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

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

#181

Post by ForHackernews »

coldcode wrote: post #165
bondarchuk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

It's not a question of legality, it's one of incentives.

Similar to Google or Facebook, if I get the service for free, the service-providers' incentives may be aligned against me in favour of their paying customers.

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

#182

Post by koheripbal »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #87
speeder wrote: post #9

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'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 b…

> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? What's even more concerning to me is that, to platforms looking for an excuse, your comment could be painted as trying to "incite" violence, and used as a justification to ban you.

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.

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

#183

Post by loceng »

speeder wrote: post #9

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'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 b…

It's also ironic that one of the supposed ethos of Bitcoin is to circumvent these powers that be - meanwhile every time there's an upward surge in pricing Coinbase conveniently isn't accessible which temporarily blocks impulse sellers and stops a rush of the "army of HODLers" from selling. If this behaviour isn't illegal it certainly should be, it's manipulation.

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

#184

Post by psychlops »

bko wrote: post #136
speeder wrote: post #9

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'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 b…

> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we'll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence? Banning collecting rain water on your own property didn't do it. Abject failure of politicians keeping drinking water clean didn't do it? Not being able to buy cheese from unpasteurized milk didn't do it. Can't grow a…

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

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

#185

Post by UseStrict »

sokoloff wrote: post #13
bradleyjg wrote: post #3

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).

It's absolutely paternalism, IMO. I'm less sure whether I think it'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'm all for "let 'em play" in general but this is not going to end well for a lot of folks...

I ended up buying a couple stocks late in the game, fully expecting to lose the money. First, it'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/manipulate it to their advantage.

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

#187

Post by snowwrestler »

wyldfire wrote: post #26

Can someone help me understand Robinhood's POV? This just seems so outrageous that there must be some sane rationale that I'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'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…

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/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 /r/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.

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

#188

Post by ghaff »

carstenhag wrote: post #146
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #84

This is interesting, can individual brokerages refuse to trade individual securities or to only allow them to be sold. Unless the SEC authorized these actions I think it arguably makes the brokerages liable for losses and is arguably market manipulation. Transferring securities positions between brokers is relatively costly and time consuming - takes at least a day and there is usually a $40-70 fee - so is a temporar…

What, really? In Germany transferring securities is free, but it takes weeks or months for all securities and the correct prices to be transferred.

In my experience, in the US it's free but it is often a pretty cumbersome and manual process that takes at least days, if not weeks. It's certainly not a click a few buttons on a website sort of thing. The last time I did this I had to physically mail a form and have a couple of different phone conversations.

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

#189

Post by op00to »

bko wrote: post #136
speeder wrote: post #9

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'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 b…

> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we'll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence? Banning collecting rain water on your own property didn't do it. Abject failure of politicians keeping drinking water clean didn't do it? Not being able to buy cheese from unpasteurized milk didn't do it. Can't grow a…

The government letting 400,000+ people die didn’t piss people off.

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

#190

Post by Super_Jambo »

bko wrote: post #136
speeder wrote: post #9

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'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 b…

> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we'll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence? Banning collecting rain water on your own property didn't do it. Abject failure of politicians keeping drinking water clean didn't do it? Not being able to buy cheese from unpasteurized milk didn't do it. Can't grow a…

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