There's a little more depth to this. It's not just an influx of users or the margin they provide to fund accounts before user money arrives to RH's bank account

There's a little more depth to this. It's not just an influx of users or the margin they provide to fund accounts before user money arrives to RH's bank account. Clearing houses, and clearing houses' clearing houses' have raised capital requirements for buying gme from 1%-2% to 100%. This has to be the brokers' capital. User capital doesn't count, so it doesn't matter that a user has fully paid for the share. This is unintuitive, but CEOs of several brokerages have confirmed. That may let RH off the hook (even they they could have borrowed easily, to cover fully paid, unleveraged purchases), but it does push the "conspiracy" question downstream. Why did clearing houses make this call? After all, it's not RH's that's liable to be unable to pay. They've already paid. At this point, there are enough credible reports confirming that clearing houses have been shutting down, or trying to, memestock buys at client brokerages. They probably do have market integrity reasons for doing so, but the specific mechanics are unclear. Also regardless, this is a decision that changes the game/rules, affecting winners, losers, outcomes. Who was the power to make these calls. I guess it isn't a regulator. Meanwhile, RH and other brokerages are responsible for whatever misunderstanding and conspiracies happened. "Because the stock is volatile and we're protecting our customers from volatility" is a naked lie. Start with a lie, and people will assume the worst. FWIW, I think it's telling that the CEO of Robin Hood was willing to imply liquidity issues to avoid talking about market makers or clearing houses. I don't know what it tells, but I guess we'll find out in the coming weeks. One thing that always comes out of these scandals is some insight into the wall street "infrastructure."