It&#x27;s the same with Trading212 in the UK

Why are you so quick to assume that people don’t know what they are doing?Is it so hard to believe that at this point buying GME is more about activism than making profit?“When you ain&#x27;t got nothing, you got nothing to lose”

It’s pretty hypocritical for a casino to say that you are welcome to keep playing our table games and lose your money to us slowly but you aren’t allowed to sit down at that table full of poker sharks because we are worried you’ll lose your shirt.

I ended up buying a couple stocks late in the game, fully expecting to lose the money. First, it&#x27;s not my retirement or long-term cash, more of a hobby. And that hobby quickly turned into sending a message after watching those rich SOBs literally cry about being hurt by the free market, and then try and end&#x2F;manipulate it to their advantage.

how about for paying gold customers who specifically want to engage int PM&#x2F;AH trading?  i know robinhood isn&#x27;t a pro level platform but come on, this feels exactly like blatant manipulation.

When Melvin Capital sold a metric ton of naked shorts on GameStop, no one was there to tell them it wouldn&#x27;t end up well. It was certainly a risk, but not really a bad one going on fundamentals. They just failed to predict the mob mentality of retail investors.Of course, those retail investors who got in on Thursday, Friday, or Monday; that seemed like a bad purchase. So bad that Melvin double-downed on their naked short position. There&#x27;s no way the stock could go up. The fundamentals aren&#x27;t there. But it did. A lot. And those retail investors made a ton of money.So, we&#x27;re at today, where you&#x27;re saying that it would be a bad time to invest because it won&#x27;t end well. You, and to some degree Robinhood, are making a prediction on the stock market. You may be right; you may be wrong; but you&#x27;re definitely not certainly right or certainly wrong. You&#x27;re making the same mistake anyone who tries to pick stocks does; you&#x27;re just doing it in reverse.

I&#x27;m not sure an app that allows you to put your entire account balance into options trades is engaging in good-faith paternalism by preventing people from buying a particular stock.

It&#x27;s absolutely paternalism, IMO. I&#x27;m less sure whether I think it&#x27;s a good thing or not (because I think people buying new positions in GME at this point are unlikely to end up happy about that in mid-Feb.)I&#x27;m all for &quot;let &#x27;em play&quot; in general but this is not going to end well for a lot of folks...

But there are tons of overpriced stocks out there. Where do you draw the line? TSLA? AAPL? S&amp;P 500?

Informing your customers is one thing. Blocking them in &quot;their&quot; own interest is a ridiculous overstep. We make platforms and tools to empower users, not to force them down whatever path we deem best for them.

really? really?this is stock investing 101. don’t invest what you cannot afford to lose. i find it condescending and insulting that they are claiming to protect the users.

Dude it&#x27;s my fuckin&#x27; money. I don&#x27;t need or want protection. Maybe I want to buy a couple hundred dollars of meme stonks solely because it&#x27;s funny. Is that not allowed?

It&#x27;s not about making money, it&#x27;s about sending a message, and we can send a message with our money. Not their business how we burn it.

It isn&#x27;t. People buy it to laugh, not to make money.

I&#x27;m pretty happy they are doing it. This is really in the best interest of the average Robinhood user trying to buy GME right now. Maybe they shouldn&#x27;t completely ban it, but there should be at least very extreme warnings about why its a terrible idea to buy.

Lost this customer! They canceled my literal 4$ but in gme, which was more of a statement than an investment on my part.

They have blocked 7&#x2F;10 most mentioned stocks in r&#x2F;wallstreetbets from being purchased. It isn&#x27;t just Robinhood, also Revolut and others. Then they launched a short attack, with nobody willing to buy besides themselves, they tanked the stock.It doesn&#x27;t get more obvious than this.

Maybe someone higher up could be losing lots, much more than what Robinhood could be valued during the IPO but that would be USD 12 bi...

It&#x27;s absolutely market manipulation. RH gets sells order flow to Citadel, who bailed out Melvin Capital.Someone high up at RH got their arm twisted to help their buddies close their shorts.

If they were just blocking margin trading or trades with unlimited risk that would be one thing. But this smacks of either paternalism or trying to manipulate the market. I hope they lose a lot of customers (or product depending on your POV).

I agree. This seems like illegal market manipulation on the part of Robinhood.

Almost certainly. Don&#x27;t expect the SEC to step in here, either.

Is having a clause like that in your ToS legal?

Just because something&#x27;s in a TOS doesn&#x27;t make it legally enforceable, especially if you&#x27;ve got enough money collectively for expensive lawyers.

Don&#x27;t the ToS include a waiver of taking any legal action against RH, class action suits in particular, and a binding arbitration clause in case you really want to make some noise?

Yep, as of last night RH had also delisted 1&#x2F;29 options for GME. 2&#x2F;6 options are still available, which maybe points to RH hoping&#x2F;thinking this all unwinds in the next few days.Sign me up for the class action...

We&#x27;re close to reaching a &quot;let them have cake&quot; point of elite arrogance.

A long halt would be bad for shorts, since they would be stuck paying the 125% annualized borrow for the duration of the halt.And practically a halt doesn&#x27;t _really_ affect the prices.

The head of NASDAQ even suggested a Tradimg Halt so institutions can adjust to combat retail investors better!

Now people are moving away from Robinhood is it only a matter of time before the other platforms do the same?

Luckily, I used my Vanguard account instead of making a Robinhood.

Citadel is one of the &quot;cheater&quot; funds along with Melvin, Point72 (previously SAC Capital Advisers) and Maplelane (ex-Galleon Group). They all have connections to insider trading of some sort since it was legal to know stuff like earnings beforehand, etc. before reg FD in 2001, and the seeds from that age are still there in these funds. They certainly aren&#x27;t the type to be below doing something like this.Citadel could also be absolutely fucking themselves if they end up in discovery over this. It could mean the end of this era of funds. Many would be glad to see them go.

Wow. First the Discord ban and then this - clearly the billionaire hedge fund managers have been busy pulling strings overnight.Limiting it so you can&#x27;t buy, you can only sell... Very clearly helping the hedge funds here.

I have a message: &quot;Transactions in this instrument are limited to closing-only trades&quot; @ Jan29&#x27;21 300 CALL GME.

I don&#x27;t know IBKR&#x27;s system, but most OMSs will accept an order unless it&#x27;s blatantly wrong such as invalid stock. It&#x27;s the execution engine that really enforce the rules.

Tested IBKR today - I was able to place a simple Limit order for GME stock which was good till close but when I refreshed to view my list of orders it shows as Cancelled.Tried it twice, did the same thing each time.

I just tested it with IBKR and was able to create a call buy order (exp 1&#x2F;29, $500 strike) for a single contract.Info: Market was closed so the order wasn’t executed but it was accepted by the order system before i cancelled it.

This is much more signifiant than Robinhood because IBKR is one of the most professional trading platforms available for retail investors.Some more info:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;IBKR&#x2F;status&#x2F;1354792600004386818" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;IBKR&#x2F;status&#x2F;1354792600004386818</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;wallstreetbets&#x2F;comments&#x2F;l6plv0&#x2F;robinhood_announces_you_can_no_longer_open_gmeamc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;wallstreetbets&#x2F;comments&#x2F;l6plv0&#x2F;robi...</a> (unless I misunderstood something)

That last sentence is extremely scary. Do you have a source?

If it&#x27;s just risk management, why IB doesn&#x27;t allow to buy 1 GME stock on non margin account?

this is a risk management move for RH, nothing else

It&#x27;s not only about options. You can&#x27;t buy even 1 stock of GME on non margin account. I don&#x27;t understand how it has anything to do with IB risk management.

Interactive Brokers now blocking purchase call and put options (even to institutional investors!) on $GME, you can only close a position.On the other side, Robinhood is asking for account to be funded with cash to execute the calls at expiration, or else they will liquidate your position :|

Not just a rules change, I’m pretty sure an illegal rules change. Volume manipulation is stock manipulation according to the SEC.

This move by RH is changing the rules of the game

Not a fan of the Reddit wsb movement but not sure this is a justified move by Robinhood.  You gotta let things play out by the rules of the game

How does allowing trades tank their business? That is their business.

I always thought the app was good - but my view of the role of the broker is to place my trades. If the SEC wants to shut down trading of a security they should do so.This will be very disruptive to Robinhood. I think today they made a poor business decision that will affect their valuation and potentially the company itself.I don&#x27;t do much trading on Robinhood, mostly for learning or experimenting with small amounts of money but this move has left a sour taste. I&#x27;ll be closing my account, while recognizing that other brokerages are doing the same (though not all).editRetail investors are locked out, $GME is still going up. What&#x27;s the fucking excuse now?

&gt; Oh please. Robinhood&#x27;s business model is not designed for this kind of thing. They are not required to tank their own business to allow malcontents to feel better about themselves.Well, they&#x27;re gonna lose millions of customers over this I predict. How is that not killing their business?

Oh please.  Robinhood&#x27;s business model is not designed for this kind of thing.  They are not required to tank their own business to allow malcontents to feel better about themselves.

That tactic worked out well during the French Revolution...

It seems preprogrammed in the brain. I can witness that in people that will gradually boil you until you snap and then benefit from the chaos as revenge almost sub-conscientiously

It&#x27;s a police tactic called Kettling <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kettling" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kettling</a>

&gt; It’s a pretty classic tactic in the history of conflictYes when executed by a single coherent entity.This is not it, unless you believe there is a powerful cabal controlling twitter, facebook, robinhood, discord etc.They are all doing it independtly to limit the legal and&#x2F;or financial risks for themselves. Getting people to &quot;strike first&quot; is not the intent, saving $ is the intent here.

It’s a pretty classic tactic in the history of conflict. By pushing your opponent into a tight position, you force him to strike first, thus giving you complete justification in your disproportionate response.

Except it isn&#x27;t a pump and dump. It is a short squeeze. Hedge fund managers are betting more stocks than the company issued and people are taking advantage of that opportunity.The closest thing to criminal activity we see here is people betting more than a company&#x27;s stock. When hedge fund managers see this and buy all the stock to squeeze the shorters it&#x27;s normal. When it&#x27;s people like you and me they say it is illegal.

Squeezing a short is different then a pump and dump.

Not quite. Citadel is a very well known quant hedge fund. The main way Robinhood makes money (and can let people trade without commission) is by selling their customers order flow (legally) to Citadel. Citadel (legally) uses this customer information to, in the milliseconds before the customer, front-run the trade, buy the shares and sell them to the Robinhood users at a marginal profit.

citadel is their market maker but as far as I know is not owned or operated by them.

Is that the same Citadel who lent money to Melvin Capital? If so, that&#x27;s a huge red flag.

I&#x27;ve heard the talk that Robinhood website is an op by a financial fund called Citadel LLC. It may be considered market manipulation on their side well more solidly than some speculation on the internet, not to say a breach of brokerage contractual obligations.

The WSB sub is almost certainly going to get banned by Reddit.Given the track record Reddit has of keeling over to public pressure, there is no way they are going to stand up to the SEC.

There&#x27;s not any real reason to be concerned about this. Not yet, at least.Furthermore, this comment is offensive. Let&#x27;s please not pretend that Facebook and Twitter were &quot;looking for an excuse&quot; before deplatforming Trump. They were entirely justified and would have been justified in doing so many years before they eventually did so.Let&#x27;s also not put the word &quot;incite&quot; in dick quotes barely three weeks after an insurrection and attempted coup. There was actual incitement of violence in that case.

Along these lines, bad-faith actors can plan racist messages as a pretext for banning arbitrary communities

Private platforms, can&#x27;t do shit about them, yada yada yada.That&#x27;s bullshit.The principle, and thus the the right to free speech is the fundamental value of a free country. Hiding behind the &quot;they&#x27;re a private company, they can do what they want&quot; is nonsense when the vast majority of communication flows through them.I&#x27;m wondering though what happens if section 230 was modified to only allow for filtering and removal of spam (I&#x27;m expecting wiggle here in how it&#x27;s abused) and illegal content.

&gt; be painted as trying to &quot;incite&quot; violence,They&#x27;re using the &quot;terrorist&quot; word already in many cases.

&gt;&gt; only tool left to common people is violence?I am genuinely interested in the physicality of how that would play out. A mob with pitchforks makes a run at a Facebook HQ. Do they kidnap employees until they find one with the access to re-initialize the account? I guess they would have to keep the hostages forever, else the accounts be disabled again the next day. Do they setup a camp outside with the declared intent to launch an attack should certain accounts not get enough likes? How long could that last? 
 Or do they break into a datacenter and attempt to do it themselves? I&#x27;m reminded of that iMac scene in Zoolander.

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”― Warren Buffett

&gt; the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?What&#x27;s even more concerning to me is that, to platforms looking for an excuse, your comment could be painted as trying to &quot;incite&quot; violence, and used as a justification to ban you.

&quot;Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.&quot;

The ft dropped the “Alt-Right” bomb in an article and then they had to change it.

OP might have a few hangups: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;query=speeder%20gamergate&amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;qu...</a>

yes Financial Times! this is a real low for a journalist...

To be entirely fair to the FT, WSB did originally have some connection to 4chan&#x27;s &#x2F;biz&#x2F;.It doesn&#x27;t really anymore, but it&#x27;s an understandable mistake imo

&gt; some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right [...]What?

It&#x27;s not that those stocks hold specific value, it&#x27;s that the denial of trade demonstrates to people a lack of personal power and freedom with regards to their own finances and where they may be directed.it signifies a small loss of financial liberty and flexibility on behalf of the citizenry, which is enough to spark upset.meanwhile large groups are allowed to systematically abuse in-place systems in a semi-visible public fashion without backlash or repercussion from regulators in most cases, exacerbating the perceived difference between &#x27;Us and Them&#x27;, fueling outrage and divide even further.It&#x27;s easy to consider why this might upset people.

