robinhood has matured well beyond its origins as a crypto-adjacent retail trading proxy, and Lee's valuation call may be anchored to a version of the company that no longer exists. Meanwhile, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was also making the rounds this week, pitching the company's agentic trading tools as the democratization of algorithmic finance. The product has passed 100,000 customers, and Tenev framed it as the coding-assistant moment for personal investing. It's early, but the vision isn't crazy.

On the bull side of Lee's list, $ANET is getting serious love across YouTube finance this week. Multiple videos flagged Arista's role in AI networking infrastructure alongside Cisco and Ciena, with accelerating revenue growth as the core thesis. If AI data center buildout stays hot, the pipes matter as much as the processors. And $JPM needs no introduction: Lee called it best-of-breed financial, which is about as spicy as Jamie Dimon's public persona but probably just as reliable.

The Robinhood debate actually mirrors a broader tension running through this week's YouTube finance content: momentum versus valuation. Bloomberg podcasts flagged record short interest in the Nasdaq as a contrarian signal, while CNBC voices noted that semiconductor stocks are getting hammered by rising yields compressing the present value of future earnings. High-growth names with stretched multiples are the first to get repriced when the 30-year yield hits 5.32%, a 19-year high reached this week. Robinhood, with its retail-heavy revenue mix and still-elevated multiple, sits squarely in that crosshairs.

What's genuinely interesting is the creator consensus around $JPM: in a week where bond yields are surging, mortgage applications are falling, and housing starts dropped 12% in July, the bank that makes money from credit spreads and fee income looks a lot more defensive than it sounds. Best-of-breed boring might just be the 2026 trade.

Robinhood's growth numbers are real, but Tom Lee has seen a lot of great stories with bad entry points. Sometimes the most dangerous stock is the one with the best pitch deck.