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Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop
- swayson 6y agoAlienating your userbase before an IPO. Damn, how much leverage do this 'hidden' hand have.
- simlevesque 6y agoYeah but the thing is that the free market does not exists and companies can screw customers up and customers hating a company does not affect it that much. The lists of companies that are absolutely shitty to their customers and are making billions is never ending. They don't need our approval.
- MrMan 6y agoRH are victims of their successful business model!
- dayaz36 6y agoThis is ridiculous
- MattBearman 6y agoIt's the same with Trading212 in the UK
- bradleyjg 6y agoIf they were just blocking margin trading or trades with unlimited risk that would be one thing. But this smacks of either paternalism or trying to manipulate the market. I hope they lose a lot of customers (or product depending on your POV).
- sokoloff 6y agoIt's absolutely paternalism, IMO. I'm less sure whether I think it's a good thing or not (because I think people buying new positions in GME at this point are unlikely to end up happy about that in mid-Feb.) I'm all for "let 'em play" in general but this is not going to end well for a lot of folks...
- noncoml 6y agoWhy are you so quick to assume that people don’t know what they are doing? Is it so hard to believe that at this point buying GME is more about activism than making profit? “When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose”
- sokoloff 6y agoPeople who believe that they can only buy GME via specifically Robinhood, I'm not sure I see them as sophisticated investors or even "understand what they're doing". I think that people should be able to spend their money however they want. I also don't mind when regulators say "liquor stores are blocked from having one-day specials the day that welfare benefits are paid." If Robinhood believes that their customers are better served by blocking certain transactions, I trust Robinhood to make that call (and suffer the goodwill or ill-will that results).
- tracyhenry 6y agoOf course the motivation of Robinhood is to "better serve their customers". However, their customers are not retail investors.
- woofie11 6y agoTiming. I looked into getting into this game to see if I could make some cash day trading (at the level of one unit of stock -- NOT my life savings). My investment firm required time to set things up, and it won't be ready in time for this game. If Robinhood can shut down trades for 24 hours, that's enough to have a huge impact, not just on the market, but on people's individual finances, as they move elsewhere. Footnote: If I had been successful, I'd be up $200 right now based on the strategy I planned. But I'm not naive enough to think that's anything beyond luck and volatility.
- nrmitchi 6y ago> Why are you so quick to assume that people don’t know what they are doing? Screenshot lists floating around the internet yesterday pointing out exactly what buttons in your app to hit in order to buy GME options is the first piece of evidence that makes me that thing, perhaps, a large number of people don't know (or understand) what they're actually doing.
- gmm1990 6y agoI'm pretty happy they are doing it. This is really in the best interest of the average Robinhood user trying to buy GME right now. Maybe they shouldn't completely ban it, but there should be at least very extreme warnings about why its a terrible idea to buy.
- bytematic 6y agoInforming your customers is one thing. Blocking them in "their" own interest is a ridiculous overstep. We make platforms and tools to empower users, not to force them down whatever path we deem best for them.
- matthewbauer 6y agoBut there are tons of overpriced stocks out there. Where do you draw the line? TSLA? AAPL? S&P 500?
- rantwasp 6y agoreally? really? this is stock investing 101. don’t invest what you cannot afford to lose. i find it condescending and insulting that they are claiming to protect the users.
- nickysielicki 6y agoDude it's my fuckin' money. I don't need or want protection. Maybe I want to buy a couple hundred dollars of meme stonks solely because it's funny. Is that not allowed?
- wocram 6y agoI imagine the paternalism argument would be something like "currently GME is part of a ponzi scheme, and you would be defrauded by making this purchase".
- imtringued 6y agoIt's a ponzi scheme where early stage investors are forced to buy the products of late stage investors.
- buildbot 6y agoLost this customer! They canceled my literal 4$ but in gme, which was more of a statement than an investment on my part.
- PartiallyTyped 6y agoThey have blocked 7/10 most mentioned stocks in r/wallstreetbets from being purchased. It isn't just Robinhood, also Revolut and others. Then they launched a short attack, with nobody willing to buy besides themselves, they tanked the stock. It doesn't get more obvious than this.
- cwkoss 6y agoIt's absolutely market manipulation. RH gets sells order flow to Citadel, who bailed out Melvin Capital. Someone high up at RH got their arm twisted to help their buddies close their shorts.
- piva00 6y agoMaybe someone higher up could be losing lots, much more than what Robinhood could be valued during the IPO but that would be USD 12 bi...
- secondcoming 6y agoHow is this not market manipulation?
- xyzzy4 6y agoI agree. This seems like illegal market manipulation on the part of Robinhood.
- mizzack 6y agoYep, as of last night RH had also delisted 1/29 options for GME. 2/6 options are still available, which maybe points to RH hoping/thinking this all unwinds in the next few days. Sign me up for the class action...
- frongpik 6y agoDon't the ToS include a waiver of taking any legal action against RH, class action suits in particular, and a binding arbitration clause in case you really want to make some noise?
- mizzack 6y agoAlmost certainly. Don't expect the SEC to step in here, either.
- muskox2 6y agoIs having a clause like that in your ToS legal?
- ascagnel_ 6y agoIn the US, yes, a terms of service can force binding arbitration.
- dd36 6y agoAnd the CFPB had made a rule outlawing it for financial firms and then the Republican senate killed it with the Congressional Review Act.
- wrkronmiller 6y agoIANAL but I believe that some clever lawyers have used this to the advantage of the victims by essentially creating a DOS attack on the company, flooding it with binding arbitration claims. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over...
- owenversteeg 6y agoWow. First the Discord ban and then this - clearly the billionaire hedge fund managers have been busy pulling strings overnight. Limiting it so you can't buy, you can only sell... Very clearly helping the hedge funds here.
- geerlingguy 6y agoThe head of NASDAQ even suggested a Tradimg Halt so institutions can adjust to combat retail investors better!
- shut_it_down 6y agoWe're close to reaching a "let them have cake" point of elite arrogance.
- h_anna_h 6y agoWe were already on that point at least since the bank bailouts.
- swiley 6y agoEvery day of 2021 I'm thinking those people with the guillotine were less crazy.
- NortySpock 6y agoThose elites making the rules and the power plays need to remember: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." John F Kennedy Elites: better leave some safety valves in the system. People have been getting angry in the last year.
- piva00 6y agoPeople have been getting angrier since 2008. Lots of those that were young and suffered through are adults now, the ones that were adults are getting older and everyone is still pissed off about what happened. I definitely feel I'm getting squeezed, even though I've increased my salary quite a lot since 2005, including moving continents to pretty good jobs in Europe. I can feel the squeeze in society, with friends that even in a rich nation with a good salary still don't look very brightly into the future. Climate disasters incoming, also propelled up by the elites (or at least delaying action against, inaction is an attack in this case). People were tired, now a lot are tired, bored, unemployed and angry.
- rvnx 6y agoInteractive Brokers now blocking purchase call and put options (even to institutional investors!) on $GME, you can only close a position. On the other side, Robinhood is asking for account to be funded with cash to execute the calls at expiration, or else they will liquidate your position :|
- Schweigi 6y agoI just tested it with IBKR and was able to create a call buy order (exp 1/29, $500 strike) for a single contract. Info: Market was closed so the order wasn’t executed but it was accepted by the order system before i cancelled it.
- rvnx 6y agoI have a message: "Transactions in this instrument are limited to closing-only trades" @ Jan29'21 300 CALL GME.
- aynyc 6y agoI don't know IBKR's system, but most OMSs will accept an order unless it's blatantly wrong such as invalid stock. It's the execution engine that really enforce the rules.
- leonroy 6y agoTested IBKR today - I was able to place a simple Limit order for GME stock which was good till close but when I refreshed to view my list of orders it shows as Cancelled. Tried it twice, did the same thing each time.
- darepublic 6y agoNot a fan of the Reddit wsb movement but not sure this is a justified move by Robinhood. You gotta let things play out by the rules of the game
- CryptoBanker 6y agoThis move by RH is changing the rules of the game
- shakezula 6y agoNot just a rules change, I’m pretty sure an illegal rules change. Volume manipulation is stock manipulation according to the SEC.
- speeder 6y agoThis sort of stuff will put people more and more on edge, there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed too, the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? Even more with some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right, effectively pushing away people that previously could be on their side.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoPerhaps but Americans won't result to violence en mass. Despite what you may have seen, Americans are rather docile. A small minority of folks who just so happened to be of military age during the country's longest war but never signed up to fight are the same people who buy the most guns and saber rattle about civil war, etc...
- metalliqaz 6y agoOh please. Robinhood's business model is not designed for this kind of thing. They are not required to tank their own business to allow malcontents to feel better about themselves.
- TheHypnotist 6y agoHow does allowing trades tank their business? That is their business.
- metalliqaz 6y agoThousands of new accounts buying one stock for free (while it's at the top) and then disappearing after it tanks is not going to help them. Is this not obvious?
- alex_c 6y agoThen block new accounts for a day or two until this blows over, not specific stocks. Why would anyone use a trading platform that now has a history of picking and choosing what trades you are allowed to make?
- wavefunction 6y ago"Free marketeers declare markets a little too free for their tastes" I've been really enjoying watching this whole thing pan out but you had to know that the 'professional capitalists' who brought us the economic crisis in 2009 would close ranks and appeal to the SEC to save them from the vicious retail investors. Robin Hood doesn't want to be banished to the proverbial wastelands because their customers are more clever than some hedge fund operators.
- ForHackernews 6y agoI'd argue Robinhood customers are not more clever, but they are more irrational/motivated by non-market goals. Getting absolutely wrecked by irrational market behaviour is a rite of passage for small traders, and it's only fair that some bigger hedge funds should learn that lesson too.
- wavefunction 6y agoSome of them were sophisticated enough to see the short squeeze opportunity and realized it was possible to exploit it. Melvin Capital kept pouring more good money after bad in a classic and literal sunk-cost fallacy. This is all completely rational behavior by WSB investors, taking advantage of the short squeeze. At a fundamental level GME just got a new activist investor/board member with a history of revitalizing retail operations and turning them around. This would be a rational reason to invest in GameStop at a basic level. This is just the status quo realizing their position can be threatened and the easy money the wealthy have rolling in can be taken by average people acting in concert.
- chaostheory 6y agoSame with TD Ameritrade. Fidelity seems to still allow trading for now. I guess the simultaneous outage wasn’t coincidental. Fidelity did not suffer and outage. I could be wrong but Vanguard was fine too EDIT Robinhood's customer(s) are hedge funds like Citadel. I believe it was Citadel who offered Melvin Capital a lifeline. I wonder what the rationale is for TD Ameritrade, and the others?
- shut_it_down 6y agoThis is not going to end nicely.
- simlevesque 6y agoFor real. This will cause deaths, you can be sure of that.
- powvans 6y agoI wonder if this is just for after hours trading. You would think the user could at least place an order for execution when the market opens. GME was up over $100 pre-market when I got up this morning, so someone somewhere is buying.