Messing with people&#x27;s finances is more anger inducing imo than banning people from an internet message board.

No one is going to become violent over not being able to buy GameStop or Nokia stock.

It&#x27;s true that today&#x27;s population is complacent.  Many should take another look at how flimsy the reasons were why Americans fought a war of independence.

I would guess most count oppression and exploitation cumulatively not by maximum event size.

The Federal Government does not have any restrictions on rainwater harvesting. Some states have minor regulations in terms of the amount of rainwater collecting and the means by which it is collected, but most states allow their citizens to collect rainwater while others even encourage it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;worldwaterreserve.com&#x2F;rainwater-harvesting&#x2F;is-it-illegal-to-collect-rainwater&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;worldwaterreserve.com&#x2F;rainwater-harvesting&#x2F;is-it-ill...</a>

I think it&#x27;s important to put this in the context of many other related issues&#x2F;pressures:* Increasing wealth inequality for several decades now* older generations holding onto more wealth and power in society than ever before - with a large share of their wealth in the stock market* Wall Street is seen as entirely unaccountable due to 2008 bailout* Pandemic this year has basically been a huge wealth transfer from normal people and small businesses towards large conglomerates and the wall street hedge funds who back them* Institutional trust is at historic lows, while online spaces become more and more regulated by those same institutionsSo maybe GME stock is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like all of this has to reach a boiling point eventually. I&#x27;m not sure what that will look like, but violence wouldn&#x27;t be surprising.

&gt; Banning collecting rain water on your own propertyWhat does that refer to?

I do agree with you when it comes to the surface level idea of buying a particular stock. However, the fight here isnt about that. This is a fight between the public mixed with low level capitalist (sub 8 digit yearly earnings) and the billionaire well... oligarchy of hedge funds. The hedge funds are putting pressure on gov and media to stop allowing the general public from doing something. This was originally a fight to screw over a hedge fund that was picking on Gamestop to bankrupt them through predatory short selling. Its blown up to now the hedge funds trying to manipulate public discourse, media discourse and the public&#x27;s ability to participate in the market. Originally, capitalism is about anyone has the ability to participate in business and the market equally, regardless of their family lineage or social class. Obviously reality is messier than theory, but you no longer need to have a royal family name to own land or start a business. Hedge funds, banks and others are trying to accomplish the same old, &quot;kiss my ring&quot;, just with slightly different tactics.It&#x27;s a fun show regardless.

&gt; This is small potatoes.Do you know how the Arab Spring started? A municipal official bullied a street vendor who was selling produce from a cart roadside.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arab_Spring#Events_leading_up_to_the_Arab_Spring" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Arab_Spring#Events_leading_up_...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mohamed_Bouazizi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mohamed_Bouazizi</a>

We live in interesting times. This is surreal coming from Ray Dalio&quot;I believe we are on the brink of a terrible civil war (as I described in The Changing World Order series), where we are at an inflection point between entering a type of hell of fighting or pulling back to work together for peace and prosperity...&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RayDalio&#x2F;status&#x2F;1353408208082112512" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RayDalio&#x2F;status&#x2F;1353408208082112512</a>

What nightmare of a HOA do you have that bans rain barrels?

Didn’t it already happen in the capitol insurrection? Will it happen again with some other collection of people? Historically high inequality societies see high instability and even revolution.

&gt; Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we&#x27;ll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence?It isn&#x27;t simply that people can&#x27;t buy certain stocks. Its an accumulation of events that increasingly lead people to believe that the system is rigged against them. This extends back decades. You have to have been living under a rock to have missed the rising tide of populist sentiment over the last decade, as seen in the pro-Trump anti-establishment contingent on the right, and the explosion of pro-socialist sentiment on the far left.This Gamestop business probably amounts to a large bucketful of water, but at a certain point, a single drop causes the dam to burst. Kicking the can down the road by saying &quot;surely people won&#x27;t resort to violence over this&quot; all but ensures that eventually, people will.

&gt; Somehow we&#x27;ll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence?Please read this whole thread (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;wallstreetbets&#x2F;comments&#x2F;l6omry&#x2F;an_open_letter_to_melvin_capital_cnbc_boomers_and&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;wallstreetbets&#x2F;comments&#x2F;l6omry&#x2F;an_o...</a>)This isn&#x27;t about buying stock any more. This has become a battleground. The people in this thread are normal people fighting back for the first time in their lives.

Yes.We are near levels of inequality that caused the French Revolution to go violent.

I mean it could be not &quot;it&quot; but the &quot;it&quot; that triggers this build-up of tension. People are fed up (and rightly so) of the elite gaming the system.KYC is fine if you are a multi-millionaire. You just delegate your lawyers and army of accountants to do it. But if you are a small man&#x2F;company, it&#x27;s a headache that can drive you out of business.This financial restrictions has to be stopped. Financial freedom is more important than Freedom of expression.

I think the point is the general cut on freedoms more than any of the individual steps. For some people the increasing power given to corporations and governments to cut people freedom and putting their rights in front of individual rights (the pilar of all mordern western democracies).The fenomenon is global by the way, but it still has been dominated by classic political tags on the media, like alt-right vs commie etc. A very few polititians broke that pattern the last 5 years or so, won&#x27;tt give any names, because all that labels I mentioned,

&gt;&gt; Let&#x27;s be real. This is small potatoes.Agree. It is not like there aren&#x27;t half a dozen apps that let you trade stocks commission free on your phone. Some may require you to have $500-$1k to invest, but seriously if you don&#x27;t have that you should invest in a different way then treading individual stocks.That said, I have no idea why Robin Hood should ban the trading of GME and I wish they wouldn&#x27;t.

And lets be honest, the overlap between retail investors trying to buy meme stocks and people who regarded Parler as their true voice isn&#x27;t going to be that huge (and the relationship between AWS and Robinhood&#x27;s compliance teams negligible). Anyone sufficiently motivated to see strong connections between the actions of AWS booting Parler and Robinhood restricting trades is going to be so accustomed to seeing everything through a fact-lite &#x27;us vs the man&#x27; lens that it barely matters what corporations actually do. And those tempted by actual violence have had other causes to attach themselves to over the last 12 months anyway.Also this isn&#x27;t people &#x27;asserting themselves financially&#x27;, this is people mug punting on a stock that wealthier and more financially savvy people who got in early are happy to unload their stock to. There will end up being people quite relieved they didn&#x27;t get to execute their plan to put their life savings into peak-price Gamestop.

It is no exaggeration to say wars have been fought for worse reasons than this.

&gt; the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we&#x27;ll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence?Banning collecting rain water on your own property didn&#x27;t do it. Abject failure of politicians keeping drinking water clean didn&#x27;t do it? Not being able to buy cheese from unpasteurized milk didn&#x27;t do it. Can&#x27;t grow a plant in your own backyard for personal consumption. But this is it, this is the impetuous. Not being able to buy GME stock.Let&#x27;s be real. This is small potatoes.

