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So, why can't a single investor with a network of bots create enough artificial volatility to kill whatever brokerage they like (presumably through proxy buyers

• Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  They could. But that's market manipulation, and maybe wash trading. Then you have to consider how they're getting these accounts which need credit histories and social security numbers.
  • derefr 6y ago
    > Then you have to consider how they're getting these accounts which need credit histories and social security numbers. Presuming an investment advisor pitching themselves as providing some kind of standalone, non-brokerage-affiliated "AI Investment-bot-as-a-Service" platform, the "bots" could be being operated in the name of their clients, acting upon said clients' brokerage accounts, with full explicit consent. (Like how Mint operated in its clients' names upon their online banking accounts, with full explicit consent.) Ironically, I believe Robin Hood themselves offered a similar "AI Investment-bot-as-a-Service" system; though theirs was a much more mundane design, legally, in that it operated upon the clients' accounts within the Robin Hood brokerage, rather than upon the clients' accounts in external brokerages.
• thesteamboat 6y ago
  Presumably a single person or small group attempting such would be engaged in market manipulation as traditionally understood, and the SEC would try to charge them. (But I am neither a lawyer nor a financial expert, so the above is just uninformed speculation.)