- rvnx 6y agoIn the night, GME went from 350 to 250 USD as well; this was when Discord had been banned and the Reddit suspended (both for moderation / hate speech issue). The variations are extreme, in the morning it was hitting 500 USD in the morning, and now 400 USD.
- rvnx 6y agoNow 309 USD, only 20 minutes, this comment didn't age well.
- TheHypnotist 6y agoThis is the perfect opportunity for another platform to step up and welcome traders. Robinhood will be on damage control.
- ForHackernews 6y agoPretty staggering hubris from the company whose shoddy software used to offer "infinite leverage"[0] to make themselves the self-appointed guardians of responsible investing. Maybe one of these newly-minted millionaires can cash out and use their gains to sue. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-05/robinhood-has-a-glitch-that-gives-traders-infinite-leverage https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-05/robinhood...
- arbitrage 6y agooh no, but what happened to the free market? this is censorship /s
- iloveyouocean 6y agoRobinhood is looking for a near term IPO. Who will take their stock public? Daddy told them to delist and they complied.
- thepasswordis 6y agoAh cool so does this mean that all the other stocks are safe and will only make me money? Very cool of Robin Hood to protect me from ever being exposed to any risk like this. It’s just really cool to know that they remove the ones that can lose me money.
- karlmcguire 6y agoNice, Robinhood is a publisher now!
- kchr 6y agoRelease the sock puppets!
- shakezula 6y agoVery cool of robinhood to protect me by tanking my stock position simply because it’s as odds with their wallet. What a fucking sham of a company and if there isn’t some serious legal repercussions of it, then I don’t know what even would qualify as “market manipulation”.
- lovehashbrowns 6y agoRobinhood determined that you're too poor to mess with the market. Sorry about that! This whole thing is such bullshit.
- imtringued 6y agoTomorrow they are going to prevent you from selling stocks that are in the money.
- wyldfire 6y agoCan someone help me understand Robinhood's POV? This just seems so outrageous that there must be some sane rationale that I'm not seeing. Why do Robinhood, Reddit, Discord, etc feel like they have to respond to this? Whether the investments being made are responsible or not, it doesn't seem like it should be their place to intervene. If the hedge funds over-shorted GME and WSB recognized that and traded against that bad analysis, then that's great! If the pendulum swung the other direction and WSB is trading into some momentum, how is that any different than the hedge funds doing the same with shorts? Why should Robinhood pick a winner (siding against their own customers)?
- node01 6y agoCould either be govt/NASDAQ forced something or a major investor/VC in Robinhood is putting the pressure because they have other investments or vested interests in the hedge funds getting hurt.
- shut_it_down 6y agoOne of Robinhood's main business partner is Citadel (RH sells their order flow to Citadel). Citadel is also the firm that has bailed out Melvin Capital, one of the hedge funds that took a huge short position in GME. Probably just a coincidence.
- agumonkey 6y agoI follow the bitcoin crowd a bit. Everyday they issue claims like 'bitcoin was made to free us from wealthy people games' it felt echo chamber / tinfoil at times. This isn't hurting their theories.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThey're right that wealthy people game the financial system. They're insane (or self-interested) to pretend the same doesn't happen in cryptocurrencies.
- 6y ago
- osrec 6y agoSo only big shot hedge funds are allowed to manipulate the market and get away with it? How dare the common man shift the balance of power, that too by playing totally within the rules!? Seriously, if a fund did this, they'd be patting themselves on the back, and would have had little to no backlash from their brokers.
- janmo 6y agoMany brokers have lent the shares to hedge funds that went short on the stock. Now these hedge funds are on the verge of bankruptcy. If they default the brokers are in a lot of trouble.
- MrMan 6y agoyeah counter-party risk can verge into systemic risk, none of these moves by brokers are surprising
- Alex3917 6y agoMeanwhile WSB is adding over 1,000 subscribers per minute.
- 908087 6y agoIn the context of WSB, "marks" would be a more accurate term to use than "subscribers".
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- moocowtruck 6y agowhy would people use this site? it seems very unreliable, i tried with many attempts last night to signup and all I get are strange errors..why would i want to conduct serious business through them if they can't simply handle signups
- snowwrestler 6y agoBrokers are worried about their legal exposure at this point. They could face lawsuits from investors in Melvin and other hedge funds, who will allege that the brokers knew they were facilitating intentional financial harm. It doesn’t matter if these are likely to fail; they are expensive lawsuits to defend against and therefore may result in settlements. And they could face class action litigation from trial lawyers representing retail investors who lose money when the bubble finally bursts. Again, maybe the brokers will win these suits but they are expensive and bad for the brand. “I used Robinhood and lost my life’s savings” is not the news story they want to see 2 months from now. (Edit to clarify: class action litigators have PR strategies to feed these stories to reporters, hoping bad press will convince their target to settle.)
- vincentmarle 6y ago> They could face lawsuits from investors in Melvin and other hedge funds Wait until Robinhood sees the class action lawsuit
- nico_h 6y agoShouldn't they have an arbitration clause in there somewhere? Maybe that would open them to a Thousand Papercut bleeding when everyone activate the arbitration clause at once.
- snarf21 6y agoClass action lawsuits never tend to work out that well for the little guy. Lawyers get rich and the Goliath pays essentially a fine.
- azemetre 6y agoClass action lawsuits are about people punishing companies because the government won't levy a harsh enough penalty. I never took part in a class action because I wanted "a payday," I take part in them because I want the company punished.
- derwiki 6y ago
- zarkov99 6y agoThis is unbelievable. If there ever was a time to be outraged. This is naked corruption as usual hiding under the shabbiest veil of virtue. RobinHood traders can bankrupt and kill themselves, and that is fine, we will continue prodding them to trade more often, but once we get a call from one our hedge fund buddies, moaning about the rubes stopping him from raping another company, we will shut the rabble down.
- tim333 6y agoIt could also be RobinHood trying to avoid their traders bankrupting and killing themselves by restricting them from buying gamestop etc. shares at 10x what they are worth.
- llampx 6y agoSuuuuuuuuure
- zarkov99 6y agoHow could that possibly work, ever? If RH can stop me from making a trade they deem bad, why don't they just trade on my behalf? This is nonsense. Any pretense of caring for their users could be faked by simply putting a banner up on the forbidden securities. They do not care one iota beyond being able to generate fodder for the hedge funds who pay their bills.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Tenoke 6y agoThat's indeed what they are claiming but it's pretty clearly just the easiest excuse they can give no matter the reason. Similar to how it's the easiest reason for discord to say they are banning wsb because of bad language. https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-...
- alexggordon 6y agoA stock market trading app, for consumers, trying to protect consumers by... not letting them buy stocks? If Robin Hood cared about consumers, they probably wouldn't have given them credit that they could then go buy options with.
- Dem_Boys 6y agoThis whole Game Stop situation has made the power of the rich so obvious and disgusting. They temporarily shut down the market, banned the discord server, and are now preventing people from buying stocks on the most popular app used by small time investors. All of these moves hurt the small time investor trying to cash in on the next bitcoin-like bubble. This just creates more division, more disgust, and more of a class war than already exists. So sad to see.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoJust invest in Bitcoin now, it is going to do the same thing in a few months. And it can’t be censored like this. I admire the gme crowd’s efforts but they are so misguided. Investing in zombie companies we actually hate is pointless. Yes you might bankrupt a hedge fund or two but the system will continue. Bitcoin was created for the disruption to the corrupt financial system that they are seeking.
- justaman 6y agoI'm hesitant to invest in an alternative currency that the CCP is one of the largest holders of as a means to stave off corruption.
- Hendrikto 6y ago> Of all the countries in the world, China had, by far, the largest international reserves in August 2020, with 3.46 trillion U.S. dollars in reserves. Maybe you shouldn’t use USD either.
- xur17 6y agoThis does make the advantages of stuff like Ethereum dexes (uniswap, etc) a lot more obvious.
- thecupisblue 6y agoAnd then the rich noted that, bought mining farms and turned bitcoin into their own playtoy.
- ulfw 6y agoSomeone remind me again how this is even legal? You can SELL but not BUY, thus automatically suppressing all stock values?!
- kart23 6y agoIts a private company providing a service for FREE. YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. Just like twitter, they are allowed to control what happens on their platform, and they make no guarantee about reliability or free trade.
- darkwizard42 6y agoThis is not even accurate in the smallest sense. This is a brokerage firm. It is heavily regulated by financial law. They are not "allowed to control what happens on their platform." in the sense of Twitter. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their clients and the reliability of their platform is actually part of their ability to operate as a brokerage. The service being free or not has NO impact on the rules they operate under as a brokerage.
- hchz 6y agoSure, it's regulated, but which regulation states they have a fiduciary duty to you? Given they are currently arguing in court they have no such duty, but only to act in their customers best interest, perhaps this isn't sufficiently clear to them.
- kart23 6y agohttps://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/Robinhood%20Customer%20Agreement.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/Robinhood%2... Read section 16.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoIt is surprising how few people are arguing the “private company can do what they want” angle here. I wonder how the balance will look next time big tech bans a bunch of conservatives.
- pdevr 6y ago99.99% (or more) of people who buy lotteries, lose ALL their money. However, government allows anyone to buy them. There is no meaningful restriction for an assured destruction of wealth for most of those who buy them. While this GME/AMC run will not end well for many people, restricting people from buying those stocks - whether it is through actions of trading platforms or governing agencies - smacks not just of paternalism, but downright favoritism. Only certain parties benefit from this.
- batmenace 6y agoIm guessing their argument would be that while a majority of people know what they're doing / the risk they are exposed to, a lot of people are seeing the gains online right now and are jumping into it blindly. Big difference between WSBers buying in at 10-30$, and people from all around the internet now buying in at 300$
- stonesweep 6y agoBack in 1999 when Red Hat went IPO (dsiclaimer: I had FoC options), eTrade denied a very large swath of first-time investors with their platform trying to take advantage of Red Hat's FoC share options; I was one of them. There was a followup round of reach-out "hey, you might want to take this quiz again and maybe we'll let you play" (meaning go answer the questions and lie that you're an experienced investor) to try and get the disenfranchised back into the game.
- VikingCoder 6y ago...and yet cigarettes are still legal.
- llampx 6y agoYes. The way the short squeeze has been working so far is the hedge funds do a ladder short to drive the price down, and retail buys up shares, sending price back up. Without retail to buy shares, price can keep falling until people get freaked out and sell their shares, which is what the hedge funds want.
- 6y ago
- alex_c 6y agoBig if true (have to take everything with a grain of salt nowadays). Can anyone with more knowledge than me comment on what Robinhood's exposure is in all this? My understanding is they do not have any direct financial exposure, only reputational risk (and of course downsides from their users potentially losing a lot of money, but that should be part of the game). Is that correct? And does blocking specific trades today open them up to future liability?
