Why These Three Investing Stocks Could Offer Stable Long-Term Growth

The year 2025 promises to be one that sees retail investors gain the confidence to return to stocks and shares at scale, opening the door to investor-focused stocks surpassing their benchmarks. 

Despite being hampered by the rising cost of living as inflation impacted their wealth in recent years, we're witnessing a return to relative stability for the year ahead, and the result could spark an increase in investors returning to stocks and shares. 

While retail accounts for around one-fifth of Wall Street investors, we're seeing more fintech firms adapt their products and services to drive inclusivity. This means that the return of consumer confidence could form the perfect storm for retail visibility, reshaping IPO strategies, corporate governance, and how shareholder engagement works. 

2024 saw more brokerages, fintech companies, and financial institutions launch new products that directly influence how retail investors invest their money and the profitability of their investments. 

Buoyed by the SEC's acceptance of Spot Bitcoin ETFs, retail now has unprecedented access to cryptocurrency investing, as well as efficient trading options for several popular stocks and shares. 

Interest rate cuts can also help more retail investors identify the higher profit potential of stocks and shares in 2025. Data shows that over a 25-year period to 2023, the 583% return of global equities far outpaces the likes of global bonds and inflation, underlining its value in the retail landscape.  

This possible resurgence of retail investors is likely to see more retail-focused stocks enjoy a strong year ahead, and these three Wall Street players could be best-positioned to reap the rewards of a lucrative 2025 for retail activity: 

1. SoFi (SOFI)

One of the biggest emerging trends in the fintech landscape is open banking, and SoFi SOFI, short for Social Finance, offers one of the most comprehensive platforms for open banking services in operation today. 

Providing a solution that covers virtually all essential financial services such as personal loans, credit cards, insurance, estate planning, and stock investing, the challenger bank appears to have become a key innovator in the financial ecosystem. 

The number of SoFi users has grown steadily from 2.52 million in 2020 to 9.37 million by the third quarter of 2024, and the digital bank clearly has plenty of room to grow further should it become a favorable location for retail investors to buy and sell their stocks and shares. 

Having recently posted its first full-year GAAP profit since going public in 2021 in an expectation-beating earnings announcement, SoFi has a lot of strong fundamentals to draw on moving forward. For a stock that's still expanding its user base, there's a lot of expectation on the future prospects of this stellar fintech firm. 

2. Block (XYZ)

Despite a tumultuous 2024 for Block XYZ owing to some high-profile settlements for the security failings of its flagship Cash App product, the fintech giant still managed to close 2024 33% higher, beating the performance of the S&P 500 in the process. 

For the year ahead, we can expect Cash App to overcome its challenges and become a retail investor hub for stocks and shares investing. 

2025 has already gotten off to a strong start for the stock, which was upgraded by Raymond James analyst John Davison on January, 3, who allocated an ‘outperform' rating to the newly tickered XYZ thanks to a clearing merchant GPV outlook for Block. 

However, it's set to be Cash App that offers the best growth potential over the year ahead. With 57 million active users, the platform is an early iteration of the open banking infrastructure that we're set to see become more prevalent as fintech becomes more sophisticated in the years ahead. 

For retail investors, Cash App offers comprehensive access to stocks and shares investing while providing a vast range of financial services. At a time when the cost of living is expected to calm to the point where users can finally make the most of all that Cash App has to offer, we could see Block go from strength to strength in the months ahead. 

3. Robinhood (HOOD)

One of the world's most confounding retail investor stocks, Robinhood HOOD is another open banking-oriented platform that appears to be on a whirlwind trajectory on Wall Street. 

2024 saw the stock rise more than 228%, and despite the fallout from the infamous GameStop saga in 2021 still weighing on retail investors’ minds, the platform appears to remain as popular as ever for its commitment to innovation and a suite of impressive cryptocurrency trading options. 

With the returning Donald Trump adopting a pro-crypto outlook for his second term in the White House, any positive movements within the industry are likely to trigger significant market growth for Robinhood. If forecasts suggesting Bitcoin could surpass $200k in 2025 prove to be correct, it's highly likely that HOOD will accelerate far beyond the S&P 500 to post significant growth in the year ahead. 

The fintech giant appears to be focused on reinvesting its earnings into expansion throughout wider markets and recently announced the launch of margin trading in the United Kingdom. Should retail investors return to form in 2025, it's safe to assume Robinhood will be favored by many. 

Embracing Retail's Return

High inflation and interest rates have confounded the power of retail investors to buy and sell stocks with the same enthusiasm exhibited back in 2021, but clearing economic conditions and a rapidly growing fintech landscape promise to drive more activity in 2025, and some of the ecosystem's most innovative stocks could be best-placed to reap the rewards. 

With open banking-focused platforms particularly appealing to investors seeking stronger financial management, 2025 could be a year to remember for fintech stocks on Wall Street.

On the date of publication, Dmytro Spilka did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer. Dmytro Spilka does not intend to make a trade in any of the securities mentioned above in the next 72 hours.