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It was blocked in Robinhood's UI, but on the back end the hedge funds could trade at will. And the hedge funds had to buy a lot of stock to cover their shorts,

It was blocked in Robinhood's UI, but on the back end the hedge funds could trade at will. And the hedge funds had to buy a lot of stock to cover their shorts, so it was handy to get the retail buyers out of the way.

amluto 6y ago
I would be rather surprised if there are serious hedge funds that buy stock using Robinhood’s backend.
- DennisP 6y ago
  It's not really Robinhood's backend, they outsource their order execution to Citadel.
- Macha 6y ago
  No, but the retail buyers getting in their way were
victorbojica 6y ago
How do you know this ?
- DennisP 6y ago
  I read a bunch of articles today and yesterday. Robinhood outsources their order execution to Citadel, which handles more than just Robinhood trades. Or actually, "outsources" is a misnomer because Citadel pays them for the orders, so they can make money front-running them. That's why Robinhood trades are "free" for their retail users. You don't pay a fee but you get a slightly worse price. Citadel also, fwiw, just loaned $2.5B to a fund with a lot of short exposure to GME.