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Businesses Blackberry The Almighty Buck

Robinhood Will Allow 'Limited Buys' of Stocks Like GameStop, Starting Friday (theverge.com) 128

After removing GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia from its platform, getting slapped with a class-action lawsuit, and flooded with 1-star reviews on the Google Play Store, Robinhood is starting to have a change of heart. The trading platform announced that, beginning Friday, it will allow "limited buys" on restricted stocks, like GameStop, AMC, and others. The Verge reports: "Starting tomorrow, we plan to allow limited buys of these securities," the company said in a blog post. "We'll continue to monitor the situation and may make adjustments as needed." In its statement, Robinhood emphasized that the decision to halt purchases was made because of internal risk to the company, not as a response to outside pressure from other financial actors.

"As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits. Some of these requirements fluctuate based on volatility in the markets and can be substantial in the current environment," the post argues. "To be clear, this was a risk-management decision, and was not made on the direction of the market makers we route to."

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Robinhood Will Allow 'Limited Buys' of Stocks Like GameStop, Starting Friday

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  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @04:57PM (#61003166)
    several members of Congress were calling for one, and it's not worth a few billion to have Congress poking around their business. The hedge fund in question will get bailed out with super low interest loans anyway.
    • by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:06PM (#61003214)
      Congress already knows what is going on. Most of them made there money from it. Directly or indirectly.
      • and thanks to Bernie Sanders they've got some teeth at the moment (he was able to leverage his primary challenge and the threat of a 3rd party run into real concessions). So they can't just shrug their shoulders.

        I'm not saying the little guy will win here, just that they won't get completely crushed. In the end if you want the little guy to win you need to regulate Liz Warren style, but nobody wants to do that because reasons.
    • by SumDog ( 466607 )

      The fucking hedge funds involved need to fall. Fuck tax payer bailouts for their fucking bullshit. They weren't just betting on companies like Gamestop and AMC to fail, they were trying to force them into failure.

      I was against bailouts in 2008 and I'm against them now. GM should have been allowed to fail and clean up their own god damn act.

    • several members of Congress were calling for one, and it's not worth a few billion to have Congress poking around their business.

      Fuck that, I want the SEC skewer them for blatant market manipulation. People need to go to jail for this.

    • by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      They're afraid of an investigation

      That and and brand suicide is something they'd like to avoid, perhaps.

    • by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday January 28, 2021 @06:15PM (#61003502) Journal

      several members of Congress were calling for one, and it's not worth a few billion to have Congress poking around their business.

      Nah, that's not why they did it. They're telling the truth.

      If you know anything about how stock trading works, the surprising thing is that Robinhood is the only one that stopped trading. Probably a size thing, bigger brokerages have more liquidity to be able to deal with the risk created by volatility. And bigger customer bases, including more institutional investors.

      The issue is that when you make a trade, it doesn't happen right away. As far as you see, it's pretty much instantaneous, but what has actually happened is just some double-entry accounting within your own brokerage. No actual money has changed hands and no shares have a new owner. That doesn't happen until up to two days later, when the transactions are settled through the clearinghouse. When that happens, the brokerage has to buy or sell the net difference between the shares their customers bought or sold, and they have to do it at the current market price. Normally this is fine, it balances out on average. But when you have an extremely volatile stock trading at very high volumes, it creates a big risk for the brokerage.

      This is particularly problematic for brokerages who operate on razor thin margins like Robinhood -- because they don't charge any commissions. They make all of their money by "making markets", e.g. you put in an order to buy shares at $1 and Robinhood finds another customer selling for $0.99. They do the trade, take your dollar, give 99 cents to the seller and pocket the penny difference. This works fine, but when the brokerage's risk goes up, they don't have the same cash cushion that a brokerage taking commissions does. Also, if the brokerage can't find another customer who is selling and they create a net position change for themselves that they're going to have to settle at some price, as explained above.

