Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop • Hacker News Board

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

#651

Post by mmmeff » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #621

zarkov99 wrote: post #57

Sure. Robinhood got a call from someone very powerful in their circle, politely asking them to stop the amateur plebes from interfering with their professional market manipulation. We are taking about people commanding titanic amounts of capital and (indirect) regulatory power. Robinhood then had the choice, do we make enemies out of these people or do we just screw, er, I mean protect, our customers? Unburdened by a…

D1 capital is a Robinhood investor and was reported to have lost 20% in the markets due to this revolt.

Yep, how is this not market manipulation?!

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/robinhood/company_fi...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-28/dan-sundh...

I'm sure there are other investors on that list losing money from this whole thing too.

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

#652

Post by hintymad » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #385

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…

> Can someone help me understand Robinhood's POV? Robinhood is a margin-lending options-trading broker. If a customer falls down on a trade, it is ultimately liable. If a retail customer loses money and makes a FINRA complaint that Robinhood induced them to buy through its gameified interface, it is liable. Risk and compliance likely made this call. Also, Robinhood makes its revenue from market makers. They are the c…

So as a platform Robinhood wants to make money from trading options, but it will shut down the platform when it sees too much risk for itself? If so, would this damage the trust to Robinhood?

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

#653

Post by kecupochren » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

firebaze wrote: post #554

Even a congresswoman has a quite strong opinion on this: https://web.archive.org/web/20210128155006/https://twitter.c... Unfortunately the tweet has already been deleted. There seems to be quite a lot of pressure.

It's still up - https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1354807292667981828?...

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

#654

Post by fairity » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

amai wrote: post #611

"Robinhood got about 40% of their revenues from one of the hedge funds that just took a dive on Gamestop. Highly recommend an investigation. This smells like collusion to protect the rich insiders." https://twitter.com/mindmeld_me/status/1354807424998281217

Is there a source for the 40% figure? It seems to allude that the fund in question is Citadel.

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

#655

Post by UK-Al05 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #446

EGreg wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, crowd, you are not allowed to buy up the stock like that! Someone is gonna get hurt on the way down! “Here let us help you” — closes down exchanges, panic sell — “isn’t that all better?” People with their money stuck and unable to cash out... so much better eh? I smell a huge class action lawsuit

Well, to be fair - they are at least allowing sales, just not purchases.

That's worse. Institutional investors want people to sell. It's in their advantage. It quite clearly a one way benefit for banning purchase but not selling.

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

#656

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#657

Post by benji_is_me » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

zaltekk wrote: post #561

Unfortunately the account deactivation story is quite poor. Under Settings > Account Information > Deactivate Account you're just sent to a customer service email form. They say it takes 1-3 business days to process. As a side note, you have to close out all of your positions and transfer out all of your money before you're allowed to close the account. This seems unusual to me from experiences with other brokers. Fr…

Robinhood does allow you to transfer holdings directly to another brokerage (for a $75 fee).

https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/transfer-stocks...

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

#658

Post by kart23 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #41

Someone remind me again how this is even legal? You can SELL but not BUY, thus automatically suppressing all stock values?!

Its a private company providing a service for FREE. YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. Just like twitter, they are allowed to control what happens on their platform, and they make no guarantee about reliability or free trade.

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

#659

Post by yumraj » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

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…

> (siding against their own customers)?

You misunderstand who their customers are. Who you're calling customers are users. Their customers, the ones who pay them, are the dark pools and other trade routers, or whatever they are called, who pay RH for routing trades thorough them.

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

#660

Post by moscovium » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #631

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354833285386543105 "Committee investigators should examine any retail services freezing stock purchases [...] especially those allowing sales, but freezing purchases." Apparently she would prefer that people were blocked from selling their holdings.

Did you not read the tweet or are you just trying to misrepresent her argument? She is asking why different sets of trading rules are apply to retail and institutional investors. If retail can sell, but can't buy, who are they selling to?

"We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit."