Hot or Not, Stock Market Edition: 01/22/2026

• HOT: eBay (EBAY) catches momentum; Rocky Brands (RCKY) puts its best foot forward
• NOT: Riot Platforms (RIOT) struggles despite diversification; Netflix (NFLX) drops on earnings

P.S. For more stocks making moves, check out our Zen Ratings Upgrades & Downgrades screener.

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🔥 HOT: Rocky Brands (RCKY) – This small-cap footwear powerhouse is stepping up in style. It’s up nearly 10% in the past month, and is currently fresh off a stellar Q3 2025 where EPS hit $1.03 (beating estimates), revenue jumped 7% to $122.5M while gross margins expanded 210 basis points to 40.2%. Robert W. Baird just upgraded the stock to "Outperform" with a $40 price target, suggesting 34% upside. Rocky Brands earns an A (Strong Buy) rating from WallStreetZen, landing in the elite 98th percentile with A grades for Value and Momentum. The company's smart supply chain pivot — diversifying away from China to the Dominican Republic and new Asian partners—is building resilience against tariffs while boosting efficiency. The brand portfolio is firing: XTRATUF bookings surged 80% year-over-year, while Muck Boot's women's line posted double-digit growth. Trading at attractive multiples below sector medians with a healthy balance sheet (debt down 7.5% YoY) and a steady 1.92% dividend yield, RCKY offers both value and growth. Verdict: Strong Buy. This combo of operational excellence, brand strength, and strategic sourcing should drive continued outperformance into 2026.

🥶 NOT: Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms (RIOT) isn't convincing Wall Street yet. The stock is up 25% in the past month, but volatility masks deeper concerns about the company's strategic pivot. RIOT is shifting from pure bitcoin mining into data center hosting, recently announcing a $311 million deal with AMD to expand its infrastructure. While this diversification sounds promising on paper, the company's Zen Rating tells a more cautionary tale: RIOT only earns a D (Sell) grade, placing it in the bottom tier of Capital Markets stocks, where it ranks 60th out of 64 in its industry. The Component Grades paint a mixed picture: C grades for Growth, Momentum, Sentiment, and Safety (37.82), and D Grades for Value, Financials, and our proprietary AI factor. That Growth score reflects genuine upside potential in the data center hosting business, but the weak Financials and Value grades suggest the company is burning through resources without establishing a solid foundation. With bitcoin's notorious volatility and the company's unproven data center strategy, RIOT remains a high-risk play that could swing either direction. Verdict: Sell. The D rating and industry positioning suggest better opportunities elsewhere.

🔥 HOT: E-commerce veteran eBay Inc. (EBAY) is up nearly 10% over the past month, and pushing well above its key moving averages. After years of playing second fiddle to Amazon, EBAY is finding fresh relevance through an unexpected angle: sustainability. The company just released its first Climate Transition Plan, mapping out a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2045 while expanding its Circular Fashion Fund to promote secondhand clothing markets. Morgan Stanley thinks there's more room to run, recently boosting its price target to suggest over 20% potential upside in the coming year. (See more EBAY price targets here.) The stock was also just upgraded in our Zen Ratings system from a C (Hold) to B (Buy). Looking at the Component Grades, EBAY posts strong B grades for Financials and Value, suggesting a well-priced stock AND a company with a solid balance sheet. It ranks 5 out of 29 in its industry (Internet Retail), which earns an overall B rating. Considering the fundamentals, the sustainability pivot appears genuine. For a mature marketplace business, that's a clever way to differentiate and capture younger, eco-conscious consumers without reinventing the wheel.

🥶 NOT:  Streaming giant Netflix (NFLX) shares are trading lower after the company reported Q4 financial results and issued Q1 guidance below estimates. (Multiple firms also cut their respective price targets on the stock.) However, it’s not just the earnings causing the downtrend — the stock has been drifting downward for the past few months amid uncertainty surrounding its bid for Warner Brothers and mounting concerns about growth sustainability despite solid content wins like "Stranger Things." The stock's Zen Rating sits at a C grade which lands squarely in Hold territory. (Looking for alternatives? Check out this video we made featuring 3 high-quality alternatives to Netflix.) The Component Grades reveal further tension: Despite an excellent A grade for Financials and B for our AI Factor, showing operational strength, it has C grades for Value, Growth, Momentum, and Safety, with a concerning D for Sentiment. The company's industry ranking compounds the problem: 9th out of 38 in Entertainment, but with an F industry grade overall. The bottom line? Wall Street is worried about the future, not celebrating the present — savvy investors may want to steer clear for now. 

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