&gt; ...the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?I wonder how big the intersection is between people saying this now and people who said that the Black Lives Matter protests were violent (when they largely weren&#x27;t).&gt; there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed tooIt&#x27;s not the same people. I keep seeing efforts to compare the deplatforming of violent and radical white supremacists that were using platforms to coordinate a coup to whatever other unpopular thing is happening today. I suspect that&#x27;s an attempt to cultivate a little sympathy for people who have none for others.Yes, large investment firms appear to be circling their wagons now and making moves through media partners and others to try to stop the bleeding. That&#x27;s an entertaining enough event all on its own, it doesn&#x27;t need specious comparisons to other recent events.

HN admins will ban this thread in 3...2...

Am I the only one who see&#x27;s parallels between the above paranoia and &quot;the election was stolen and they&#x27;re not even hiding it?&quot;

Yes. You can now see the true extent of their tricks and possible ways of shaking the WSB traders. Obviously these large guys are using their influence and connections to drive FUD, lies and fake news to frame their enemy &#x2F; target (&#x2F;r&#x2F;WSB) to give in and sell. Even the stock brokers are in on it. All of this to protect the losses of the irresponsible and the greediest of hedge-funds and short-sellers.Best part? They are not even hiding it. Everyone can see the message.

&gt; the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?A clever way to create a situation to pass mass gun control and limit those pesky civil liberties, no?

It&#x27;s not only that - the current price of AMC, GME, etc... are being manipulated artificially.This is text-book illegal activity.There is no logical derivation of GameStop&#x27;s financial books that would warrant the kind of stock price it has.It is very very clearly market manipulation, and these exact sorts of manipulations are commonly prosecuted.

I&#x27;m still shit at these things, but so far, I seriously cannot understand how hedge funds get away with &quot;shorting&quot;, but people doing the same thing in reverse is market manipulation. From this (admittedly naive) POV, this sounds like double standards.

&gt; Does it feel good to get one up on a hedge fund idiot that was trying to manipulate GameStop the other way? Yes - but this is, at best, financial vigilantism.Hedge funds do this to each other every day. Why is it suddenly wrong when it’s retail investors on the other side of the trade?I truly do not understand the naïveté of arguments like these. Only the wealthy should be allowed to game the price of assets and rip each other off?

If I were running a financial brokerage I&#x27;d totally do this, too. It&#x27;s not a matter of &quot;helping my hedge fund broker friends&quot;, it&#x27;s a matter of &quot;how do we keep the SEC off our backs&quot;. Remember: Robinhood is already being charged with securities law violation for giving their customers a raw deal on order execution.We usually don&#x27;t see distributed market manipulation like this, but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if a shitton of people buying GameStop to squeeze a short-seller breaks securities law. Does it feel good to get one up on a hedge fund idiot that was trying to manipulate GameStop the other way? Yes - but this is, at best, financial vigilantism.

When that happens it&#x27;s usually at the same time as a huge influx of new users and&#x2F;or user activity.I agree it&#x27;s somewhat suspicious if it happens all the time, like this has happened enough times why haven&#x27;t you designed your infrastructure to handle surges more gracefully, but for the most part I think it&#x27;s legit.If we assume intentional malice every time a website goes down, that&#x27;s a dangerous precedent for the tech industry.The corporations I&#x27;ve worked for had nothing to do with finances but managed to have several major outages I&#x27;ve sat in on that have lasted as little as 2 hours and as much as 48 hours. They were pretty much always network or server related, sometimes unrelated to the business entirely (a T1 line got cut accidentally by the city in one case).Those corporations didn&#x27;t want to go down, and often lost some serious money as a result. I imagine Coinbase loses out on a good amount of money every time they go down as well.I also expect it&#x27;s at least somewhat overreported or only a partial outage as well. One person has an issue and announces it and everyone just repeats it without checking themselves. There was at least two instances when I saw people say Coinbase was down and I tried logging in myself and had no issues.

By crashing, or giving the appearance of crashing, Coinbase, Kraken etc maintain plausible deniability. RH is going whole hog &quot;look at us, we are denying you the ability to buy this security so that hedge funds can drive the price down, and all you can do is sell your existing position - can&#x27;t even short it if you like&quot;

Bitcoin is a monetary escape valve from the current financial system according to Janet Yellen. It’s a 20 year long trend that can work peer to peer even without any exchange. Of course Coinbase makes things simpler, but it’s not needed.

It&#x27;s also ironic that one of the supposed ethos of Bitcoin is to circumvent these powers that be - meanwhile every time there&#x27;s an upward surge in pricing Coinbase conveniently isn&#x27;t accessible which temporarily blocks impulse sellers and stops a rush of the &quot;army of HODLers&quot; from selling. If this behaviour isn&#x27;t illegal it certainly should be, it&#x27;s manipulation.

&gt; Deplatforming is&gt; throwing a customer out of the grocery store because you don&#x27;t agree with his choice of vegetables.There, fixed for you.

&gt; This sort of stuff will put people more and more on edge, there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed tooDon&#x27;t compare deplatforming and this.Deplatforming is akin to throwing a customer out of the grocery store for doing nazi salutes in the vegetable aisle.What Robinhood is doing is akin to throwing a customer out of the grocery store because you don&#x27;t agree with his choice of vegetables.

It’s happening. You can’t find GME on Robinhood unless it’s in one of your lists, and when you do it says “This stock is not supported in Robinhood”.There are millions of users of this app, and it’s easy enough to verify - why the skepticism?

This is a twitter post of a screenshot. There&#x27;s almost no substance here. We don&#x27;t know why or even if this happened. So the immediate leap to talk of violence as a reaction is incendiary.

You had me, up until &quot;legislature&quot;. Recent events seem to indicate the people know precisely where the legislature meets.

Violence against whom and how? Do the powers that rule the USA truly fear any commoners? I doubt it, the rich are ensconced in private jets, mansions, posh offices, and do not interact with commoners, nor are they easily targeted due to lack of proximity and knowledge. It&#x27;s not like the French Revolution, where the mobs knew precisely where the king, queen, and legislature were, and could assail them personally.

If you are coming with such a narrative it would behoove you to come with proof.

Serious question. Is the whole David vs Goliath narrative unfounded?Over the last 8-10 years online activism&#x2F;mobs have increasingly been co-opted by those in power as a means of astroturfing. I think it is totally fair to be skeptical and ask whether that is going on here.One thing is for sure. Even if this is organic, it won’t be next time. After seeing this why wouldn’t some hedge fund orchestrate something like this to manipulate the market?

It seems more like big fish stuck in a losing set of trades are pulling whatever strings they can to save themselves.

No, this is the market defending itself from unwanted shenanigans.Listed companies want nothing to do with this.Restaurants like customers, but imagine a stampede of 1000 people rushing through the doors, it&#x27;s not what they want.The populism here is getting ridiculous, I don&#x27;t think most people have any understanding of what&#x27;s going on.

You know, you could always just pay for your trades and get them executed as you wish. Or you use a service that is free, but please stop complaining.

