RIOT Stock: Why a "Riot" is Usually Something You Run From

Written by: Jerry from The Smartin Team

RIOT $23.96 (-12.49%) · Smartin Score: 11/100 — NO · as of 2026-07-02

RIOT $23.96 (-12.49%) · Smartin Pro Score: 11/100 — NO · as of 2026-07-02

What is the deal with the name Riot Platforms? Usually, when a “riot” breaks out, people are trying to get away from it. You don’t see people on the news saying, “Hey, honey, grab the kids, there’s a riot downtown—let’s go see if we can get a piece of the action!”

And yet, here we are, looking at a stock that dropped nearly 13% in a single day. People are treating this ticker like it’s a clearance sale at a store that’s currently on fire.

The Sourdough Starter of Share Dilution

You look at the balance sheet and you see a Debt-to-Equity of 0.37. Great! They don’t owe anyone money. That’s the only green flag on the board. It’s like saying, “Sure, the boat is at the bottom of the ocean, but at least we don’t owe the dock master for July!”

But then you see the shareholder dilution. They are printing new shares at a rate of 38.2% a year. This isn’t a company; it’s a sourdough starter. It just keeps expanding and expanding, but nobody’s actually getting a sandwich. If you bought one share last year, you now own about two-thirds of that same share’s influence today. They’re watering down the soup so much it’s basically just a bowl of warm tap water with a picture of a Bitcoin floating in it.

I used a fundamental stock screener app to see if there was some hidden genius here, but the algorithm just started laughing at me. The EPS is negative $2.49. That’s an impressive trick. Most people, if they did nothing all day, would have an EPS of zero. Riot has to actually work to lose that much money per share.

Reinventing the Hole You’re Digging

The headlines say they’re “reinventing” their business while selling off their Bitcoin. It’s like a bakery that hates the smell of bread. “We spent all day baking these loaves, now please, for the love of God, sell them before we have to look at them!”

They’ve got earnings growth of -60% per year. Think about that. If my hair thinned at -60% a year, I wouldn’t call it “reinventing my scalp.” I’d call it “buying a lot of hats.”

And then there’s the PEG ratio. Or lack thereof. The app says it’s “not computed.” How do you not compute a ratio? That’s the financial version of a waiter telling you, “We don’t have a price for the fish because the fish has decided it doesn’t want to be involved in the economy anymore.” When your earnings are this volatile and cyclical, the math just gives up and goes home.

The Smartin Score is an 11. Out of a hundred! You get an 11 just for showing up and spelling your own name correctly on the SATs. At an 11, the company isn’t just failing the test; it’s eating the Scantron sheet.

If you’re looking for a sign to jump into this “Riot,” just remember: usually, when the riot starts, that’s when the smart people are already halfway to the parking lot.

Before you join the mob, get the 15-second truth on your next trade with the Smartin app.