- zepearl 6y agoMaybe they have indirect exposure derived from loans granted to users that are holding those stocks? Just trying to guess. Edit - related comment (about "margin requirements"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942150
- zarkov99 6y agoSure. Robinhood got a call from someone very powerful in their circle, politely asking them to stop the amateur plebes from interfering with their professional market manipulation. We are taking about people commanding titanic amounts of capital and (indirect) regulatory power. Robinhood then had the choice, do we make enemies out of these people or do we just screw, er, I mean protect, our customers? Unburdened by a moral compass or fear of retribution, the RH leadership made the obvious choice.
- vlkr 6y agoSource?
- zarkov99 6y agoIf I had a source I would be reporting it to the SEC, the FBI and any newspaper that would print it, though of course that would likely be none. This is all speculation, obviously.
- pfortuny 6y ago“You know: we can buy market information elsewhere”. This is not a source but. The problem with huge power is that one loses control of the size of one’s decisions.
- honest_guy 6y agoLol
- itsyaboi 6y agoHackernews, everyone!
- dang 6y agoPlease also don't post unsubstantive comments here. We're trying for something a bit different than internet default. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=stave%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- kasey_junk 6y agoI don’t have a data feed available to verify but it’s at least possible there is no one on the other side of the order book for these symbols so Robinhood can’t execute any more buy orders. Judging this as a policy decision from a 1 sentence tweet and some screen shots seems premature.
- coredog64 6y agoWhy do you have to get all rational when we can stoke conspiracy theories?
- guerrilla 6y agoThe conspiracy is real, here's your source: https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-...
- GVIrish 6y agoIf that were the case then why didn't RH put out a statement saying exactly that? They haven't even put out a tweet.
- kasey_junk 6y agoWhy didn’t they tweet a policy decision? One explanation is that this is a systematic behavior, part of their software is seeing market conditions it can’t execute into and hitting this case. If it’s not sustained or is happening only during particular microbook states the best thing to do is let the software behave as designed and let it stabilize.
- GVIrish 6y agoIf it were a case of their software functioning as intended, it would be malpractice to not come out and say that. Right now it looks like they're deliberately manipulating the market to the detriment of their customers. That makes for a humongous blow to trust in their platform and can lose them many, many customers.
- lordnacho 6y agoThis will just incense the WSB crowd more, surely? The cat is out of the bag, people can organize a group purchase of stock if they feel like it. On one platform or another.
- Zealotux 6y agoI'm using Trading212 and they did the same today with GME and AMC.
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoThis is interesting, can individual brokerages refuse to trade individual securities or to only allow them to be sold. Unless the SEC authorized these actions I think it arguably makes the brokerages liable for losses and is arguably market manipulation. Transferring securities positions between brokers is relatively costly and time consuming - takes at least a day and there is usually a $40-70 fee - so is a temporary but significant road block. Robinhood may be wanting to keep their name out if the papers but unless every brokerage does this it will just move elsewhere. Just like the US was going to limit oil futures because they thought institutions were driving up gas costs - then Dubai announced they would continue to trade without restrictions, US dropped that idea like a hot potato because they would rather have high gas prices then have Dubai become the world hub for oil trading.
- carstenhag 6y agoWhat, really? In Germany transferring securities is free, but it takes weeks or months for all securities and the correct prices to be transferred.
- ghaff 6y agoIn my experience, in the US it's free but it is often a pretty cumbersome and manual process that takes at least days, if not weeks. It's certainly not a click a few buttons on a website sort of thing. The last time I did this I had to physically mail a form and have a couple of different phone conversations.
- bagacrap 6y agowhat losses can you prove? It's not like you were blocked from selling at the high, the high was blocked from being reached. And this applies whether you have a rh account or not.
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoOpportunity loss. When I worked IT in brokerages we always had to reimburse traders for missed opportunity from technology issues -- which was abused, whenever trades went against them they would claim their UI was unresponsive and we'd have a programmer scour the logs with millisecond timestamps to prove the UI did respond and how quickly, then cross reference with the tradebook to see if its a trade that would likely be executed immediately or not etc. Often times the resolution is that the trader clicked trade at this timestamp, the order was sent at this timestamp, the exchange acknowledged at this timestamp, but you tried to buy 10000 shares at X price and only Y were available, so the trade did not execute immediately or not at all. Edit: Class action lawsuit was just filed for loss of opportunity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25945052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25945052
- gruez 6y ago>thread for an unsourced tweet reaching the front page, with everybody assuming it's true where have I seen this before? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584
- rubatuga 6y agoThis is manipulating the market, imagine if you set up a brokerage where you can only sell a certain stock but not buy.
- thinkingemote 6y agoRobinhood will have its work cut out to recover the trust lost today. I wonder how they will respond?
- corobo 6y agoI don't think they can respond to this adequately. Imagine being the first one to bend to big money with that name hahaha
- simlevesque 6y agoI don't want to sound too dramatic, but that is the beginning of the end for robinhood. Why would you use it after this ?
- kevinventullo 6y agoSchwab, Fidelity, and others now offer free trades on equities and ETF’s, so if that’s all you’re doing, there’s no reason to stay. That said, RH still has the best fee for options trading ($0.00 vs $.65 for Schwab/Fidelity).
- MrMan 6y agowhy would you ever use it? to experience random outages and poor execution?
- Tenoke 6y agoThis is messed up but WSB has pissed off RH so much before ("infinite money cheatcode")[0] so it probably took less convincing for them to do this than one might think. 0. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/robinhood-fixes-infinite-leverage-free-money-glitch-suspends-related-traders-2019-11-1028670689 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/robinhood-fi...
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agoStep 0: Citadel pays Robinhood for order flow. Citadel gets to see RH's orders a few milliseconds before they're filled. Citadel may choose to front-run some of those trades. Step 1: RH's customers and WallStreetBets start manipulating $GME. This is happening in the open. -- https://twitter.com/toxic/status/1353890766800621569 https://twitter.com/toxic/status/1353890766800621569
- coredog64 6y agoDueling Twitter posts: https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1354129838806872073?s=21 https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1354129838806872073?s... I’m gonna go with Matt Levine over a Twitter rando, especially since the step 0 notes something that is explicitly illegal (front running)
- clevernapkins 6y agoFront running is illegal indeed. But it would be possible to use Robinhood's order flow data to detect momentum and decide to hold a position from that. Small difference but the effect is the same
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoI am in Uk, and Trading 212 has not allowed any purchases since yesterday. Freetrade is the only platform that was still allowing trades. I thibk i will stick by them, despite them taking saubscribtuon payments
- JulesRosser 6y agoAt least with the subscription they pay 3% on up to 4k cash, essentially covering the cost (assuming you have an emergency fund/cash available).
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoHad an AMC buy go through today on Freetrade too.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoTo be clear I bought puts on GME yesterday, so this will work well for me, but it is totally unfair by Robinhood. I will be cancelling my Robinhood account after this show of force.
- MrMan 6y agouse a better broker! dont be a mark
- stevespang 6y agoCensorship, Cancel Culture - - and now, throttling smaller retail traders again giving the big institutions and hedges more power.
- cwwc 6y agoThis is not limited to these stocks - I’ve been stopped from buying some REITS, closed end funds, ETFs, ect (even DNP).
- SirensOfTitan 6y agoI’m fuming, and about as angry as I’ve been in years because of this. Robinhood opened up a bunch of levered trading to amateurs, that was fine! Allowing folks to buy stocks that are making their business partners lose cash: we’re protecting the little guy. If you work at Robinhood and you continue working at Robinhood I don’t know how you’ll continue to sleep at night.
- diveanon 6y agoTheir paychecks can buy some very nice mattresses. RH has been a scam since day one, the very principle of it is virtue signaling to the common man to sell his data to front run his trades. I'm sure none of these people will lose a wink of sleep.
- MrMan 6y agoyeah Robin Hood was a creepy cynical marketing play from the start. good on them for convincing young people that they were a good choice despite being objectively worse than all other brokers. it's the free market at work! go use another broker if you dont like RH, trading fees have plummeted everywhere it's a years-long trend due to market regulation changes and HFT and low interest rates
- timdaub 6y agoLol, what else to say but: Buy Bitcoin?
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoWatching this unfold makes so many of the early criticism of Bitcoin look ridiculous.
- lettergram 6y agoPeople can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Onto the next one.
- nickjj 6y agoI don't think the title of this post does the story justice. The buy UI widget under GameStop's stock symbol has been replaced with: "This stock is not supported on Robinhood." It seems the ability to buy the stock has been completely removed, however they left in the ability to sell. That is much different than "limited" because other platforms only prevented options trading but still allowed purchasing it with funds you already have.
- GVIrish 6y agoYou can't even look at the stock on RH, it's like it doesn't exist. Same with Nokia, AMC, etc. And all this with no explanation whatsoever. It would be one thing if they put out a press release or something to explain themselves but the fact that they did it on the sly stinks to high heaven.
- simonsarris 6y agoNot you too, Interactive Brokers :'( https://twitter.com/IBKR/status/1354792600004386818 https://twitter.com/IBKR/status/1354792600004386818
- thonos 6y agoI too bought those shares with the anticipation that the price will go up due to the hype generated. I made a careful decision to do so by estimating that the traffic on /r/wsb will increase because of the news coverage, which causes people to buy those shares. I don't live in the states and don't use Robinhood, but a local broker that charged me a good bit for US stock trading. Robinhood halting trading tanked the price in afterhours immediately, and it will likely crash further on opening because of this. As a result, I too will lose money. Sure that's what you get with market gambling and speculation but I find it ridiculous that this company now singlehandled crashed the stock and results in losses for global independent investors like myself. Being able to only sell shares and not buy is directly playing towards the hedge funds. It will drive the price down and positions might get closed. If what reddit did was market gambling and manipulation, what robinhood is now doing is the same, just in the opposite direction.
- bjeds 6y agoI think you should file a complaint to your local financial authorities.
- rswail 6y agoAs I understand it, the hedge funds had naked shorts. That's illegal. If they did, what is happening to them serves them right. Even if they didn't, a "short squeeze" is perfectly legal. If the short sellers think the stock is overpriced, and there's others that think its underpriced, then both sides are placing their bets and will deal with the result, either by making or losing a lot of money. This is not a "pump and dump", this is an unco-ordinated short squeeze. A bunch of people decided to take the short sellers on. Whether everyone involved understands the risk of a short squeeze to them by going long is a prime case of "caveat emptor". They're not even buying calls, they're actually buying the stock. The short sellers are being squeezed mercilessly and will eventually have to bail out. At that point the stock will tank back to a more realistic position and the people that went long too late and didn't exit will also lose lots of money. Of course, they won't crystalize those losses until they sell.
- sltkr 6y ago> If the short sellers think the stock is overpriced, and there's others that think its underpriced, then both sides are placing their bets and will deal with the result, either by making or losing a lot of money. I don't think it's really a case of people disagreeing on the real value of GameStop stock. Framing it like this ignores important facts. This stock was trading around $4 in August, around $20 in the beginning of January, and is almost at $400 right now. People can have legitimate disagreements about what the true value is: $5 per share? $10? $20? $40? But no way anyone sincerely believes GameStop is worth $400/share. People who are buying right now at (or near) that price point are either doing so because they believe the short squeeze will drive the price up even further (Redditors), or because they have to deliver stock they sold short (investment funds). So all parties agree that the stock is overpriced, and people have been buying knowing this fully well.