Yeah, there isn&#x27;t necessarily a ton of overlap. I&#x27;m pretty liberal but I follow this stuff, not so much WSB (and no skin in the game for this GME craziness) but crypto, and put money I&#x27;m willing to lose into these things periodically. I&#x27;ve lost some money, sure, but I&#x27;m significantly up overall.

Honestly, I don&#x27;t see where the attempt to equate the WSB people out to make a quick buck by gambling and hope they win out over the hedge funds as being that connected to the deplatforming of right wing people - I&#x27;m sure given &quot;the right&quot; and &quot;wall street bets&quot; are large groups that there is some overlap, but in Europe I know plenty of people following along the stock market with no connection to current US issues.People have found an unpopular target (large funds, still a lot of dislike built up over the 2008 recession, current inflated housing markets in many cities) and there&#x27;s a swing in popular emotion and yes, public figures have egged it on at this stage, but it&#x27;s not really a protest against donald trump&#x27;s deplatforming or liberal elites that some people are trying to make it out to be.Plenty more people willing to take risks on that among the middle class when the stock market is the only way to even keep the value of their savings anyway. My savings account has an actual interest rate that was cut from 0.50% to 0.01% this year, whereas 2020 excluded, inflation has been around 1% in my country. Many of my friends in similar situations have gotten involved in stocks under a similar background and a not insignificant number of them are operating under logic like &quot;90% in long term stocks, 10% for whatever crazy long bets&quot; (like which airlines are going to come out of this, whatever stock reddit is pumping at the moment, bitcoin or companies like AMD a few months ago which they&#x27;re like &quot;I use this stuff and so many insitutional investors are completely clueless on the market dynamics&quot;).So you get people with &quot;stupid bets&quot; funds, and an idea that gets momentum (The shorts cannot not buy, let&#x27;s outwait them), and this is the result.

&gt;This is why I put academic fields adjacent to &quot;identity politics&quot; in the same category as climate changeThis is why academic fields involved with &quot;identity politics&quot; are in the same class as &quot;scientists&quot; involved in climate change denial and questionable nutrition&#x2F;smoking studies. Once there were academics involved in &quot;critic theory&quot; which more or less used Marxist level of analysis. A thorn in the side of the establishment. A branch within this field took the language of Marxism but replaced capitalist&#x2F;working class with identities(e.g white men&#x2F;minority women). Ofcourse those in power have supported this branch of critic theory and have gotten to the point where they even use it as a wedge issue. At this point this is the orthodox branch of &quot;critic theory&quot; and it&#x27;s not because of intellectual merit.

Remember how quaint Occupy Wall St. seemed back in 2011? They were maligned as a bunch of privileged wannabe hippie kids. The economy was &quot;hopelessly complex&quot; and &quot;how were we to know&quot; etc. Seems we&#x27;re way past that, to blatant protection of the wealthy over a fluctuation in .025% of the stock market.

Perhaps but Americans won&#x27;t result to violence en mass. Despite what you may have seen, Americans are rather docile. A small minority of folks who just so happened to be of military age during the country&#x27;s longest war but never signed up to fight are the same people who buy the most guns and saber rattle about civil war, etc...

I worked in proprietary trading for about half a decade.I think the biggest thing that the lay-person doesn&#x27;t understand is that thinking of hedge funds (and other proprietary firms), banks, exchanges and ATS&#x27;s, retail brokerages, the SEC, and lawmakers as all being either one entity or all being on the same side is just absolutely incorrect. They all need each other, but by and large they are not friends.Some claims I&#x27;ve seen that are just comical to me:&quot;The SEC is going to step in to save hedge funds&quot;The relationship between regulators and proprietary firms is particularly cagey. The SEC constantly audits them and asks, in my ex-professional opinions, extremely annoying questions about even the most innocuous trading activity. (Annoying because they take so much time because frequently, not knowing what the firm is doing, they ask questions that internal tooling is just not prepared to answer, thus requiring custom development; and annoying because some of them feel like they&#x27;re just the SEC trying to use their authority to conduct audits to learn more about the industry). But I digress. The SEC is absolutely not going to step in and do a prop shop a favor. Their concern is with the efficient and accurate functioning of the equities market. The fact the GME, a company with no news releases and no change in their (honestly dismal) fundamentals, has experienced such absolutely insane volatility (there are large numbers of options contracts with less volatility, for crying out loud!) is absolutely a concern for them. The fact that &quot;what is the price of GME right now&quot;, asked to a person who looked at Apple Stocks app yesterday but not yet today, is &quot;somewhere between 10 dollars and 1000 dollars&quot;, is absolutely a major cause for concern to them. Equity markets exist to discover pricing and transfer risk. It&#x27;s hard to transfer risk if you don&#x27;t have any idea of the pricing!&quot;retail brokerages are cancel culturing the GME rocketship!&quot; and similar rhetoric, especially with aphorisms suggesting that the SEC or shadowy &quot;the rich and powerful&quot; are pressing them to do so.I really, really doubt it. Retail brokerages toe a very fine line, because on one hand they obviously really want people to store their money with them (e.g. Schwab makes like 80% of its operating revenue from interest on uninvested cash balances) and also to use their trading services. But at the same time, they are taking as clients some of the most dangerous creatures known to man: retail investors. They&#x27;re dangerous because they have so little clue what they&#x27;re doing (which is like, fine, you know? this is no judgement on them) that there is a very real responsibility places on the retail brokerage to protect them from themselves. There&#x27;s a reason you have to apply and be approved to trade options, and there&#x27;s various levels of approval for various risk categories too. You need at least 25k in balances to be a pattern day trader. There&#x27;s precedent for brokerages limiting access to some ETFs that expose equities investors to the kinds of leveraged risk that is more typical of options. Brokerages have been sued - successfully - for not doing their fiduciary duty to educate investors about risk.I am absolutely unsurprised that retail brokerages are limiting trading of GME, AMC, etc. I can already see the lawsuits coming when this thing folds - &quot;Why did you let me trade GME given the volatility, especially after the SEC even made a statement about it? I am a retail investor and your client, and cannot be expected to know better, and you failed in your fiduciary duty to me.&quot; This is absolutely something a retail brokerage would do to protect themselves from regulatory scrutiny.(I had more to vent, but this post is already huge so I&#x27;ll stop here. You get my gist, though.)

&gt; Even more with some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right, effectively pushing away people that previously could be on their side.I didn&#x27;t read any such claim in my German and Scandinavian news diet, is this a US-only thing? Here, the consensus seems to be that what happens is a somewhat well-deserved embarrassment.

&gt; the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?I think creating and using decentralized alternatives beyond the control of the state and affiliated corporations is a much better tool for creating lasting change. Violent revolutions tend to just replace (or restyle) the ruling class without significant changes to their behavior.

&gt; the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?They do realize that and are confident that they will win. In the end it boils down to that.In here we have a case of the wrong people succeeding at a game that de jure is supposed to be open to everyone but de facto is only open to the right people.

