Live data from Hacker News

Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

nytimes.com

51–60 of 166 posts

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which firms attempted illegal short selling, and what is your specific evidence to support that they did?

Is this needed to make a claim? If I say that someone stole the Declaration of Independence, then I would only need to provide evidence it was stolen, not evidence that shows some particular person stole it. In this case, evidence of illegal shorts is what one would need to provide to back their claim, not evidence that a specific firm engaged in illegal shorts.

>In this case, evidence of illegal shorts is what one would need to provide to back their claim

Okay, what's the evidence of illegal shorts?

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#52

I'm pretty skeptical of the negative attention Robinhood is receiving. It seems like the entities who actually acted in bad faith, the ones who attempted illegal shorts, are trying to divert attention. Like someone else said, Robinhood is just the fall guy here.

Robinhood deserves negative attention, but not for restricting trades to closing-ony. That appears to not have been much of a choice. They do deserve a lot of negative attention for running a brokerage in a way that invited a lot of risk-ignorant retail traders to instantly trade into leveraged positions for which they should never have been qualified in the first place. Robinhood has the valuation it does because it…

And add these adverts plugging "factional" shares at naive first time investors to the list, tbh I think the SEC should encourage share splits once a share gets to Tesla levels.

Your first investments should never be in individual shares - start with an tracker ETF for a few years before branching out to active management or even individual shares.

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#54
post #53

Currently Robinhood won't send me my tax forms from 2020. I have a trivial amount of money in the account but it's the only thing preventing me from filing taxes yet. Everything else has been ready since early March.

So ready for only 2 days?

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#55
These lawsuits seem silly.

Are investors suing for the right to be the biggest fool in a pump and dump scheme?

The consequences of not buying GameStop is that the investor has more cash in their account which doesn't change in value. Most of those who would have bought around the peak would have lost a lot of money.

If Robinhood prevented investors from selling their shares or closing their positions then that would be grounds to sue. Investors were exposed to an extremely volatile stock with no means to exit and could have lost everything in that scenario.

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#56
post #46
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue isn’t the shorts, it’s when the shorts (or others) start messing with the game board. You should be able to short a stock, no doubt about it. But you shouldn’t be able to coordinate “short attacks” or use other tactics. I wonder if it may be a good idea to remove computers from trading except for execution enacted by humans because of human research. Should Bloomberg terminals be legal? Should everyone effec…

>But you shouldn’t be able to coordinate “short attacks” or use other tactics. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1qdq0y5b79rzb...

I'm not saying they used that tactic - but that the use of such tactics shouldn't be allowed.

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#57
post #55

These lawsuits seem silly. Are investors suing for the right to be the biggest fool in a pump and dump scheme? The consequences of not buying GameStop is that the investor has more cash in their account which doesn't change in value. Most of those who would have bought around the peak would have lost a lot of money. If Robinhood prevented investors from selling their shares or closing their positions then that would…

I think you are minimizing the extent of Robinhood's perfidity. Almost all fiduciaries would have advised and blocked such trades but Robinhood can't decide to become a fiduciary on a whim. Robinhood was interfering in a decision made by a user . What if your calendar decides you shouldn't be dating a particular person ?

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#58
post #53

Currently Robinhood won't send me my tax forms from 2020. I have a trivial amount of money in the account but it's the only thing preventing me from filing taxes yet. Everything else has been ready since early March.

did you check under your Account->Documents? They posted my 1099 mid-February.

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#59
post #56
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But you shouldn’t be able to coordinate “short attacks” or use other tactics. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1qdq0y5b79rzb...

I'm not saying they used that tactic - but that the use of such tactics shouldn't be allowed.

The point is that the tactic isn't viable in the first place. It's almost like saying that we should ban people from making perpetual motion machines.

Re: Robinhood is facing nearly 50 lawsuits over GameStop frenzy

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Melvin capital and several other hedge funds engaged in naked short selling, and many backbone clearing houses enabled it via share counter fitting. (naked short selling is illegal) The deeper issue is the SEC not cracking down on the fail to delivers and naked short selling. I think Robinhood and other brokerages are the scape goats here. Their hands where tied when the companies that processed their orders refused…

Is there a source for this? I watched their testimony to congress and they said they aren't even able to place naked shorts/calls. You can still get a short interest above 100% without selling naked calls/shorts.

This whole "illegal naked short sales" story recently is a conspiracy theory, not a valid theory, so you're not going to get a source.

The main difference between a conspiracy theory and a valid theory is that a conspiracy theory is non-falsifiable; any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as "fake news" or "the deep state is hiding the evidence".

In your example here of "they testified to Congress under penalty of perjury", the response will be "Ya, they lied, because they knew the whole system would back them. They faked all of the records that show that they didn't actually do it!".

Now this isn't to say that a conspiracy theory can't be right in the end, but that still doesn't make it a valid theory.

Post reply on HN