      And, of course, Gamestop is exactly the worst kind of risky stock in this situation, because it's in a short squeeze, making the stock hard to find and pushing the price to astronomical levels. If all of Robinhood's customers are holding (or hodling, which actually seems like a more appropriate term) shares and no one is selling, and a customer comes along who wants to buy some more.... what should Robinhood do? By filling that order they put themselves in the position of having to buy shares to cover two days later, when the price may be 10X what the customer paid. If the brokerage is lucky they have a bunch of people who want to short the stock and are willing to borrow and sell it, so Robinhood can borrow it from those who own it, loan it to those who want to short, then sell it to those who want to buy. But Robinhood is dealing with small investors who don't often engage in short selling anyway, and many of them are actively trying to squeeze the shorts.

      The simplest, and most logical explanation for Robinhood's actions here is exactly what they said: They needed to limit their risk.

      • Nah, that's not why they did it. They're telling the truth.

        Considering this was not the explanation they gave when they cut off purchases, they're lying.

        Either now, or earlier today.

      • Robin Hood isn't the only site that went down. About 1/2 the brokers went down for at least part of the day, including really really big ones. Some just stopped taking trades on GME and AMC

      • "This is particularly problematic for brokerages who operate on razor thin margins like Robinhood -- because they don't charge any commissions. They make all of their money by "making markets", e.g. you put in an order to buy shares at $1 and Robinhood finds another customer selling for $0.99. They do the trade, take your dollar, give 99 cents to the seller and pocket the penny difference." That's not true. Simple false. They sell the order information to high-frequency trading firms that do that, and it se
      • by KingBillHK ( 7672774 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @09:30PM (#61004230)
        "the brokerage has to buy or sell the net difference between the shares their customers bought or sold, and they have to do it at the current market price." This is called settlement, and there is no price risk as the cash flows have already taken place. What you have written is an outright falsehood.
      • by Tom ( 822 )

        no one is selling, and a customer comes along who wants to buy some more.... what should Robinhood do?

        Deny that specific order on the grounds that no stock is offered for sale. Of course, that would require that they actually do an actual trade instead of the left-pocket-right-pocket business model that they're really running, as you explained well.

        I do my stock trading through a proper bank, and I understand that all my trades are trade offers until they are actually fulfilled and I enter a price that I'm looking for and a limit price that I'm still willing to take because the online brokerage app doesn't

      • Bullshit ... this is in fact such a steaming pile of bullshit I find it hard to blame on stupidity and it seems a strange thing to troll about.

  • Nice spin (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @04:58PM (#61003174)

    In its statement, Robinhood emphasized that the decision to halt purchases was made because of internal risk to the company

    Yes as we all know by now thanks to social media, the "internal risk to the company" is that a large investor of Robinhood is Citadel, with a huge short position on GME.

    • Re:Nice spin (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:21PM (#61003302) Homepage

      This whole statement is BS.

      "As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits. Some of these requirements fluctuate based on volatility in the markets and can be substantial in the current environment," the post argues. "To be clear, this was a risk-management decision, and was not made on the direction of the market makers we route to."

      Different stocks can have different margin requirements, up to the point where you only allow cash purchases. And that's fine as a risk management policy to a broker. Except Robinhood and others weren't even allowing cash purchases. If you don't allow people to buy things with cash, that's not a "risk management" decision for your brokerage; that's an attempt to achieve a specific outcome against the will of your customers. In this case, that specific outcome being to kill this campaign against the shortsellers of GameStop, AMC, and others.

      They caused huge material losses to their customers who were long GME and others (I'm not among those people), and deserve to pay dearly for this choice.

      • If you don't allow people to buy things with cash, that's not a "risk management" decision for your brokerage

        Yes, it is. You have to understand that trades don't happen immediately, and the brokerage holds the risk until they settle, a couple of days later. See: https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

        • Word is it's the clearing houses that's left robinhood and the others with very little option (sorry, don't have a link).

