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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

#351

Post by swader999 »

batmenace wrote: post #110
baybal2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'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.

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.

This and they have terrible spreads. So commission is included in the price.

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

#353

Post by ceejayoz »

snowwrestler wrote: post #36

Brokers are worried about their legal exposure at this point. They could face lawsuits from investors in Melvin and other hedge funds, who will allege that the brokers knew they were facilitating intentional financial harm. It doesn’t matter if these are likely to fail; they are expensive lawsuits to defend against and therefore may result in settlements. And they could face class action litigation from trial lawyers…

> They could face lawsuits from investors in Melvin and other hedge funds, who will allege that the brokers knew they were facilitating intentional financial harm.

That'd be a gutsy move from a firm that takes a big short position and then publicly bashes a stock.

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

#354

Post by zaltekk »

All of this is making me wonder if I'm making the right choices for the retail brokerage that I use personally. While I'm not trading these stocks, what if this happens with a stock I do have money in?

Initially I had thought, "hey, there's this Interactive Brokers place that seems a bit further removed from places like Robinhood or Fidelity/Schwab/TD/ETrade." But apparently they're now blocking trades too.

What is the right way to ensure you're able to trade? I know there's the StockBrokers.com review site, but it doesn't seem they're going to have this kind of information.

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

#355

Post by notacoward »

zarkov99 wrote: post #37

This is unbelievable. If there ever was a time to be outraged. This is naked corruption as usual hiding under the shabbiest veil of virtue. RobinHood traders can bankrupt and kill themselves, and that is fine, we will continue prodding them to trade more often, but once we get a call from one our hedge fund buddies, moaning about the rubes stopping him from raping another company, we will shut the rabble down.

Please don't use rape as a metaphor.

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

#356

Post by kweinber »

The fact is that a few things that are already prohibited are happening here. You have 1) pump-and-dump manipulation on the day trader side and 2) Robinhood grew an entire business based on selling blocks of order-volume so that people can front-run and piggy-back off of trades (which is also prohibited).

If the SEC wasn't neutered by the last administration and was doing their job, people would be hauled in for market manipulation on both sides.

Real marketplaces need to be free from gross manipulation or else people lose faith in them for legitimate commerce.

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

#357

Post by Tinyyy »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #318
kmeisthax wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were running a financial brokerage I'd totally do this, too. It's not a matter of "helping my hedge fund broker friends", it's a matter of "how do we keep the SEC off our backs". Remember: Robinhood is already being charged with securities law violation for giving their customers a raw deal on order execution. We usually don't see distributed market manipulation like this, but I wouldn't be surprised if a shitto…

> 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…

> Hedge funds do this to each other every day.

Do you have a source for this?

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

#358

Post by llampx »

loceng wrote: post #183
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.

By crashing, or giving the appearance of crashing, Coinbase, Kraken etc maintain plausible deniability. RH is going whole hog "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't even short it if you like"

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

#360

Post by llampx »

fvbdbdhbdb wrote: post #254
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…

Serious question. Is the whole David vs Goliath narrative unfounded? Over the last 8-10 years online activism/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…

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