> isn’t there precedent to halt trading when markets get too volatile? There are mechanisms in place that do this automatically. It's done at the exchange leve

> isn’t there precedent to halt trading when markets get too volatile? There are mechanisms in place that do this automatically. It's done at the exchange level and includes ALL trades (buy and sell) on a particularly volatile stock. This is functioning normally. GME has been halted many times over the past few days. But what OP is describing is not that. This is retail brokerages, where normal people buy and sell, disabling the "buy" on certain stocks and only allowing "sell". Without the ability to buy, the stock price can only go one way; Down.