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          If a market maker goes bankrupt, it's not the broker's business to keep them alive. Enough with this "to big / too important to fail" nonsense. If the market maker fails to deliver, then some retail investor may not see their gains, but at least you're not deliberately collapsing the entire underlying security for everyone.

          The CEO of Interactive Brokers on CNBC literally declared a value that he assesses $GME shouldn't be worth more than ($17) and said he doesn't plan to lift limitations until the company

          • If a market maker goes bankrupt, it's not the broker's business to keep them alive.

            The market maker is the broker in this case. Making markets is how Robinhood makes money, since they don't charge commissions.

      • "To be clear, this was a risk-management decision,"

        This could be a description of many different decisions.

      • As RH is not directly making the trades on the market they go via a clearing house and hence need the money to cover settlements. the clearing house/SEC requires RH to have the funds deposited with the clearing house so it isn't BS at all and no it isn't solved by simply requiring cash trades from the users as it needs to be with the clearing house. hence why over night they have acquired more liquidity to cover those deposits. Not saying RH aren't guilty of some caving to pressure from above but their stat
    • Nobody will be punished for this shit.

      Hell, still nobody's been really punished for the 2007 crash based entirely on the deliberate misrating of crap financial bundles.

  • Cover the Float (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:03PM (#61003198) Journal
    CNBC was saying that there is a 2 day settling period on most trades. Hedge funds have direct access and can settle trades much faster. Large retail brokers have a lot of cash on hand to cover the float (However, the reduced margin trading to conserve cash). Robinhood is too poorly funded to float the trades until they are settled. Therefore, they halted trading.
    • Re:Cover the Float (Score:5, Informative)

      by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:06PM (#61003216) Journal
    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      Can you please explain this in more detail/accessible terms? I am trying to understand if there even a small chance that Robinhood halting trades could be legitimate move and not covering for Citadel.
      • Re:Cover the Float (Score:5, Informative)

        by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:18PM (#61003292) Journal
        Say you have $100 in your checking account, and I give you a check for $5 for some Girl Scout Cookies. You place the order online and The Girl Scouts take $5 out of your account electronically. A few days later, my cookies arrive, my check clears, and everything is good.

        I REALLY like the cookies! Now I want to by 100 boxes of cookies. I give you a check for $500, and you place the order online. The Girl Scouts overdraw your account by $400, because my check hasn't cleared yet. If you want to sell more cookies, you need more cash in the bank, or you need a faster way to settle payments.
        • That's when you get your son to sell boy scout popcorn and use his winnings to payoff the Girl Scouts
    • Re:Cover the Float (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Luke has no name ( 1423139 ) <foxNO@SPAMcyberfoxfire.com> on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:11PM (#61003250)

      See, this is what I don't get about the entire financial industry.

      All money is bits. Verified bits, but bits nonetheless.

      With today's computational power and the purely electronic nature of trading, it makes zero sense to me that trades, clearing, reconciliation, ACH, transfers, or anything take more than minutes.

      • Re:Cover the Float (Score:5, Interesting)

        by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:14PM (#61003266)

        I have often thought the same thing. It seems like there are a lot of artificial delays in all financial transactions.

      • by vix86 ( 592763 )

        My money is on the COBOL interpreters can only turn over transactions so fast on software that was written 40-50 years ago to run on IBM mainframes. It's one giant kludge underneath the hood.

        • Re:Cover the Float (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mungtor ( 306258 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @06:03PM (#61003434)

          It's more likely so the financial institutions can continue to use your money for their own ventures. There is absolutely no reason that it takes 2 days for a check to clear, except that the banks want 2 days to play around with all the money that's "in transit" between accounts.

          • Ding Ding Ding. 2 days of overnights. Depending on their market positions it is anywhere from 5 hundredths of a percent to a quarter of a percent in the US per day. Technically that goes down to zero, but in the majority of overnight trades you never see that.

        • Re:Cover the Float (Score:5, Insightful)

          by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @06:22PM (#61003550) Journal

          Bet the COBOL code written 40 years ago is more efficient than the Javascript code I wrote today.