&quot;They&#x27;re a private company! They can restrict their product for corrupt political and financial purposes and this is good... for... reasons... at least that&#x27;s what the tv&#x2F;social media told me.&quot;

Exactly my thoughts. It&#x27;s only a matter of time now. I&#x27;m most surprised it hasn&#x27;t started in earnest yet.

&gt; the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?This is a dangerous thing to say in 2021. Merely suggesting violence is an option or eventuality could be considered incitement and get you banned from every major internet platform.

People who engineered this fake outrage made a lot of money by buying early and selling early, everyone who believed this scam lost money.Let&#x27;s punish hedge funds - fake outrageStocks are climbing up - fear of missing outRestrictions on platforms to prevent people from falling into this scam - fake outrageScammers&#x27; freedom of speech is in danger - fake outrageLooks like we entered new era where fake outrage on social media (Reddit, HN and Twitter) can make scammers a lot of money.I am surprised that HN community is falling for this scam.

&gt; GamerGate 
Actually it seems related to me. Leveraged short-selling is a tactic of activist investors to take control of a company, and there was an article about what they wanted to do with it. No doubt the past actions of activist investors in the gaming industry was fuel for this fire. I’m not a gamer and I don’t know what is going on, but I think it has something to do with getting rid of the ownership model of games to make way for cloud gaming and advertising, served with a political agenda. GameStop made the ownership model work. Every major cloud service provider, social media company, and their investors all want it gone. Gamers know that ownership is the only way to keep politics out of gaming.

This reaction was predicted in this sibling comment: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25941883" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25941883</a>(dang: Thank you for all your moderation. This is a meta-comment, not a complaint.)

Some people are complaining to me that this comment is an implicit call to violence. It&#x27;s not so hard to see why they might be reading it that way.Please don&#x27;t post like that to HN. Instead, either post comments that are unambiguously within the site guidelines to begin with, or be careful to disambiguate your intent. Otherwise we end up in flamewar hell or something even worse than flamewar hell.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment&amp;query=disambiguate%20burden%20by:dang" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=false&amp;so...</a>

This sort of stuff will put people more and more on edge, there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed too, the powers that rule USA don&#x27;t realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?Even more with some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right, effectively pushing away people that previously could be on their side.

Some of them were sophisticated enough to see the short squeeze opportunity and realized it was possible to exploit it.  Melvin Capital kept pouring more good money after bad in a classic and literal sunk-cost fallacy.  This is all completely rational behavior by WSB investors, taking advantage of the short squeeze.
At a fundamental level GME just got a new activist investor&#x2F;board member with a history of revitalizing retail operations and turning them around.  This would be a rational reason to invest in GameStop at a basic level.
This is just the status quo realizing their position can be threatened and the easy money the wealthy have rolling in can be taken by average people acting in concert.

I&#x27;d argue Robinhood customers are not more clever, but they are more irrational&#x2F;motivated by non-market goals.Getting absolutely wrecked by irrational market behaviour is a rite of passage for small traders, and it&#x27;s only fair that some bigger hedge funds should learn that lesson too.

&quot;Free marketeers declare markets a little too free for their tastes&quot;
I&#x27;ve been really enjoying watching this whole thing pan out but you had to know that the &#x27;professional capitalists&#x27; who brought us the economic crisis in 2009 would close ranks and appeal to the SEC to save them from the vicious retail investors.  Robin Hood doesn&#x27;t want to be banished to the proverbial wastelands because their customers are more clever than some hedge fund operators.

Same with TD Ameritrade. Fidelity seems to still allow trading for now.I guess the simultaneous outage wasn’t coincidental. Fidelity did not suffer and outage. I could be wrong but Vanguard was fine tooEDITRobinhood&#x27;s customer(s) are hedge funds like Citadel. I believe it was Citadel who offered Melvin Capital a lifeline. I wonder what the rationale is for TD Ameritrade, and the others?

For real. This will cause deaths, you can be sure of that.

Now 309 USD, only 20 minutes, this comment didn&#x27;t age well.

In the night, GME went from 350 to 250 USD as well; this was when Discord had been banned and the Reddit suspended (both for moderation &#x2F; hate speech issue).The variations are extreme, in the morning it was hitting 500 USD in the morning, and now 400 USD.

I wonder if this is just for after hours trading. You would think the user could at least place an order for execution when the market opens.GME was up over $100 pre-market when I got up this morning, so someone somewhere is buying.

This is the perfect opportunity for another platform to step up and welcome traders. Robinhood will be on damage control.

Pretty staggering hubris from the company whose shoddy software used to offer &quot;infinite leverage&quot;[0] to make themselves the self-appointed guardians of responsible investing.Maybe one of these newly-minted millionaires can cash out and use their gains to sue.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2019-11-05&#x2F;robinhood-has-a-glitch-that-gives-traders-infinite-leverage" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2019-11-05&#x2F;robinhood...</a>

oh no, but what happened to the free market? this is censorship &#x2F;s

Robinhood is looking for a near term IPO. Who will take their stock public? Daddy told them to delist and they complied.

Very cool of robinhood to protect me by tanking my stock position simply because it’s as odds with their wallet. What a fucking sham of a company and if there isn’t some serious legal repercussions of it, then I don’t know what even would qualify as “market manipulation”.

Robinhood determined that you&#x27;re too poor to mess with the market. Sorry about that!This whole thing is such bullshit.

Tomorrow they are going to prevent you from selling stocks that are in the money.

Ah cool so does this mean that all the other stocks are safe and will only make me money?  Very cool of Robin Hood to protect me from ever being exposed to any risk like this.  It’s just really cool to know that they remove the ones that can lose me money.

I follow the bitcoin crowd a bit. Everyday they issue claims like &#x27;bitcoin was made to free us from wealthy people games&#x27; it felt echo chamber &#x2F; tinfoil at times. This isn&#x27;t hurting their theories.

I keep seeing this pop up everywhere; Citadel != Citadel Securities

One of Robinhood&#x27;s main business partner is Citadel (RH sells their order flow to Citadel). Citadel is also the firm that has bailed out Melvin Capital, one of the hedge funds that took a huge short position in GME.Probably just a coincidence.

What you are describing would be Discord engaging in (potentially illegal) market manipulation.

&gt; Looking at the financial backers of Discord, you can pretty quickly draw a link to the short sellers.Mind elaborating on this?

So FYI, the Reddit WSB &quot;shutdown&quot; was temporary and on purpose (by the mod admins) to clean up the page a bit. It was private for an hour or two and back up.Discord, not so. Looking at the financial backers of Discord, you can pretty quickly draw a link to the short sellers. Presumably some phone calls or dinners were had last night and strings were pulled to shut the discord down.

It’s not unbelievable, but it does sound like a breach of fiduciary duties to side with investors against your clients.Is what RH doing legal for a brokerage?

This is just a guess, but I imagine the hedge funds that own shares of these platforms are pulling some strings. That&#x27;s a bit conspiratorial, but is it really that unbelievable?

Yes. Hedge funds profit from every trade on RH.

Nah, it’s likely net interest that is the largest portion.

