4 ms·

This 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

This 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 ago
What, 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 ago
  In 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 ago
what 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 ago
  Opportunity 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

carstenhag 6y ago

What, 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 ago
In 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 ago

what 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 ago
Opportunity 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