          • by Tom ( 822 )

            It quite likely is.

            Yes, I have written code in both COBOL and Javascript.

            First, COBOL has fewer dependencies. Good luck doing any JS more complex than "hello world" today without including 500 libraries. Or 5000. Half of them entirely unvetted and constantly in flux, which is an absolute no-no for financial transaction code, but we were talking efficiency, so let's ignore that.

            Second, COBOL was made at a time when processing power was expensive and you'd get a short time share on the mainframe. It had to be

            • The sad part is that despite all that time, the Javascript isn't going to be any easier to write in than the COBOL was.

              • by Tom ( 822 )

                It'll be shorter. Because whoever came up with MULTIPLY FIVE BY SEVEN GIVING RESULTVARIABLE deserves to be shot.

                But yes, the JS will most likely be more complex by code.

      • See, this is what I don't get about the entire financial industry.

        All money is bits. Verified bits, but bits nonetheless.

        With today's computational power and the purely electronic nature of trading, it makes zero sense to me that trades, clearing, reconciliation, ACH, transfers, or anything take more than minutes.

        With banks, there are statutory requirements (that they bought from Congress) that gives them x days to actually deposit the money into your account. Nowadays most banks know instantaneously if a check is "good" because they go directly to the issuing bank and ask electronically. But the law allows them more time, and they use the float to make money on investments.

        tl;dr It takes a certain amount of time because that's what the law allows.

      • With today's computational power and the purely electronic nature of trading, it makes zero sense to me that trades, clearing, reconciliation, ACH, transfers, or anything take more than minutes.

        The reason is because they make mistakes. So a huge part of these transfers is the ability to reverse them.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's by design. If it all happened in seconds it would only take seconds to tank the market or wipe out a bank.

        Delays allow time for humans to intervene when things are going wrong.

        • by jezwel ( 2451108 )

          CNBC was saying that there is a 2 day settling period on most trades. Hedge funds have direct access and can settle trades much faster.

          It's by design. If it all happened in seconds it would only take seconds to tank the market or wipe out a bank. Delays allow time for humans to intervene when things are going wrong.

          That makes sense if the guys with huge amounts of money - and therefore leverage - are delayed, while those with piddling small amounts are transacted quickly.

          Whereas the opposite is true - the big players can take advantage immediately, while the little guys are stuck waiting as their reactionary trades stale in response to events.

      • There's a shitload of 100% safe money to be made on delaying the transactions.

        Person A buys at $100 at 10am. Person B sells at $99 at 3pm. If you don't have to resolve the trades for a long time, you get to pocket that $1/share.

    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      >CNBC was saying that there is a 2 day settling period on most trades. Hedge funds have direct access and can settle trades much faster. Large retail brokers have a lot of cash on hand to cover the float (However, the reduced margin trading to conserve cash). Robinhood is too poorly funded to float the trades until they are settled. Therefore, they halted trading.

      That might be an excuse to stop people from _selling_ (or simply don't let clients trade with unsettled funds). But, it's no reason to preve
    • Isn't this by design? They make their money off of that trading delay arbitrage; they batch their buys together but some hedge fund gets to know it's going to happen first, so they scrape the pennies off the trades before Robinhood's trades go through and there's a deal there to give some percentage back to Robinhood. That's why Robinhood doesn't charge for trades. (Correct me if I'm wrong, this is what I've pieced together over the last couple of days.)

      Citadel capital processes all of Robinhood's trades...

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Especially since Robinhood FORCED some sales of GameStop on their customers. If you held some GameStop shares, Robinhood sold them off for you in order to 'mitigate risk', even if you didn't instigate the trade

        That is illegal - if you have evidence you should be able to file an SEC complaint A brokerage should not be acting against the wishes of the investor - or selling off property behind their back. It's your shares, even though they hold it. If they go bankrupt, you still own those shares.