Which is not remotely illegal, and most brokers do the same thing, except they used to charge people to buy and sell as well but now just make money from order flow. In fact market makers have always been involved in stock sales to ensure a fluid market; none of this is new. What is new is that buying and selling stocks costs you nothing, so there is no barrier to anyone to put money in or take it out. While everyone thinks it&#x27;s a great thing, it&#x27;s no different that allowing free communication in exchange for your personal data (ie Facebook) instead of requiring you to pay to communicate via mail or phone or plan things in person. Free always has a cost; in this case free involve scads of money changing hands with the folks at the end holding the bag, and anyone can pump the market to ensure they make a profit, and someone else takes a loss.

As far as I understand it robinhood makes (most of their?) money from selling their order flow to hedge funds.

Robinhood makes most of its money by selling &quot;dumb money&quot; order flows to bigger Wall Street firms: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;08&#x2F;robinhood-makes-millions-selling-your-stock-trades-is-that-so-wrong&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;08&#x2F;robinhood-makes-millions-sell...</a>It seems plausible to me that some of Robinhood&#x27;s real paying customers have asked them to tame their unruly product.

It is likely that they have lend out the $GME shares to a hedge fund that went short, if this hedge fund goes bankrupt and the stock price continues to rise they will be in serious trouble.

Better to educate instead of ban then.  So long as people have the facts, let them make their own decisions.  At this point a number of people are probably just in on this because they love the idea of sticking it to a hedge fund or two.

Are buyers of these stocks really exposed to more downside risk than the buyers of the way OTM options they sell to retail investors freely?

The opposite is true:The idea behind these trades is that they will not in fact suffer any losses because they bought in after the naked shorts brought the stock down to a low valuation. If they keep the stock high enough, long enough, the naked shorts will have to buy back the stock at much higher prices than the price was when this short squeeze was started. That&#x27;s why short squeezes are a thing in the first place. This is no different than what Carl Icahn did to herbalife and Bill Ackman.When companies keep these people from implementing their strategy, they expose these individuals(their own customers) to potential huge losses.

Lots of people saying &quot;you can lose a ton of money&quot;If you buy 10 shares at $200, that&#x27;s $2k out of your bank acount, and it&#x27;s gone, just like if you bought a car.How do you lose more than that? I&#x27;m not talking about shorting and stuff, just buying shares, hoping it goes up, and selling it later.

Robinhood allows free trades.  With all the new customers loging in and just buying a few stocks, they have to acquire lots of new shares.  When this is all over, a lot of retail investors are going to be left holding the bag, and will likely not be continuing customers.

Could either be govt&#x2F;NASDAQ forced something or a major investor&#x2F;VC in Robinhood is putting the pressure because they have other investments or vested interests in the hedge funds getting hurt.

Section 230(c)(2) explicitly protects service providers who  remove content that they deem to be “otherwise objectionable.”

&gt; Why do Robinhood, Reddit, Discord, etc feel like they have to respond to this?Indeed. There&#x27;s a lot of talk about Section 230 lately, and how &quot;precious&quot; it is to freedom of speech. That law protects them from culpability against hosting legally-dubious things like this market move -- and any malfeasant commenting about it -- but none of the big platforms are acting like it exists. They&#x27;re just censoring anyway, because they are either embarrassed, or are getting their strings pulled. Either stand behind Section 230, or admit you&#x27;re just censoring things for duplicitous reasons of politics, money, or the rabble.

What? RH enforces the PDT rule, as does every other US broker. SEC is not looking the other way there at all.

How is this a classic pump and dump ?This is a short squeeze: the stock is shorted to the limit, and from the stock price, the shorters entered their positions &quot;uncovered&quot;, so their risk is extremely high, and their losses are potentially infinite.The WSB crowd and probably others noticed this, and bought the stock, knowing that it was going to become more valuable over time once the shorters had to close their positions.They were right, and the shorters are loosing so much money that they are willing to buy back the stock at astronomical prices to limit their losses, which drives the price up even more.The WSB crowd just need to hold until the stock is at the maximum price that the short sellers can pay, right before the short sellers default. That&#x27;s the actual value of the stock right now.If the stock climbs too much, and the short sellers default, the stock is worthless.TBH, this is the short sellers own fault. They made the assumption that the market was &quot;fair&quot;, and that they were going to buy back the shares for cheap when they needed them as a consequence.That assumption was wrong.

&gt; Robinhood only exists because the SEC has chosen to look the other way concerning the pattern day trading ruleThis is simply not true at all.I&#x27;ve had my trading on RH restricted specifically because of the PDT rule. As in, I was about to make a trade, and the site told me that the trade would cause a restriction because of pattern day trading.

Reddit and discord are afraid they&#x27;ll be implicated in what is a classic pump and dump. Robinhood only exists because the SEC has chosen to look the other way concerning the pattern day trading rule which clearly is in jeopardy if big money starts complaining.

&gt;Can someone help me understand Robinhood&#x27;s POV?This is a small part of the picture but RH lost a lot of money due to WSB advertising and exploiting the &#x27;infinite money glitch&#x27; so it likely didn&#x27;t take much convincing to act against WSB.Though ironically it took them months to close the glitch which was their fault and a day to stop the action on WSB&#x27;s picks.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;markets.businessinsider.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;stocks&#x2F;robinhood-fixes-infinite-leverage-free-money-glitch-suspends-related-traders-2019-11-1028670689" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;markets.businessinsider.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;stocks&#x2F;robinhood-fi...</a>

I think you&#x27;re entirely right, but Citadel is the customer Robinhood is protecting. The retail investors are the product.

In this case, the &quot;restrictions&quot; seem clearly aimed at retail investors, and intended to help those with short positions.

&gt; &quot;It is very clear to anyone looking at the numbers that the whole marketplace is being manipulated here&quot;I don&#x27;t get this.I didn&#x27;t know anything about short selling a few days ago and maybe now is a bad time to learn... but my understanding is that short selling is only legal because it disincentivizes bubbles caused by artificial overestimation of a company. Investors took it too far and short sold over 100% of the stocks in a company, ironically creating ideal conditions for a bubble. As soon as GameStop&#x27;s stock turned upward, the rampant short selling resulted in a demand for more than 100% the supply of GameStop&#x27;s stock, resulting in a meteoric rise in price.But how is this market manipulation? The rise in stock price has nothing to do with an artificial overestimation of GameStop&#x27;s value. It&#x27;s just fundamental supply and demand. If anything, the short sellers are the ones who manipulated the market when they started shorting over 100% of the stock supply.Like I said, I&#x27;m a complete noob when it comes to the stock market. Maybe I&#x27;m misunderstanding something?

