Sticking With This SoFi Price Target as 'Parade of Clowns' Drives Selling
I'm not rattled by a dip from my 2026 stock pick of the year.
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To much fanfare, I named SoFi Technologies (SOFI) my 2026 stock of the year in late December.
Through over the years, I have produced a clunker here or there, but with three "stock of the year" picks over the past three years — Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and then Palantir Technologies (PLTR) twice — that performed better than I could have imagined, my pick had garnered a lot of attention from readers and social media followers.
My ego likes the attention. My trader/investor side does not so much like having to pick one stock a year ahead of time that will return triple-digit percentage returns. Well, that's the ballgame.
Unlike all of your famous and sometimes laughable FinTV analysts, I do back up my picks with my own skin in the game. You want to play in the big leagues, put on your big-league pants and face big-league pitching.
So Far...
For SOFI, the year got off to a fast start.
The stock was up 4.9% on Friday and up 6.6% on Monday. Less than two days in, SOFI peaked up 14.1% year to date. Holy smokes. Could it be the easy?
The short answer was: "No." On Tuesday, SOFI surrendered 7.9%. As I write this on Wednesday morning, I last saw the shares down another 1.9%. Still up for the year, but by less than this much: ><.
What Happened?
Actually, first and foremost, the stock ran too far for the first two trading days of the year. Being up small for the year on the morning of the fourth trading day of the year is not awful. It just looks awful because the stock peaked considerably higher than where it now is. However, the stock has taken a beating this week for several reasons and three of them are baloney in my opinion.
These reasons are:
Readers will likely recall that back in early December, SoFi Technologies raised some dough, with a secondary offering of 54.5 million shares that were priced at $27.50. That was the second time in 2025 that SOFI had gone to the firm's shelf registration, and it diluted the equity at the time by roughly 5%.
The underwriters were granted options to purchase more shares at $27.50 at the time. Goldman Sachs (GS) , Bank of America (BAC) , Citigroup (C) , Deutsche Bank (DB) and Mizuho were among those exercising their options.
On January 5 (Monday), SOFI completed the issuance of enough common stock to satisfy those options. This increased the offering from early December grew in size from 54.5 million shares to 57.75 million shares. This is a firm with a float of 1.19 billion shares and 1.26 billion shares outstanding. Adding 3.25 million shares to those numbers doesn't help the long-equity case, but that is not, in my opinion, why the stock gave up almost 8% on Tuesday.
The Baloney
On Monday, Bank of America's Mahir Bhatia (five stars at TipRanks) "resumed" coverage on SOFI with an "Underperform" rating and a $20.50 target price. A little research shows that, as recently as November 2, Bhatia had SOFI rated at "Underperform" with a $17.50 target price.
So, I don't know exactly how long Bhatia had refrained from covering SOFI, but in two months, he basically reiterated his sell-equivalent call but increased his target price. Looking back, we see that Bhatia has had a sell-equivalent rating on SOFI since the stock was trading with a $9 handle and has not had a buy-equivalent rating on the shares since 2023.
Basically, it's safe to say that Bhatia may be a highly rated analyst, but on this stock, he has proven to be awful. Any SOFI investor who has taken heed of anything Bhatia has done or written on SOFI since mis-2023 has been hurt financially. Why would anyone sell stock because someone who is batting .000 in the stock said so?
There's More
We got another one. On Tuesday, analyst Mike Ng of Goldman Sachs (five stars at TipRanks) reiterated his "Neutral" rating on SOFI while cutting his target price from $27 to $24. Again, Ng is a highly rated analyst who has never understood SOFI and never gotten the SOFI story right.
In a tale that defies reality, Ng has had this hold-equivalent rating on SOFI since the stock was trading in the $4.40s. In fact, in early 2023, Ng lowered his target price on SOFI to $6.50. Nice goin', Mike. Again, I ask: Why would anyone sell stock because someone who is batting .000 in the stock and has always batted .000 in the stock said so?
Can't Make This Stuff Up
On Wednesday morning, the parade of clowns down Wall Street (with no skin in the game) continued. Four-star analyst Tim Switzer of KBW reiterated his "sell" rating and his $20 target price on SOFI. Switzer actually had a "hold" on SOFI in 2024 and downgraded the stock to "sell" in January 2025 when the shares hit $15 a piece.
Switzer probably felt pretty smart when the shares traded with a $10 handle in April. By the end of the year, probably not. Again, I must ask, why would anyone sell stock because someone who is batting .000 in the stock said so?
My Thoughts
I have a sizable, long position in SOFI. I am not at all rattled by three sell-side analysts who have been consistently wrong on SOFI trying to dig and hoping that the market stops making a fool of them.
I do not need to add to my long on this dip. I will add on momentum should the stock re-take and hold its 50-day SMA.
My medium-term $36 target price stands. I have a much higher price in mind longer-term. What would rattle my cage is if the firm lost CEO Anthony Noto. As long as SOFI has Noto, SOFI, in my opinion, is going to be fine.
At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long SOFI equity.