- vincentmarle 6y agoYeah, so... what? Which laws dictate that stock needs to be traded at “fair price”?
- 6y ago
- boh 6y agoI could see how a regulator can peg Wall Street Bets as some vague case of market manipulation, but this is a whole new level. They're closing the public out of the public markets. There's really no formal argument to support this. What, the stock price is overvalued because of concentrated investments propping it up? That's pretty much most of the market.
- teekert 6y agoWhat? I get the reason for GameStop, but why the other 3?
- kyuudou 6y agoThey were next on the list recommended by WSB, IIRC.
- kryogen1c 6y agoim just so worried this is textbook bolshevism. the narrative that the evil corporate oligarchs are ruining peoples lives is certainly rooted in truth, but it is not true enough that people need to die about it. these people with their FREE stock trading platforms browsing reddit all day with their $500-$2000 smart phones AND computers, feel like life is unfair. they feel repressed (because there is certainly >0 repression occurring), but have no idea how deep this rabbit hole is. the single mothers with 4 kids arent on WSB. the mentally ill, the 75 year olds that lost pensions, the drug addicted, the slumlords, the victims of being poor in ghettos - none of the people with real problems are WSB players. once people with actual problems get involved, all these kulaks are gonna realize how much they have to lose.
- muagleeb 6y agoShould probably change their name to Nottingham.
- Leader2light 6y agoDisgusting. The entire system is so fucking corrupt. The only fix in my mind is total collapse. Bring everyone down to the same level.
- vincentmarle 6y agoIt’s real. They just announced it on their blog: https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-... > Our mission at Robinhood is to democratize finance for all. We’re proud to have created a platform that has helped everyday people, from all backgrounds, shape their financial futures and invest for the long term. > We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK. We also raised margin requirements for certain securities. > Amid significant market volatility, it’s important as ever that we help customers stay informed. > We fundamentally believe that everyone should have access to financial markets. We’re humbled to have helped many people invest in the markets for the first time.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Miner49er 6y agoRobinhood's rating on the android app store has fallen to 1.1 stars.
- mam2 6y agook fine but there are other brokers..
- bashwizard 6y agoClass action lawsuit, incoming. WE LIKE THE STOCK.
- thick 6y agoHow long before r/WSB turns into r/LateStageCapitalism?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WhompingWindows 6y agoIsn't this a bad business move? Doesn't RH want its users to engage with them? Or are they calculating that this sort of mass-coordination on their app will lead to regulations and censures against them?
- neom 6y agoI always thought BTC and blockchain stuff had no utilitized value, so I never really took it seriously. Today I started to take it seriously.
- dhdhhdd 6y agoClickbait. They're reducing the (risky) leverage. "A Schwab spokeswoman said that the platform changed its margin requirements, limiting how much an investor can borrow, on Jan. 13 and said it has placed “restrictions in place on certain transactions in GME and other securities"
- ultimoo 6y agoSo is schwab.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoIs this legal? Or is it a case of the eventual SEC fine will be a much smaller problem for them than upsetting whoever asked them to do this?
- EGreg 6y agoSo organized capital was all about free markets and small government, until organized people took it on. Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital is becoming one of my heroes, LOL. Last year he criticized the trillion dollar bailouts of Wall Street, now he comes on to defend the right of retail investors to share information publicly and coordinate a short squeeze against overleveraged short positions by shadowy hedge funds. When organized people take on organized capital, we get this kind of situation where the organized capital tries to call for government to add additional rules to protect their existing ways of making money. What happened to wanting a free market and less regulation? What happened to welcoming innovation? Technology empowers people and unites communities. Sometimes those communities can start to organize in new ways. That’s why we started Qbix.com and Intercoin.org - to build the tools for them to do so, without relying on the Big Tech oligopoly. The future is decentralized. You can’t keep shutting down people’s speech on platforms. And here we are shutting down people’s transactions. Even if you don’t like what they are doing or saying.
- devops000 6y agoIt was obvious, the real customer of Robihood are hedge found for their front-running business. They protect interest of hedge founds.
- thepasswordis 6y agoI really don't get why everybody is so upset. The stock market is a private company. If you don't like it just make your own financial system. /s
- mrkramer 6y agoWhat SEC thinks of this GameStop madness? Is this normal market activity or pump and dump scheme? They only said they are monitoring ongoing market volatility. [1] I didn't research this whole situation a lot but I know brick and mortar game selling is almost dead and everything moved online especially to Steam which basically has monopoly on digital online video games selling. I don't agree with Chamath when he said paraphrasing this is the move against financial establishment, this is the result of transparent and open stock market research. For me this is public and collective pump and dump scheme. The narrative of going against current financial establishment is the same one that motivated criminals and drug sellers to embrace Bitcoin because they thought it was meant to be anonymous and anarchist but in reality it was meant to be everything opposite; to establish decentralized trust, transparency, enable micro transactions and to eradicate fraud and financial mischief. [1] https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/joint-statement-ongoing-market-volatility-2021-01-27 https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/joint-statement-on...
- aynyc 6y agoThis isn't a fundamental based investment on both sides. Even if you believe GME is about to go out of business, shorting it at 140% is ridiculous. This is momentum trade on both sides. The difference is all establishment (news media, hedge fund bros, brokers and government) is against one side (retail).
- pdevr 6y agoFWIW, Robinhood posted a statement on their blog[1]. Two snippets: >In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK. Also: >We fundamentally believe that everyone should have access to financial markets. Cognitive dissonance to the hilt :) [1]https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-...
- krelian 6y agoAt least for GME the stock is still rising uncontrollably. If the WSB crowd who mainly uses Robinhood can't buy then who is pushing the price up?
- jberryman 6y agoI'm really out of my depth here but my understanding is at a certain point short sellers start getting forced to buy at whatever price, pushing the stock up further?
- greenshackle2 6y agoIf you are short you have to put up more and more collateral as the price goes up. So yes, eventually you may be forced to buy to cover your short, if don't have enough cash you are able or willing to tie up as collateral. This can create a feedback loop as short-sellers buy and drive the price further up, forcing other short-sellers to buy, etc., the so-called short squeeze. I have no idea if this is happening now.
- mitch3x3 6y agoThat is exactly what is happening right now.
- Quarrelsome 6y agoI feel like we're bordering on religion here (which means it doesn't have to be grounded in logic) and its possible that people who were rewarded for holding bitcoin have happily added an extra punt to this campaign. If you can click all the buttons to deal with crypto then I don't imagine its too hard to trade without Robin Hood.
- byerobh 6y agoWhat kind of joke brokerage would do this? Closing my account ASAP
- slumdev 6y agoIt's most likely that (because of dark pools and other legalized front running) that Robinhood is the losing counterparty at the other end of these trades.
- typon 6y agoI can confirm interactive brokers is doing the same thing. Looks like collusion from the top.
- bilekas 6y agoExcuse my ignorance but can this not be considered manipulating the market ?
- imgabe 6y agoPlease remember that Robinhood is a private company, so if they want to collude with hedge fund managers to deny small investors access to the stock market, then that's just something we all have to accept. We must never, ever question the actions of a private company.
- Lasher 6y agoMods on WSB are catching a lot of flack for closing a thread asking for alternative brokers (no idea why) and for commenting in another sticky not to go and write bad reviews for the brokers limiting trades. I fear they are about to get a harsh lesson in what happens when the mob you are leading turns against you.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- worldmerge 6y agoAnyone have any recommendations on brokers? I would like to move off Robinhood as soon as possible.
- christophilus 6y agoFidelity has been rock solid for me. Great customer service. Relatively terrible UI, but you get used to it. Edit: Also, their rewards card dumps 2% of your usage into your brokerage. It's a nice combo.
- swiley 6y agoWhen was Nokia being pumped? I bought calls on it for something I saw on HN a week ago which is what you're supposed to do and have been watching WSB and no one was talking about it. Also: thinkorswim just let me submit an order to buy more NOK anyway. Heh, this is what you get for using robinhood.
- DC1350 6y agoFor a lot of young people, the only paths to a regular life are either work hard for 5-10 years, live like a poor student, save the majority of their money and gamble that life will be affordable at the end, or just gamble away their money today. It’s so much harder to reach regular milestones that it’s sometimes not even worth the effort. I don’t think taking this away from a bunch of nihilistic young men is going to end well... On an unrelated note, start preparing yourself for a neo-feudal society now and you will still live well. You will own nothing, and you will be happy.
- kchr 6y ago<3
- naebother 6y agoBut what if I want to own something?
- TheColorYellow 6y ago> On an unrelated note, start preparing yourself for a neo-feudal society now What would it mean to prep for this? What would a neo-feudal society actually look like?
- pettersolberg 6y agoWell, so this is the free market in action - wow!
- hyko 6y agoIn America, the law is king...until one of the actual kings gets punched in the face and re-writes the law the next day.
- tester34 6y agoRelying on USA based IT seems to be very poor choice
- jonthepirate 6y agoRH is blatantly rigging the system in favor of the hedge funds. Not good.
- justaguy420 6y agoCTRM (Castor Maritime), BB, NOK, GME, AmC, and others! Important no stock delisted goes unmentioned. Don't let them win, not a single hand!
- cblconfederate 6y agoI find the actions of billionaires petty. This is a world of absurd valuations, stocks skyrocketing despite experiencing the equivalent of a world war. And they can't let go of a few billion to some random redditors? The billionaire class is made to look bad with this, and billionaires must stop this reaction in order to restore the faith and trust in the Ancien regime of the markets.
- justaguy420 6y agoCTRM (Castor Maritime) to that list! important to track all delisted apps. Can't leave any of em behind. Don't let them win a single hand!
- boringg 6y agoWhat about robinhood's platform not being to handle the activity level and are concerned about their ability to execute all the trades while managing the book probably given their history on execution. Thus they had to limit purchases as they expected more surges and then a lot of risk on Friday settlement.
- sharker8 6y agoSwitch to WeBull, works great.
- ummonk 6y agoTake from the rich and... oh wait you're not allowed to do that.
- abrowne2 6y agoRobinhood bugged out as I attempted to sell some of my AMC this morning. The Market Sell order barely went through and was visually glitched for 10 minutes.
- IceWreck 6y agoHow is this not market manipulation ?
- aaron695 6y agoRelevant XKCD - https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ They are a private company and you aren't allowed to complain, something something American law.
- zaltekk 6y agoAll of this is making me wonder if I'm making the right choices for the retail brokerage that I use personally. While I'm not trading these stocks, what if this happens with a stock I do have money in? Initially I had thought, "hey, there's this Interactive Brokers place that seems a bit further removed from places like Robinhood or Fidelity/Schwab/TD/ETrade." But apparently they're now blocking trades too. What is the right way to ensure you're able to trade? I know there's the StockBrokers.com review site, but it doesn't seem they're going to have this kind of information.
- kweinber 6y agoThe fact is that a few things that are already prohibited are happening here. You have 1) pump-and-dump manipulation on the day trader side and 2) Robinhood grew an entire business based on selling blocks of order-volume so that people can front-run and piggy-back off of trades (which is also prohibited). If the SEC wasn't neutered by the last administration and was doing their job, people would be hauled in for market manipulation on both sides. Real marketplaces need to be free from gross manipulation or else people lose faith in them for legitimate commerce.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- perfunctory 6y agoOn the one hand this is outrageous. On the other, if you don't pay for the product (Robinhood) then you are the product. How many times do we have to be reminded of this.
- throwaway2245 6y agoThis is identical to my experience of casino gambling. If you have a system that is beating the house (or appears to be), the house will immediately shut you down. You can't win. Not only because the bets are stacked against you (here in favour of the wealthy), but also because the system only exists in the first place to benefit the powerful.
- lastofthemojito 6y agoI know some language nerds who like to debate about whether certain aspects of language should be descriptive (dictionaries document how real people use language) or prescriptive (very smart people know the correct way to spell/use words, and that should be imparted to the less knowledgeable). In that light, I'd always seen the stock market as purely descriptive - the price of a stock can be completely detached from the valuation or profits of a company, it's purely the price that someone in the market is willing to pay. This feels like an attempt to make the stock market prescriptive - "we know that these retail traders are wrong for trading at such lofty prices, we need to fix this". Spoiler alert: Descriptivism always wins.
- alea_iacta_est 6y agoThe elites of this world should meditate on it, because on the same logic: populism always wins.
- axiom92 6y agoAnd dogecoins!
- gorgoiler 6y agoWSB reminds me of the heyday of LulzSec. As questionable as LulzSec / anon’s hacking was, it was also exciting to watch in real-time (10 years ago!) Of course they were caught and of course they turned out to be regular nobodies. Everything is normal and banal in the end. If WSB doesn’t turn out to be a regular ole pump and dump then I’d be very surprised. The only thing that’s weird about it is that not even the current cohort of pumpers realise that’s what they are doing. Could it be that the original pumpers have closed out already leaving behind a crowd of meme spewing parrots that collective display malicious sentience while individually being regular joes?
- danmg 6y agoIt's not a pump and dump. It's a short squeeze. It's nothing new. It's the plot of the 80s movie "Trading Places." A hedge fund bought short position futures contracts for 120% of the available stock on the market. That's the underlying reason the price is going up: because they're forced to somehow buy more than 100% of the available Game Stop stock because they agreed to sell it to the people on the other end of those contracts for a set strike price.
- MrMan 6y agono the pump and dump part means that WSB arguably exists as a kind of ion cannon like Anon used to be, where if you can convince a sizable number of community members to commit to a proposed course of action, you can create a reflexive effect that you can harness to your advantage. creating a stock price event, on purpose, using a community like WSB, and profiting, by exiting the trade is a "pump" and "dump." it is ancillary that a short squeeze might be an attendant and inciting event. you could do this with any stock as long as the supply is limited compared to the demand created by the manipulation of trader sentiment. the short squeeze just amplifies the effect
- danmg 6y agoIt's disingenuous and factually incorrect to compare WSB with a DDOS takedown crew running a tool against scientology.org. WSB is legally sharing trading information and making informed investing decisions based on public information. What happened with Game Stop is completely predicated on large investors, who should have known better, buying positions that exposed them to an infinite amount of risk. The short squeeze is the reason this is happening and not "ancillary." The hedge fund took these positions because they thought they were a form a free money. A better analogy would be "The Producers." The audience just walked out of "Spring Time for Hitler" for intermission and they're humming the songs and laughing.
- lefrenchy 6y agoThis whole situation was supposed to be bad because “retail traders would be left holding the bag”. Now Robinhood has intervened, essentially crashing the stock by taking away retail buy pressure, so retail is inevitably left holding the bag. Meanwhile, Kelly Loeffler and other senators insider traded before the pandemic market crash. Nancy Pelosi holds deep ITM Apple and TSLA calls.
- minkeymaniac 6y agoWhat they should do if it is indeed to protect the user is have you sign a document. Just like Fidelity does if you want to buy UVXY or the oil short securities FWIW Fidelity lets you buy GME....
- carrabre 6y agoThat's why the world needs more decentralized technologies. Pro DeFi & other decentralized tech.
- acdw 6y agoI'm personally really pissed off because I made a Robinhood account last night to buy $10 each f AMC and GME, the first stock trading I've ever done. I just want to make some extra money so I can start a family, you know? I feel like the history of my personal financial life has been the increasing awareness that nobody with any power cares one whit about me or anyone like me.
- MrMan 6y agoI think one of the original messages of HN was "start a business" partly because investing in those new businesses was what Pg wanted to do for a living. why don't you embrace that message? it seems healthier than complaining about the stock market being rigged
- chuckysbk 6y agoinstitutions are controlling robin hood? why else would they not let you buy/sell certian stocks.
- squeaky-clean 6y agoIt's not just Robinhood, IB and WeBull have also suspended GME. Schwab lets me get all the way to confirming an order, but I'm not spending $370 on a share of GME to confirm if it will go through haha. IB/WeBull/Schwab seem to still allow AMC/NOK/BB. Those are the brokerages I use, can't check in the others.
- anaboyd101 6y agoThis is really messed up. Does anyone here think that Robinhood will allow me to buy any shares soon or will it just be limited?
- chuckysbk 6y agohow can robin hood stop me from buying certian stocks? is this legal?find another platform.
- drewcon 6y agoTrading stocks is not the 1st amendment where we basically say we don’t really care about the outcome of your speech (as an individual). Say what you want even if its dumb and hurts you. With capital markets...there absolutely is a goal, and it’s not speculation/gambling. The goal is to have a place where corporations can raise capital and investors can hold them accountable for how they return value to them...and then a billion rules to make that as fair and functional (not equitable) as possible. I don’t get the argument that what these guys are doing is somehow noble, or to be encouraged. Completely unregulated non-purposeful markets are not helpful....we did that 100 years ago...thats why we have all the rules we do to make markets function to the end.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago>it’s not speculation/gambling What is short selling if not speculation? It's speculating that an asset will be worth less than it is now.
- drewcon 6y agoThere is a world of difference between playing a game of chance, and playing a game where you happen to believe you have real better/different information about how the future unfolds. Speculators tend to act mostly on emotion and inertia from the game, not any real understanding of any underlying fundamentals. Short sales can be good. Downward pressure can be healthy. If you think a company is overvalued because its fundamentals are misjudged, the short is a corrective force in an overly optimistic market
- dixego 6y agoPerhaps this is proof regulations on the market should be stricter, then. After all, if a bunch of barely coordinated randos on the internet can do this through the power of 'meme magic', imagine what people with real resources and power and influence could do.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago>imagine what people with real resources and power and influence could do. You mean what they already have been doing for decades? Are you seriously in favor of clamping down on retail investors??
- mandeepj 6y ago> people asserted their power financially This is just wrong. Where was this power before? Stock trading platforms have been around forever. And, why to assert this power only on some of the stocks? It's just sheep chasing sheep
- ucha 6y agoRobinhood sells their order flow to Citadel. Citadel is financing Melvin Capital's GME short. The financing terms are private but whether they just lent them funds to cover the margin calls or actually hold their short positions until the storm passes for a fee, it is absolutely in their interest to prevent GME from continuing to skyrocket. Drawing a collusion between Citadel and RH isn't that far-fetched but I obviously have no insider knowledge of this. Most brokerages sell their order flow and Citadel trades 25% of the equities market in the US, from memory. Schwab, which also sells order flow to Citadel, requires 200% margin to go long GME which makes no sense since at most, you can lose 100% of your bet. This is not what free markets are supposed to be like.
- shakezula 6y agoBecause it’s not a free market. It’s a controlled market where market makers have all the power and they plainly flex it. I’m pretty disgusted with this as a whole. As others have pointed out in this thread, these funds have no problem margin calling the little guy but when they get in danger of losing their ass they can just bail out and hit the “off” button on the whole stock? Complete bullshit honestly.
- gdubs 6y agoZooming out above the vitriol, a few thoughts: 1) There’s a deep irony in calling yourself Robinhood - literally a guy who stole from the rich to pay the poor - and taking a move like this. 2) The 2008 financial crisis continues to have deep reverberations and has played a role in a lot of the upheaval over the past decade. 3) The Medium is the Message. This one probably deserves an essay, but if McCluhan were alive today he’d probably say that what’s really happening is society is getting buffeted against the waves of new mediums.
- dataminer 6y agoOne of the things people don't realize is that all these short squeezed companies get put into a very hard position. CEOs at these companies don't want a situation like this, as it damages the company's reputation, CEO of Tilray has talked about it when Tilray got squeezed for two months. He said something interesting “My advice to those CEOs would be that, at times like this, your company is not your stock and your stock is not your company”. Another things we need to realize is that there are people who will be losing their life savings or getting into debt. It doesn't matter if someone with high networth loses 1% of their wealth, but it does matter if someone in middle class loses 100% of their savings or worse bought these stocks with debt and now need to pay high interest on the losses. There have been painful situations where losses like these have caused people to have heart attacks, mental health issues and suicide. Brokers, apps, platforms don't want their names associated with such painful situations.
- baobabKoodaa 6y agoIf brokers like RH don't want their name associated with regular-joe-lost-everything-trading suicides, then they surely will not allow regular Joes to buy GME stock right before they manipulate the stock price to crash... No wait, that's exactly what they did.
- paganel 6y agoDeplatforming in action, first they came for Trump and his supporters, now for people trying to make a quick buck the same way as the fat foxes on Wall Street, what will be next?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Simulacra 6y agoI predict that we will see a law or regulation which will require that a person hold a license from the government in order to trade stocks, or certain securities. In every state there are laws that you must hold a license to perform certain tasks, so it's not inconceivable that the government will say: "This is too dangerous to let just anyone do, look what unlicensed, and untrained people did with GameStop. The government must require that only a professional licensed financial trader buy or sell stocks and securities."
- gkfasdfasdf 6y agoNot that I condone this type of market manipulation, but I do wonder what is the end game for all these wsb buyers - the price will come down eventually right? What will happen when they try to cash out?
- FirstLvR 6y agohow come is this even legal basically the system is telling us to do what they want of fuk off
- h0nd 6y agoI am just going to leave this here: https://www.sec.gov/oiea/Complaint.html https://www.sec.gov/oiea/Complaint.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoThe ONE TIME that shareholders don't ruin things for everyone . . .
- RyanShook 6y agoIsn't r/wallstreetbets the logical outcome of Robinhood's business strategy? When you combine free, frictionless trading with online communities I don't really see any other outcome and it will keep happening.
- MrMan 6y agoWSB certainly seems to have been pumped up by RH business and vice versa.
- Triv888 6y agoHow is that not illegal?
- thefounder 6y agoImagine buying some of these stocks. Next day people can only sell. What could go wrong..who will make money put of this? I think it's time to do something! People will get fed up of this fake freedom and "equal opportunity" bs
- 127 6y agoThe sacrificial lamb enters the fray. Killing off Robinhood is a much cheaper option than allowing your Wall Street buddies to take a loss.
- avereveard 6y agowhere's the 'just build your stock exchange' crowd now?
- pelasaco 6y agoLooks like the Robinhood became corrupt and ratted his outlaws out to the Sheriff of Nottingham
- greatpatton 6y agoIf the prevent buy and let people only sell stock it is going to create a great market imbalance that will just crash the stocks blocked. For once this done by multiple broker is pure market manipulation because it is going to have a huge effect on the blocked stocks... and will leave big fish with direct access dictate the direction.
- cratermoon 6y agoSo what do the apologists for wealth concentration that cite the supposed "Free Market" as a reason to fight market regulation think of this? Is this not real free market behavior? If not, are the activities of hedge funds not real free market behavior?
- skinpop 6y agoso much for the free market
- tareqak 6y agoRobinhood has announced this restriction on their blog here: https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-... . > We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AAL, $AMC, $BB, $BBY, $CTRM, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD, $NOK, $SNDL, $TR, and $TRVG. We also raised margin requirements for certain securities.
- coliveira 6y agoThis is typical market manipulation from WallStreet. They colluded to guarantee the outcome of their price manipulation and make millions on the back of thousands of small investors.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y agoSurprised no one is commenting how they stopped AAL (American Airlines) as well, it's not even close to being back at precovid levels, which would not be an unreasonable level for the stock I believe.
- gbolcer 6y agoThey don't even show up in search. Why would Robinhood do that?
- 0x008 6y agoThis is not robinhood only, this is on a lot of brokers world wide. Gamestop and AMC are close-only.
- vvpan 6y agoHacker news often gets very skeptical about blockchain-related projects. But I think Uniswap and similar "automatic market makers" are showing us a glimpse of how things will work. It's an unstoppable exchange with no middlemen. Anybody can access, anybody can trade, anybody can pool their money to facilitate these trades and nobody can say "no, you cannot".
- TheGrim-999 6y agoWait, so now private entities censoring/deplatforming/shutting down anyone they want for any reason they want is a bad thing? Just pretend they were all evil Trump voters that got what they deserved.
- majortennis 6y agoCriminal
- almost_usual 6y agoAs someone without any skin in the game this has been really entertaining.
- ineedasername 6y agoApparantly they're letting people close out their position, but how are you supposed to do that when no one can buy it from you?
- AI_WAIFU 6y agoSimple, the hedge funds can buy it from you at a steep discount, that way the can close their short positions for massive profit.
- wnevets 6y ago"oh no our customers are making too money" seems like a very weird stance for this company to take.
- graiz 6y agoThis is messed up. The only the stock exchange (NASDAQ/NYSE) should be able to halt a stock. We need a "stock neutrality" for trading platforms. Robinhood claim that they are protecting investors assumes that they don't understand the risks of stock investing. Did the shorts understand the risks of shorting a stock over 100%?
- firebaze 6y agoEven a congresswoman has a quite strong opinion on this: https://web.archive.org/web/20210128155006/https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1354807292667981828 https://web.archive.org/web/20210128155006/https://twitter.c... Unfortunately the tweet has already been deleted. There seems to be quite a lot of pressure.
- guidovranken 6y agoIt's not deleted.
- firebaze 6y agoIt _was_ deleted. Maybe she undid it in the meantime.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kecupochren 6y agoIt's still up - https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1354807292667981828?s=19 https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1354807292667981828?...
- Miner49er 6y agoTed Cruz and AOC have also tweeted similar.
- zaltekk 6y agoUnfortunately the account deactivation story is quite poor. Under Settings > Account Information > Deactivate Account you're just sent to a customer service email form. They say it takes 1-3 business days to process. As a side note, you have to close out all of your positions and transfer out all of your money before you're allowed to close the account. This seems unusual to me from experiences with other brokers. From my understanding the average retail broker will allow you to transfer you assets out to another brokerage. You can do this as part of closing your account. While just transferring money out separately and keeping the account open longer isn't a big deal, there's tax and other financial implications to having to close your positions instead of transfer them. You'll have to realize capital gains. You'll also have multiple banking days in which the price could move up while your money is transferred to another brokerage to re-buy the shares.
- benji_is_me 6y agoRobinhood does allow you to transfer holdings directly to another brokerage (for a $75 fee). https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/transfer-stocks-out-of-your-robinhood-account/ https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/transfer-stocks...
- zaltekk 6y agoAh, good find. There's no mention of this as a closing option in the app itself. That fee is a bit ridiculous, but it might be the best option if you have a real portfolio. I can't find a history that shows when they added this, but it appears they at least added transfers in a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/RobinHood/comments/6tre6o/transfer_stock_to_robinhood_has_arrived/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RobinHood/comments/6tre6o/transfer_...
- throwaway4good 6y agoI am the only one who finds this understandable? Sure short selling sounds weird and dodgy. But how is this different from shilling penny stocks in year 2000? People on Internet forums find stocks that are easy to move for whatever reason; generate hype and price hike and then watch gullable speculators pile in while the core group of manipulators exit their positions.
- gmm1990 6y agoYeah I don't understand why so many people are defending a ponzi scheme. Its in at least 90% of Robinhood users interest to not be able to buy GME right now.
- recursive 6y agoWhen are all the noble protectors going to turn their attention to convenience stores and gas stations? They shamelessly sell lottery tickets every single day to unsuspecting bag holders. It's in at least 99% of their interest not to be able to buy those tickets.
- gmm1990 6y agoThat's a good point
- Miner49er 6y agoIt's a short squeeze, not a pump and dump, as you describe. In a short squeeze, the hedge funds that hold the shorts will be the ones who lose money. Although, to be fair, some gullable speculators probably will too, but the point is to make money off the hedge funds' poor trade. The SEC can step in for pump and dump schemes, no reason for Robinhood to have taken the initiative (AFAIK).
- joez 6y agoI don't get how Robinhood can make this move. I see this move as a lose/lose. Anyone care to emphasize with them? Maybe they see themselves as saving the lay investor? But then from a price action perspective, - If GME goes up, people are going to have the sentiment that Robinhood stopped them from making money to protect the fat cats - If GME goes down, people are going to blame RH.
- djrogers 6y agoThis is so over the line that reps Cortez and Cruz both agree it’s ‘unacceptable’, and would push for hearings on the matter...
- codecamper 6y agoThis is exactly what they should have done immediately when these stocks started to make no sense. 150% moves would be maybe a rough estimate. Markets need to be protected from manipulation. Not allowing purchases from robinhood does not punish retail traders more than institutions. There was NO legitimate reason for the price on these stocks. By limiting purchases they are preventing their clients from getting into a trade that will almost certainly result in losses. "the short sellers" could very well be other retail investors. I personally shorted GME & AMC when they hit ridiculous prices (I lost money on these trades when they became 2x ridiculous)
- naebother 6y ago> There was NO legitimate reason for the price on these stocks Agreed, $TSLA next.
- adjkant 6y agoWorth pointing out that nearly every major trading firm has blocked buying of Gamestop and AMC stock today. I really am hoping to see legal action against the entire industry for literal stock manipulation. This isn't limiting purchasing, it's full-on stopping and only allowing selling. That's insane.
- goodluckchuck 6y agoI don't know how stocks work. Could you explain how it's possible to stop buying and allow selling? In order to execute a sell order, there would have to be a corresponding buy order? Do they do this by allowing new buy / sell orders, but only if they're at a lower price?
- maxerickson 6y agoThere are different sorts of access to the markets. Some companies literally operate the market, others have direct access to trade on that market, others sell indirect access to other people. The companies blocking buy orders are all in the indirect access business.
- cwkoss 6y agoIt is unprecedented for buying to be stopped for retail investors while still allowing buying from institutional investors.
- adjkant 6y agocwkoss more or less covered it, but they stopped buying for "retail" investors, but wall street could still buy. They basically literally said "okay enough of you normies, only professionals get to trade GME or AMC today". The unsaid part here is "and we'll probably make a ton of money during this since the retail investors were all buying". There's a rumor that Citadel doubled down on shorting the stock today and made a killing when it dropped from $450 -> under $200 today when trading was blocked. That could probably outweigh a good deal of the losses from Melvin today, though it's unclear who is still holding the bag on shorts. That's why this ban for retail traders is so crazy and blatant...
- throwaway5752 6y agoWe as a technology community should know this better than anyone. If you are getting a service for free, then you are not the customer.
- bytematic 6y agoWhat a complete spit in the face of their users. If you work at robinhood, take a look at your company values and know that they are willing to wipe out any of those during investor pressure.
- gintoki927 6y agoWhat upsets me is the fact that selling isn't halted. If only buying is halted, it's obviously going to cause the stock to plummet. Retail investors who bought AMC, GameStop, Nokia, or Blackberry are going to fear losing a lot of money and sell. If everyone does that, the stock price decreases. It's obvious manipulation in favor of hedge funds shorting the stocks. I really hope Robin Hood gets hit with a class action lawsuit. I don't want to sound greedy because I'm losing money, but the way this is being dealt with is beyond unfair. Losing money for a stupid decision is fine by me, but joining a movement like this and having it shut down by force is absolute bullshit. How can hedge funds be allowed to manipulate the market but we can't come together to fight them?
- rootusrootus 6y agoNot only them. I just got an e-mail from Tasty Works saying they're doing the same. And that it's out of their direct control.
- amai 6y ago"Robinhood got about 40% of their revenues from one of the hedge funds that just took a dive on Gamestop. Highly recommend an investigation. This smells like collusion to protect the rich insiders." https://twitter.com/mindmeld_me/status/1354807424998281217 https://twitter.com/mindmeld_me/status/1354807424998281217
- fairity 6y agoIs there a source for the 40% figure? It seems to allude that the fund in question is Citadel.
- briankelly 6y agoNot revenue, but RH publishes their order flow percentages, which shows Citadel is at the top. Here's one from last year: https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20SEC%20Rule%20606A%20and%20607%20Disclosure%20Report%20Q1%202020.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20SEC%2...
- hntrader 6y agoYeah it must be, they gave funds to Melvin Capital which took a beating on GME, and make money off Robinhood's customer flow.
- tomjakubowski 6y agoCitadel the hedge fund and Citadel the market maker are separate companies.
- tylerhou 6y agoThey do share ownership though. But the alleged conspiracy above is unlikely for other reasons.
- whimsicalism 6y agoGiving funds to Melvin so they can close their short != having a short position in GME There are like 30 comments getting this confused in this thread.
- hntrader 6y agoHedge funds made millions off this move by Robinhood. As soon as this information became known - and they would be the first to know about since they would've game planned this out - they would've loaded up on put options and front-run retail investors who were getting stopped out of their position due to cascading liquidations. What a tremendous transfer of wealth from retail to institutions that we witnessed today. It's fairly interesting to see the cultural response to this, and it doesn't seem to divide down the usual left/right political lines which is a relief after years of constant fighting. I wonder if this might be a driver of more political harmony in the coming months. I also wonder how much of all this is due to a social media vacuum created by the end of Trump's tenure and his removal from social media. The timing of this GME episode lines up pretty well with that hypothesis.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- irrational 6y agoI understand that the hedge funds stand to lose a lot of money, and potentially go bankrupt, but isn't that just one of the risks when you play the stock market? There is no guarantee that all your bets will end up making you money. If you want a sure thing, put your money in bonds or some other investment that has low risk. The hedge funds are acting like they deserve to make money off their shorts and them not making that money is theft in some way.
- kgwgk 6y agohttps://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354833285386543105 https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354833285386543105 "Committee investigators should examine any retail services freezing stock purchases [...] especially those allowing sales, but freezing purchases." Apparently she would prefer that people were blocked from selling their holdings.
- moscovium 6y agoDid you not read the tweet or are you just trying to misrepresent her argument? She is asking why different sets of trading rules are apply to retail and institutional investors. If retail can sell, but can't buy, who are they selling to? "We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit."
- kgwgk 6y agoDoes she or doesn't she say that the retail services allowing sales but freezing purchases are especially worth of investigation, compared to the general category of retail services freezing stock purchases? Of course, in reality, the only services freezing stock purchases are those allowing sales but freezing purchases. Because freezing sales in addtion to purchases would be much more problematic, not less.
- darkwizard42 6y agoNo, I think she would prefer that exchanges didn't restrict purely in an effort to "protect" retail investors and nakedly do the bidding to protect larger institutional investors who are getting squeezed. A brokerage NOT allowing buys, sells, margins, options on a security is well within their right to do so. It's only when they start to take positions that limit an investor's ability to manage their own risk that it gets a little fishy...
- kgwgk 6y agoSo if you have shares in a brokerage account you think the broker is within his right to prevent you from selling them?
- avarsheny 6y agoIs this even legal?
- l31g 6y agoWhen AOC and Ted Cruz are agreeing that something smells fishy... it's probably fishy https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1354833603943931905 https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1354833603943931905
- blhack 6y agoHere's the part of this that is actually worse than it seems at first: RH is making it so you can ONLY sell the stocks. You can't buy them. So who is on the other side of the trade? Definitely not anybody on RH. But the thing is: a lot of the retail buy side of this is coming from RH. Like RH just gutted the buyers and handed them to the sellers. It's unbelievable how corrupt this looks.
- subsubzero 6y agoI called out Robinhood months ago in this old thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188407 basically its a shitty company that sells your orders so hedgefunds (citadel etc.) can then buy the same stocks at a lower price[1] and you always end up paying more, they were fined 65M for doing this see here[1]. A total scam and hopefully congress and the SEC come down hard on this company. [1] - https://modernconsensus.com/technology/robinhood-high-frequency-trading-citadel-two-sigma-galilleo-russell/ https://modernconsensus.com/technology/robinhood-high-freque... [2] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robinhood-sec-fine-65-million/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robinhood-sec-fine-65-million/
- jacquesm 6y agoRobinhood -> best picked name ever. Steal from the poor, give to the rich :) And all the while the poor where believing it was the other way around.
- wocram 6y agoAll retail brokerages sell order flow to the wholesale brokerages, it is part of the market structure. Rule 606 disclosures enumerate each brokerage's arrangement: eg. https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20SEC%20Rule%20606a%20and%20607%20Disclosure%20Report%20Q3%202020.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20SEC%2... from https://robinhood.com/us/en/about/legal/ https://robinhood.com/us/en/about/legal/ Fidelity: https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/literature/item/9901330.html https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/literature/item/990... from https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/item/RD_13569_21696/sec-rule-606.html https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/app/item/RD_13569_21696...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ignorantguy 6y agois there a good alternative to robinhood? I really like robinhood, but what they have done today is super dumb.
- nickik 6y agoI don't understand what these investors do, I don't think it makes sense for most of them and I would advice against it. However, the whole point of Robinhood is to allow people to buy the stocks they want. Would they also have stopped people buying Tesla a few years ago? This has proven to be right bet. However given r/teslainvestorsclub strongly pushing for the stock, could be interpreted as the same thing. Robinhood seems to just decide who can be a winner.
- djvu9 6y agoI have to say whoever voted for Biden voted for this. A Trump admin would have done the same but at least we could get some angry journalists yelling at them. See what we get now? A bunch of a* lickers.
- krapp 6y ago>A Trump admin would have done the same but at least we could get some angry journalists yelling at them. See what we get now? A bunch of a* lickers. But Trump supporters have been telling everyone for years that journalists are all a*lickers for corporations and the left. Why would they suddenly have integrity today if Trump were in office now? Surely they would just toe the line of their corporate masters of find some way to blame Trump for everything, as we're told their extremist left-wing pro Democrat agenda required them to.
- djvu9 6y agoI never mentioned integrity. Integrity is nonexistent in the previous admin, the current admin, the big tech, and the mainstream media. And they working together is much more scarier than they fighting each other. I wish you could have seen this after what happened to Parler and now the GME stock saga.
- seahawks78 6y agoAnd they call themselves "Robinhood"! Nauseating.
- randyrand 6y agohedge funds are a group of people all giving their money to act together. how is this any different?
- benji_is_me 6y agoRobinhood's rating has dropped to 1 star in the Google play store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.robinhood.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.robinhood....
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cirgue 6y agoSo am I crazy, or is WSB a fairly transparent ploy for larger investors to get more stupid money into the market? Like the people making out here are the ones that sold the short positions before everyone hopped on the bandwagon. Am I missing something here?
- codecamper 6y agoThe only problem I see here is that market makers can still buy the stock to prop it up so they don't have to pay out on the options they sold. Restricting retail from buying the stock is a good idea. There is no legitimate reason to buy these stocks. They are doing naive investors a favor. People who own the stock can either hold or sell. You sell if you think the current price exceeds the value. I can guarantee that also no institutional investors are buying the stock. They just don't really need someone to tell them that. Brokers are attempting to limit complaints by limiting their user's losses. They have done this in self interest.
- gricardo99 6y agoNamely, should a brokerage—especially one like Robinhood that brands itself with an anti-Wall Street Everyman gloss—be selling its customers’ trades? What exactly is the point of this article, other than trying to stir up anti-Robinhood sentiment? Relying on PFOF/external execution is now a bad thing? Is the author advocating to do away with PFOF/external execution? What's the proposed alternative, because it seems like that would take us to a full circle. In previous years, the brokerage dealing directly to the clients was fraught with problems: conflict of interest between the brokerage and their clients because the brokerage holds offsetting client positions, and the market risk held by the brokerage. Auditing "best execution" is pretty straight-forward for a brokerage and regulators (really anyone with the data). If Brokerages are "cheating" and dealing against their clients best interests, then that's exactly the role of regulators.
- dang 6y ago(This comment was originally a reply to "Robinhood makes most of its money selling customer orders (2020)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25946626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25946626, but we've merged it into the main thread.)
- throaway1990 6y agoNaked short selling through unlimited "Puts" is totally LEGAL for these hedge-funds, but when people caught them pants down they are using every ILLEGAL move to cover their asses and losses. These are the corrupt and insane people who should be punished not the people who sussed out their bullshit! What Robinhood and other platforms are doing is market manipulation which is illegal. The legal and reasonable thing would be to allow trading these stocks with additional "e-signs" letting the individual know that there are additional risks here. That would actually help the retail investor. But these brokers and buddies are happy to help their hedge fund buddies!!
- Tiktaalik 6y agoIncredible shenanigans. Government needs to lower the boom. Very much an example of how only "certain people" are allowed to win in our society and the system will intervene to ensure that established wealth retains its preferred status.
- at_a_remove 6y agoA now-old song has the lyrics "everybody knows that the dice are loaded" and, outside of "doing it for the lulz," part of this exercise is to expose the collusion as a kind of carnival. Watch Big Tech scramble to the aid of Big Money! Witness the flimsiest of excuses being generated in the hopes that one will stick! See with your own eyes the scramble to protect the usual suspects! And what is pretty amazing is that some folks think that if they just stamp out this one, they can go back to (big) business as usual: money made by a select few, and the small fry can hope that some crumbs might trickle down to them, if only by accident. My bet is that this is going to happen again -- perhaps not exactly the same way, but it will be another nasty demonstration of the self-protection that has managed to be the sign of the entrenched.
- gmethowaway 6y agoInteractive Brokers (IB) is blocking GME stock buy even on non margin account.
- c3534l 6y agoHow is banning people from buying stock with the express purpose of prevent the price of that stock from going up in any way, shape, or form legal?
- Triv888 6y agoDo they limit only on margin buys or even cash buys? Because with TD Ameritrade, they only limit with margin buys.
- NVHacker 6y ago1. RobinHood get their money from Citadel. 2. The price was not driven by the little people but by Citadel following the trend. 3. Now Citadel want to realize some gains an instructed RobinHood that th silliness needs to stop. 4. Citadel go on the other side of the trade and sell short, as there are no more buyers.
- JackTally 6y agoDuring today's short ladder immediately after Robinhood removed the ability to buy shares... • There was 443k shares sold in a single batch at $120 at 11:24:36 AM EST. • There was 347k shares sold in a single batch at $140 at 11:19:09 AM EST. Someone took a total loss of $300M from the price an hour prior OR that is a $100M short sale.
- hntrader 6y agoMost likely it's a large long position who is capitulating or being margin called (stopped out) by their broker. I don't think a short seller with that kind of capital would ever chase a steep drop like that.
- JackTally 6y agoYou are probably right! Justin Kan (YC) just posted this: https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354861575916515330?s=20 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354861575916515330?s=2...
- Tenoke 6y agoRH are scummy but reloading just beforehand seems way too risky by citadel and more like a made-up for attention story.
- hntrader 6y agoIt could've been one of the many trading desks inside Citadel who saw the news early, through publicly available sources (e.g. the RH website), and put on a short position within a few seconds. So the story about Citadel shorting the top could be be simultaneously true and legal/normal. Definitely needs an investigation though.
- Tenoke 6y agoHm, actually Citadel has access to all RH trades before they go in effect as part of their partnership so I guess their traders would know when buys stop coming at the earliest possible time without any breaking of the firewall. Still, if that's what happened the tweet is still inaccurate and likely made-up for attention
- dang 6y agoFor pointers to other vertices of this story graph, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543. As for this thread, it's got 1500+ comments. If you want to see them all you'll need to click through the More links at the bottom, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941431&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941431&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941431&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941431&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941431&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941431&p=4 (Use your imagination after that.)
- weitzj 6y agoTraderepublic is doing the same
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Triv888 6y agoThey are not the only one, TD Ameritrade and Alpaca are doing it too... they are on one team, we are on the other.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoIt's interesting to see the outrage about this. Everyone who has done a bit of research into this kind of broker knew this. It's the only way to get the commissionless trading they advertise with. Just another case of "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold".
- belltaco 6y agoNot really, the outrage is over a short of GME being a customer. If the headline was about Firm XYZ without a short in GME paying $100M it wouldn't be as newsworthy.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoYou don't get to pick to which advertiser your data is sold either. You're just along for the ride with no hands on the wheel. I'm not defending business models built upon selling their users' data. I'm just saying that this is no surprise, and it was pretty inevitable to happen sooner or later.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> the outrage is over a short of GME being a customer Do we have any evidence Citadel is materially net short GME? They bailed out Melvin Capital. But Melvin Capital announced that they closed out their short position. And bailing out Melvin Capital isn't the same thing as assuming their positions.
- cmmeur01 6y agoPlease provide evidence they have closed their short other than them talking their portfolio.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIs there any concrete reason to suspect they're lying? Obviously none of us have directly seen Melvin's books, but there's a point where the contrary hypothesis just becomes unfalsifiable.
- fireeyed 6y agohttps://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315 >Just got a tip that Citadel reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop trading $GME. If this is true, Ken Griffin and the Robinhood founders should be in jail. This is class warfare.
- floatingatoll 6y ago'Reloaded' isn't a term I understand yet amidst the WSB stuff going on. Do you have a brief refresher on what it's slang for?
- joejohnson 6y agobought more
- baobabKoodaa 6y ago"Reloaded" in this context means they reopened their short position. As in, they had closed their short earlier, and now they opened it again. The implication is that they made a large bet that the stock price would fall, just before they changed the rules to cause the stock price to fall. I have no idea if any of this is true.
- dillondoyle 6y agoI can't wait (and by that I mean I'm terrified) to see what politics happens in the midterms. 2007/8 -> tea party & Sarah Palin lowering the bar. I argue economy/bailouts & anger had a large role. But obviously Obama, Obamacare, & racism played big role too. It's palpable and poll-able how pissed off everyone except the top top % is. I work in Democratic politics, am a relatively good earner, clearly engaged, and I'm pissed. I have a hard time understanding the other side (MAGA) but they seem even more angry all around - enough to attempt to murder Congress. Maybe the best hope we have is the 'working class' (at this point I would categorize that as anyone making under $500k) getting pushed so far that we see real change to redistribute wealth and power back down. I'm skeptical though because the other type of political polarization doesn't help; half these voters identify more for Trump / religious issues than their own interests.
- defen 6y agoThe whole value prop of Robinhood (from an institutional POV like Citadel) is that providing liquidity to retail traders is valuable because it's lower risk - my guess is that the GME imbroglio blew that assumption out of the water and they got caught with their pants down.
- dilippkumar 6y agoQuestion: Why shouldn't everyone pull their money out of Robinhood asap? Thesis: Suppose a sufficiently large number of people believe that the market is going to crash one day. Robinhood has just shown us that it will consider locking up everyone's accounts and prevent a sell off while the rest of the market cleanly exits after cutting their losses. Robinhood investors will be left holding the bag once Robinhood reopens trading for the plebians.
- piva00 6y agoI think because we are dealing with sentiments. There would be a price point that will trigger a run-off but it still seems to be sustained by the "fuck you" message and playing chicken. The problem here is that game theory completely mess the incentives, everyone needs to play chicken (or buy out the ones selling) or everyone loses on potential profit. But if just a few people trigger a sell out, everyone loses. It's a very strange Mexican stand-off and my take is that is held, for now, by anger and excitement to see what happens when the shorts have to cover. When the shorts start buying and driving the price up we will see how many are able to hold (and up to what point). This is quite fascinating to me, game theory would predict this shouldn't have happened with so many different players with conflicting interests.
- bargl 6y agoI'm linking a comment to someone who kind of addresses this. I've also linked the interview below. It's an interview of the WeBull CEO and why they had issues. It's pretty clear that this is a process issue, not necessarily a RobinHood is evil issue. Long story short, the clearing house (similar to when you buy a house) assesses risk and assigns terms based on that. The risk got so high that RobinHood couldn't cover it or their clearing house couldn't cover it anymore. Whether or not the clearing houses are in bed with these brokerages remains to be seen. I was also pitchforks out earlier today, and willing to move to webull all my stocks, but then I did more digging and this seems more reasonable. RobinHoods press release was garbage tho. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25950191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25950191 Link to the video from the OP. https://finance.yahoo.com/video/heres-why-robinhood-restrict https://finance.yahoo.com/video/heres-why-robinhood-restrict...
- finikytou 6y agoim moving to JPMorgan after today events.
- Closi 6y agoAh yes they would never mislead investors to their own benefit and manipulate the market for profit something something subprime crisis.
- adventured 6y agoThat's most likely the joke. Of all the choices they pick JPM, which is notoriously corrupt to the bone.
- fireeyed 6y agoGoodluck with DOJ and SEC investigating and bringing charges against RobbingHood and Citadel. I am not holding my breath.
- hinkley 6y agoIn retrospect this seems quite obvious. This Citadel-Melvin-RH triangle looks super sketchy. The sort of thing that might show up in anti-corruption training at a company that does government or especially defense contracting. In fact if I still worked at a particular employer, this would have been the breakroom and lunch topic for today.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- buttholesurfer 6y agoFunny how everyone has no problem with blocking users and stopping ideas from spreading until it impacts them. When facebook, twitter, youtube and reddit block the things we don't like, we cheer... but when they do it to things we like, there's outrage. Almost like censorship in any form is bad. I know they are two different problems, but its awfully funny to see the crowd yelling "just make your own platform" (in regards to censorship) get outraged at this.
- traeregan 6y agoDoge cryptocurrency can also be added to the list of Robinhood's halted buys for today.
- gadders 6y agoProject Veritas is on the case: Robinhood whistleblowers can hit us up at veritastips@protonmail.com or on Signal 914-653-3110
- Animats 6y agoFully paid purchases, or just options?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sebmellen 6y agoJustin Kan (Twitch founder) is calling for Ken Griffin and Robinhood's co-founders to jailed. > Just got a tip that Citadel reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop trading $GME. > If this is true, Ken Griffin and the Robinhood founders should be in jail. > This is class warfare. See https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354856228661334017 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354856228661334017.
- pulse7 6y agoThis article has a good summary of what exactly happened: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/redditors-took-hedge-funds-over-gamestop-amc-theatres-stock-won-ncna1255919 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/redditors-took-hedge-f...
- zby 6y agoEighteen years ago flashmobs were disrupting some retail stores - but I knew they have a potential for more. Now we see flashmobs in the US Senate and then disrupting capital markets. It is funny - but also ... disruptive. Actually politics has been a part of entertainment for some time already - but I don't like it like that and I am afraid capital markets will also be worse.
- wonderwonder 6y agoIf Robin Hood was allowing people to sell but not to buy, and most other Citadel involved brokerages were doing the same, who was able to purchase the massive volume of shares being sold? If it turns out that it was only allowing large hedge funds with massive short exposure then it means that they were artificially reducing price to bail them out and the very real expense of the retail investors that were suddenly and inexplicably bag holders on a stock that could not be longed. If this is true, then this is a Bernie Madoff level crime and I hope that those responsible get similar sentences. Tens / Hundreds of thousands of retail investors were involved in the WSB long, all of these people potentially suffered damages, some of them significant. Its fine to say only invest what you can lose but in your risk analysis I am sure that the market maker intentionally committing fraud to force you to dump your shares probably did not factor in.
- warkdarrior 6y ago> If Robin Hood was allowing people to sell but not to buy, and most other Citadel involved brokerages were doing the same, who was able to purchase the massive volume of shares being sold? I think you answered yourself, but you may want to consider that RH is not the only trading platform out there.
- andi999 6y agoDoes anybody know: who is getting rich on this? What I mean, the short seller have to pay up a lot of money because of the squeeze, so who gets this money. Of course the entities who lend the stocks to them. Who is it specifically Goldman? (the guys from reddit just 'create' the squeeze, they are not getting a big chunk from the cake).
- ineedasername 6y agoThis significantly constrains demand while at the same time it pressures people to put their supply in the market (sell it off). So they're lowering demand and increasing supply, which is sure to drive the price down and make people lose money. Likely to the benefit of institutional investors-- the same ones that lost money on the squeeze-- to make money on shorts they places at the top. Doesn't smell right. It might even just (relatively innocently) be from soft pressure from the SEC to limit a perceived market manipulation, but it will still induce losses in positions that users might have sold at higher prices.
- IceHegel 6y agoRobinhood is being deceptive. They say this move is to protect their customers, in fact it's to protect themselves. As others have pointed out, Robinhood lends margin to some accounts and if those accounts cannot pay for losses purchased on margin, Robinhood is responsible. This is a real risk, and they should have made the margin requirement 100% for GME or cash only as other brokers did. They did not have to limit buys to de-risk their own portfolio.
- FabHK 6y agoCan someone clarify whether RH blocks margin purchases (in other words, just refuses to lend people money to purchase those stocks), or blocks outright cash purchases? The former would be entirely understandable and justifiable, the latter not so much.
- FabHK 6y agoLol, seems to be a general restriction on buying. Wow. https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-...
- jacobsenscott 6y agoThere are a handful on people on wsb manipulating a lot of people into buying worthless stock from each other, often on margin. It is such a classic con. I can't believe people are mad at RH for helping them not get conned.
- f430 6y agoSo the HF strategy is now to: 1. stop hemmorage 2. lose their edge in market (buying order flow from RH) 3. go to court & hopefully settle for less than their AUM. All in all, this seems like a desperate move. Every securities lawyer is celebrating right now because they have a home run case. Either way, Citadel is screwed but the HF managers probably decided its better to call it a day at -30% than over -100%.
- mudlus 6y agoBuy Bitcoin
- throwaway5752 6y agohttps://seekingalpha.com/news/3655841-why-brokers-shut-down-reddit-wsb-stock-trading-in-gamestop-amc-others https://seekingalpha.com/news/3655841-why-brokers-shut-down-... is likely an honest explanation and isn't nefarious. The system may have issues, but Robinhood just wants to stay in business.
- lend000 6y agoTruly a terrible idea on Robinhood's part, but most of the high-profile outrage seems to come from people who typically are in favor of protecting people from themselves. Seems a bit hypocritical to support investor accreditation and then lambast this move.
- mysterypie 6y agoFor anyone like me who needs an ELI5, the best comment I found that explains what this story is all about is this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25949669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25949669 Hacker News needs a way to mark the best comments when there are 1600 comments to read. Years ago, HN used to publicly show karma score of every comment. They eliminated that (and probably for good reasons), but it was useful to find the best comments. Some other way to find the most incisive comments woud be great.
- maerF0x0 6y agoCould GME issue more stock as the shorts start to get squeezed? Could be a good opportunity for GME to build a war chest for their digital conversion....
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoOf course a company that steals from the poor to give to the rich would be named Robinhood We totally live in a simulation
- niyikiza 6y ago"You can buy candies". We don't have candies. How's that a problem? Obviously it's a logistics problem. It seems like the anger being driven to the wrong people.