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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

#721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah it must be, they gave funds to Melvin Capital which took a beating on GME, and make money off Robinhood's customer flow.

Citadel the hedge fund and Citadel the market maker are separate companies.

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

#722
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's thinking is similar

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] https://www.nyse.com/trade-halt-current

Exchanges halt trading, is Robinhood an exchange?

>But the crazy part is that they only halted one side of the trade... the buy orders. That is manipulation.

Exactly, I mean you could make the argument to stop selling: "The current price is being manipulated and is too high so we stopped our customers from selling if they mistime the market. We will resume selling when prices return to normal."

Edit to add from /wsb:"If you try to sell you will get fucked because who are you going to sell it to if nobody can buy it?"

I hope there is some meaningful action by the SEC. It would be interesting to have all the trades reversed to the point when buying was stopped.

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

#723
post #427

Trading stocks is not the 1st amendment where we basically say we don’t really care about the outcome of your speech (as an individual). Say what you want even if its dumb and hurts you. With capital markets...there absolutely is a goal, and it’s not speculation/gambling. The goal is to have a place where corporations can raise capital and investors can hold them accountable for how they return value to them...and th…

Perhaps this is proof regulations on the market should be stricter, then. After all, if a bunch of barely coordinated randos on the internet can do this through the power of 'meme magic', imagine what people with real resources and power and influence could do.

>imagine what people with real resources and power and influence could do.

You mean what they already have been doing for decades? Are you seriously in favor of clamping down on retail investors??

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

#724

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…

I don't think this was Robinhood's choice. Robinhood doesn't actually execute any trades. They sell user's trade orders to Citadel, a trade executor. Citadel then buys the shares on the market, and sells them to Robinhood for a slight markup. It's how Robinhood offers trades for $0 fees. You pay pennies more per share, but don't have to spend $5 per trade. Citadel, and other trade executors, are refusing to buy share…

Who wins from a more limited market? It seems to me suspending trades locks people from selling as much as it locks them from buying, and short sellers should be happy to have a more liquid market,not less.

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

#725

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…

I don't think this was Robinhood's choice. Robinhood doesn't actually execute any trades. They sell user's trade orders to Citadel, a trade executor. Citadel then buys the shares on the market, and sells them to Robinhood for a slight markup. It's how Robinhood offers trades for $0 fees. You pay pennies more per share, but don't have to spend $5 per trade. Citadel, and other trade executors, are refusing to buy share…

> Citadel also bailed out Melvin fund for their short position in GME. So, Citadel has an interest in not letting the price go up any further.

Citadel bailed out Melvin Capital. Not its position. Melvin doesn't have a short position anymore.

Melvin made a stupid bet. Citadel bailed them out. Private sector bailouts aren't free: Citadel got its pound of flesh. Even if they bought the entire portfolio, that portfolio no longer includes GameStop shorts.

If Citadel's asset management and market making arms are colluding, that is illegal. But it's the most complicated and stupid explanation of the bunch. Market makers stop quoting for all kinds of reasons. If I were still on my options market making desk, I'd be pulling the plug on this. My traders would yell at me. This is what you make money on in market making! But the risks of loss go up with volatility, and the costs of gamma getting away can be nasty.

The chances that a fund the size of Citadel has any strong opinion on the direction of GameStop stock is vanishingly low. The chances that they stopped quoting in the name, as did almost every other market maker, and thereby broke Robinhood's system, which doesn't--to my knowledge--directly interface with exchanges to any significant degree, is high.

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

#726

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…

Well with a name like Robinhood I can at least see why they might be a tad hot under the collar on the legal department today.

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

#727

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…

I don't think this was Robinhood's choice. Robinhood doesn't actually execute any trades. They sell user's trade orders to Citadel, a trade executor. Citadel then buys the shares on the market, and sells them to Robinhood for a slight markup. It's how Robinhood offers trades for $0 fees. You pay pennies more per share, but don't have to spend $5 per trade. Citadel, and other trade executors, are refusing to buy share…

Exactly this. They know there will be lawsuits and they know there might be SEC fines, but they are betting that those two will total up to be less than the billions it would cost them to cover a short position at $500-$600 per share.

The question I have is, can this be prosecuted criminally and can those in charge be threatened with actual jail time from this?

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

#728

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…

I don't think this was Robinhood's choice. Robinhood doesn't actually execute any trades. They sell user's trade orders to Citadel, a trade executor. Citadel then buys the shares on the market, and sells them to Robinhood for a slight markup. It's how Robinhood offers trades for $0 fees. You pay pennies more per share, but don't have to spend $5 per trade. Citadel, and other trade executors, are refusing to buy share…

Fix: fines should be 2x more than just taking the loss on the chin.

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

#729
post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If a customer falls down on a trade, it is ultimately liable.... Robinhood induced them to buy through its gameified interface Why would robinhood be any more liable than other online traders like Fidelity or etrade? > What I can guarantee is nobody shorting GameStop got Robinhood to pull the plug. How can you guarantee that? Robinhood likely routes most of it's trades through citadel, which has informed partners i…

Citadel Securities is a market maker. Do you have any evidence that Citadel has un-hedged "massive short positions on GME"?

I find it nuts how this has transformed into a populist thing.

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

#730
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.

No, I think she would prefer that exchanges didn't restrict purely in an effort to "protect" retail investors and nakedly do the bidding to protect larger institutional investors who are getting squeezed. A brokerage NOT allowing buys, sells, margins, options on a security is well within their right to do so. It's only when they start to take positions that limit an investor's ability to manage their own risk that it…

So if you have shares in a brokerage account you think the broker is within his right to prevent you from selling them?
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