&gt;&gt; helping mitigate risk for our clientsIt&#x27;s cute when they phrase it like that, though everyone understands that it should be &quot;chosen clients that make us most money&quot;

Apparently Citadel is in bed with Schwab&#x2F;Ameritrade, too, who also halted trading:&quot;The Verge meanwhile noted one hedge fund suffering amid the GameStop surge was Melvin Capital Management, which another hedge fund, Citadel, has since bailed out. Citadel&#x27;s founder is Ken Griffin, who also founded Citadel Securities, a big investor in Robinhood that also works with TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.&quot;I suspect they sell them the trading data just like Robinhood does, to help them front-running the retail traders.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theweek.com&#x2F;speedreads&#x2F;963627&#x2F;robinhood-halts-trading-gamestop-other-heavily-shorted-stocks-hedge-funds-suffer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theweek.com&#x2F;speedreads&#x2F;963627&#x2F;robinhood-halts-tradin...</a>

They can halt trading of the stock all they want. All exchanges do [0]But the crazy part is that they only halted one side of the trade... the buy orders. That is manipulation.Personally, this cost me £1k on Nokia. I went from +£700 to -£1000 over the course of about 30 mins, because the market was pulled from under me.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nyse.com&#x2F;trade-halt-current" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nyse.com&#x2F;trade-halt-current</a>

But trading Tesla is OK? Oh wait that&#x27;s a darling of WS, so it&#x27;s OK. &#x2F;s

From Schawb“It is not uncommon for us to place restrictions on some transactions in certain securities in the interest of helping mitigate risk for our clients,”from Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth“It is very clear to anyone looking at the numbers that the whole marketplace is being manipulated here,” he said.I imagine Robinhood&#x27;s thinking is similar

I would love to see a good argument there, because while that argument is easy to accept at face value, when I dig deeper at the concept of what market manipulation is, I fail to find behavior that the majority of WSB is engaging in that fits that criteria.Where are the fraudulent statements causing price pumps? None of the prominent due diligence the community has provided that started this run has been found to be untrue. Their thesis still stands: GME was undervalued and shorts were vulnerable to a squeeze.

I think it&#x27;s BS to stop people trading but...You can make a good argument that WSB are engaged in market manipulation. RobinHood don&#x27;t want to be the broker for that for a whole myriad of reasons.

It seems to me it&#x27;s because &quot;market makers&quot; are a thing. Market making activities create billions in profits. But we are seeing the flaw in the market making algorithms.Do we need market makers to let us always take a position in every single option when no real market for that option exists? I would argue no. It&#x27;s completely artificial and they profit from it. If companies want to be market makers and profit from every single transaction, they need to be prepared to take a loss when the math doesn&#x27;t swing their way.

When markets move rapidly, and in GME’s case we are T-1 from opex, brokerages cannot manage risks effectively. They could actually be exposed quite a bit. With something like GME (probably an 8 sigma event) it could actually put Robinhood out of business.

&gt; many of which will run into technical problemsIf a broker has a technical problem processing a trade, they deserve to be blamed.

&gt; Broker apps like Robinhood will be absolutely overwhelmed with sell ordersShouldn&#x27;t be possible. Most of the messages to the orderbook, by orders of magnitude, would be market makers doing add&#x2F;cancel, which isn&#x27;t something that comes from RH anyways.How often is one particular user going to send in an order? 10 times a day if they&#x27;re particularly busy? Doesn&#x27;t touch the sides. The internet facing gateways can be scaled up easily if that&#x27;s even needed, they aren&#x27;t latency sensitive. The inside towards the exchange can be made extremely fast.I&#x27;ve built systems that do this.

&gt; Not everyone buying GME today understands the social movement &#x2F;r&#x2F;wsb angle.I mean read the top comments in the top WSB posts today. It ain’t about sticking it to the man. It’s about making money, fast.

&gt; When the crisis hit, the firms got the blame, not their customers. Companies learned that helping their customers shoot themselves in the foot can come back to bite them, even if it was all legal and what customers wanted at the time.That is a pretty gross oversimplification and completely dismisses the variety of &quot;companies&quot; that had a hand.Subprime lending was just the foundation, but it took investors to investors to buy those securities, and ratings agencies to assign favorable risk ratings to those securities.

&gt; caused by financial firms selling a lot of crazy mortgages to people who could not afford them unless housing prices went up forever. When the crisis hit, the firms got the blame, not their customers.This is not totally correct.2008 was caused by banks giving out extremely risky mortgages (the banks knew they were risky mortgages) and then packaging them up into giant bundles and magically calling them AAA stable real estate investments and selling them forward to other banks&#x2F;pensions&#x2F;401ks.Banks are responsible for assessing the risk on a mortgage, not the customer.

&gt;Companies learned that helping their customers shoot themselves in the foot can come back to bite them, even if it was all legal and what customers wanted at the time.What a dismissive, awful, terrible way to phrase this.Having parents that were nearly the victims of one of those upside down mortgages, it&#x27;s not that simple. They didn&#x27;t ask for a 400k mortgage. They asked for a home they could afford. When the bank, that they have trusted their entire life, says, &#x27;you can afford this much per month&#x27;, they had no reason to question that.They&#x27;re unsophisticated people, who trusted the system not to fuck them. And that&#x27;s precisely what it tried to do.While I get that people need to take control of their own money, when the people responsible for looking after your money, the actual, literal bank tells you you&#x27;re good, why wouldn&#x27;t you believe them?

&gt;When the crisis hit, the firms got the blame, not their customers. Companies learned that helping their customers shoot themselves in the foot can come back to bite them, even if it was all legal and what customers wanted at the time.Maybe it wasn&#x27;t intended, but this comes across as particularly harsh victim-blaming.Yes, the firms got some blame (and a bailout), the customers lost their homes.Edit: I now see the retraction&#x2F;clarification you just posted to another commenter. Cheers.

The way to make money in a bubble like this is to sell right before the pop.At some point the word will go out that it’s over—“we won”—and everyone will rush to sell their GME and take profits.It’s not possible for all those people to succeed. Broker apps like Robinhood will be absolutely overwhelmed with sell orders, many of which will run into technical problems and&#x2F;or no counter parties. A lot of people are going to be pissed off and blame the brokers.People buying in late will have the most to lose and maybe the least understanding of what is going on. I mean, this story was a “breaking news” red banner on WashingtonPost.com yesterday. Not everyone buying GME today understands the social movement &#x2F;r&#x2F;wsb angle.Ultimately brokers are worried about getting sued by people or companies who lose a lot of money in ways that will look preventable in hindsight.Edit to add: the 2008 financial crisis was caused by financial firms selling a lot of crazy mortgages to people who could not afford them unless housing prices went up forever. When the crisis hit, the firms got the blame, not their customers. Companies learned that helping their customers shoot themselves in the foot can come back to bite them, even if it was all legal and what customers wanted at the time.

Can someone help me understand Robinhood&#x27;s POV? This just seems so outrageous that there must be some sane rationale that I&#x27;m not seeing.Why do Robinhood, Reddit, Discord, etc feel like they have to respond to this? Whether the investments being made are responsible or not, it doesn&#x27;t seem like it should be their place to intervene.If the hedge funds over-shorted GME and WSB recognized that and traded against that bad analysis, then that&#x27;s great! If the pendulum swung the other direction and WSB is trading into some momentum, how is that any different than the hedge funds doing the same with shorts? Why should Robinhood pick a winner (siding against their own customers)?

Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop