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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

#992

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> The chances that a fund the size of Citadel has any strong opinion on the direction of GameStop stock is vanishingly low.

I find it exceedingly unlikely that Citadel has no opinion on the value of a stock that could make or break a firm they just lent massive amounts of money to.

It's also very unlikely that Melvin didn't have a short position anymore. I think that was a lie, knowing the SEC fine would be less than what they otherwise would lose. We'll see - maybe. Or maybe TPTB will cover this up.

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

#993

If Robin Hood was allowing people to sell but not to buy, and most other Citadel involved brokerages were doing the same, who was able to purchase the massive volume of shares being sold? If it turns out that it was only allowing large hedge funds with massive short exposure then it means that they were artificially reducing price to bail them out and the very real expense of the retail investors that were suddenly a…

> If Robin Hood was allowing people to sell but not to buy, and most other Citadel involved brokerages were doing the same, who was able to purchase the massive volume of shares being sold?

I think you answered yourself, but you may want to consider that RH is not the only trading platform out there.

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

#994

Worth pointing out that nearly every major trading firm has blocked buying of Gamestop and AMC stock today. I really am hoping to see legal action against the entire industry for literal stock manipulation. This isn't limiting purchasing, it's full-on stopping and only allowing selling. That's insane.

I don't know how stocks work. Could you explain how it's possible to stop buying and allow selling? In order to execute a sell order, there would have to be a corresponding buy order? Do they do this by allowing new buy / sell orders, but only if they're at a lower price?

cwkoss more or less covered it, but they stopped buying for "retail" investors, but wall street could still buy. They basically literally said "okay enough of you normies, only professionals get to trade GME or AMC today".

The unsaid part here is "and we'll probably make a ton of money during this since the retail investors were all buying". There's a rumor that Citadel doubled down on shorting the stock today and made a killing when it dropped from $450 -> under $200 today when trading was blocked. That could probably outweigh a good deal of the losses from Melvin today, though it's unclear who is still holding the bag on shorts.

That's why this ban for retail traders is so crazy and blatant...

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

#995

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…

I think it is probably illegal but SEC fines are so light they are just considered part of the price of doing businesses. If the SEC did something more reasonable like charge 5% o revenue for a year then these companies would sit up and take notice.

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

#996

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

I don't think Vanguard will, since they have a limit on orders per day precisely to stop people from, well, day-trading.

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

#998
post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Since RobinHood is a private company, does the "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits partisan politics? This is the natural evolution when censorship as we've recently seen is given a pass.

Censoring speech and regulating stock trading are categorically different. This doesn't cut across political lines as much as it does lines of class

Yes, but that still has absolutely nothing to do with a private company having the right to make their own business decisions.

The ACTUAL different is that since it doesn't cut across political lines, you want to treat the situation differently.

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

#1000

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…

The weird thing is that Citadel Securities and Citadel are different entities. Citadel Fund went to the rescue of Melvin Capital and Citadel Securities stopped the buying trades. Suspicious eh?
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