        If they sold

        • The shares sold were bought on margin. The broker performed a margin call with zero notice and sold the shares. They can do this since you borrowed to buy the shares (even if you didn't exceed your cash balance, you still buy things on margin in a margin account until thr T-2 settlement occurs). You need to specify your account as cash only to avoid this.
    • If that is the case, then they should be under even more investigation for bad financial practices. I know no financial institution has the cash on hand to cover all client account balances. However if the broker itself can not cover cash stock purchases then something is wrong, and the SIPC should be doing a full review of the company.

      Plus the damage has been done, hedge funds had a day to regroup.
    • Robinhood CEO will be on CNBC within the hour.
    • Problem is that wasn't their claim when they started limiting purchases. Their claim at that time is they were doing it to protect their customers from risk.

      So, even if we only listen to their own statements, they're liars. Why should we believe anything they claim about no outside pressure? Because that claim is the interesting one.

    • by Tom ( 822 )

      If that's the reason, then all regulatory hell should break loose for them. Because it means they advertised a service that they could not provide at the scale they were operating on.

      If I opened a shop that sells cookies, and I take pre-orders for thousands of them, and then it turns out I only actually make one cookie a day, I'm quite sure they'd be breathing down my neck in no time.

    • Even if it was a financial technicality that prevented them from being able to trade further, why target specific stocks? If they can't operate their brokerage because they're too cash-poor, they need to halt trading entirely. I'm not sure why the SEC would even allow them to broker trades like this if they can't handle even a small bubble.
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:07PM (#61003222)

    Sorry to repeat this again, but this is concerning so I want to see this get out as wide as possible - it appears at least one user had Robinhood sell what they owned without asking [twitter.com].

    And because we seem to have some guy trying to cover for Robinhood misdeeds on Slashdot, no that is not a margin call. Look at the messaging "we have received your order". That is not an indication of a margin call.

    Yeah it's not even a whole share but if it's happening to many users, it could add up to a lot of shares sold unwillingly to help keep the price from going up.

    GME after hours, now at around $260 on the news normal people will be able to buy it again.

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:28PM (#61003320) Homepage

      There's one thing I don't understand here is... why isn't GME doing a multi-billion dollar capital raise? Are they in some way prohibited from doing so? AMC did it... Seriously, they could, say, raise $8B, buy a big game company like Square-Enix, and then they'd have a real future and at least partially justify their new astronomic values. If they managed the PR right, I bet they could get the stock to rally even further on the news (lionizing the retail investors who saved them and talking up the hope for the future that, with their help, the company now could have)

      • As I understand it (and I could be wrong), to raise capital they'd have to issue new shares. To do that takes months (due to unavoidable stock market regulations). They can't use it to make new debt, since it wouldn't pass due diligence for any sane lender.

        AMC got their investment before the stock rise. Its their investor that is transferring the debt to shares (unless I've missed something)

        • by AuMatar ( 183847 )

          Usually a company has existing shares they keep in a pool. They could sell those in much less time.

          The hedge funds right now think they can still win. Otherwise what they'd be doing is going to institutional investors (big banks and retirement funds) and offering to buy their shares en masse at a discount to unwind their position.

      • There's one thing I don't understand here is... why isn't GME doing a multi-billion dollar capital raise?

        Do you think their stock will stay high long enough for them to complete the capital raise?

      • Because that takes weeks to months to complete, depending on the exact mechanism they use to raise the capital. Their price will likely drop before they could complete it.

        (And that's not some sort of pro-hedge fund thing. A short squeeze is going to make the price spike until the shorts are done getting fucked.)

      • by trawg ( 308495 )

        I have been wondering similar things, but figured that maybe the execs and major shareholders of GameStop have decided to just accept this staggering stroke of good fortune, sell their shares at this ludicrously over-inflated price, and get out of physical retail in an already mostly digital industry while they can.

      • There's one thing I don't understand here is... why isn't GME doing a multi-billion dollar capital raise? Are they in some way prohibited from doing so? AMC did it...

        AMC got very lucky and filed the paperwork weeks before the stock price ran up. I don't think GME's price will hold long enough to file all of the regulatory paperwork approved.

    • Or one guy was drunk trading and forgot.

    • Sorry to repeat this again, but this is concerning so I want to see this get out as wide as possible - it appears at least one user had Robinhood sell what they owned without asking [twitter.com]

      A nefarious plot that involves a single sale of 0.09 shares?

      If it were widespread enough to make a difference you'd hear a lot more about it.

      Assuming the Twitter user isn't simply trolling I suspect they either put in a sell order they forgot about or they got hacked.

    • Absence of evidence is evidence? Show me an account balance statement with margin balances, funds available, buying power and we'll see how much this person had in settled funds and margin equity today. Most brokerages increased GME (among other tickers) to 100% maintenance in the last few days, and most customer agreements allow your broker to liquidate positions not only for margin calls but also for portfolio risk, and they can do it without your permission. If you don't understand what that means, you n

    • Anyone could sell their stock and then claim they didn't order the sale, how many other people out there are claiming this? One person claiming this, I call BS, give me thousands making the same claim and I might be half convinced Robinhood did this.

      Eventually the fundamentals will determine the share price, there's nothing reddit can do about that. The recommendations to buy were all about squeezing shorts on the GME... well those shorts have already been closed out, redditers won the battle and like a b

  • Not really. Rich people don't go to jail very often. But you will likely have to pay a big fine.

    • The company will pay a fine, not the people who did the stupid stuff.
      • The hedge fun managers that created the "opportunity" for this entire mess will likely either get shame-shame finger wags or a massive severance and sent on to run another hedge fund. The people most likely to be cracked down on, HARD, in the end will be the reddit dudes that decided to chuck their play money into this to fuck with the people shorting GME. We can't have non-players gaming the system. That shit can't be allowed to stand.

        Robinhood may have cooked their goose by doing what they did when the

  • by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:18PM (#61003286) Homepage
    The correct regulations should require hedge funds with outsized short positions on highly shorted stocks do risk analysis including short squeeze scenarios. If they can't weather a short squeeze they should be forced to increase their cash on hand or close out the short position. GME shooting to the moon wasn't caused by Reddit traders, it was caused by the hedge funds themselves. The r/wallsteetbets traders just did what rational capitalists should do, take advantage of irrational bets.
    • by Tom ( 822 )

      Nonsense.

      These funds live on high risk / high return investments. That's how they pull interest from the market that your bank will not offer you in a thousand years on any safe investment. They're just huge enough that they can take the occasional hit. Losing a couple millions on a risky investment is daily business over there. So what, exactly, do you think a risk analysis would do?

      It's also not unlikely that they sink a considerable part of their cash into a deal they are certain off. With Gamestop publi

      • by nagora ( 177841 )

        Nonsense.

        These funds live on high risk / high return investments.

        No. They rely on market manipulation of the type that sparked this. Announce a massive short, watch the price fall, fulfil your naked orders, bank the profit, watch your allied private equity firm buy the company at the new low, low price, make some more off the asset stripping, bank that profit. Repeat.

        There is almost no risk for the funds in any of this so long as they all work together to manipulate the market. Some smaller funds who aren't in the club might get burnt here and there but the aristocracy

        • by Tom ( 822 )

          Putting (only) people from Robinhood in jail for what's happened on the grounds that they manipulated the market would be rank hypocrisy and only serve to further protect the real crooks from consequences.

          But they are too big to fail ! you can't go after them! think of the economy! the children!

  • Convenient that the men in suits get to deal with their short issues before GME can be bought again.
  • by chuckugly ( 2030942 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:32PM (#61003328)

    https://twooxen.com/2020/03/02... [twooxen.com]

    How to transfer your stock out of Robinhood to another brokerage

    Solved

    • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:43PM (#61003364) Journal

      A lot of people on RH are small fish, so I'm kind of wondering what happens to the fractional shares. The article linked doesn't cover that. I have a DRIP and every statement has a little note about how if you want to transfer out, fractional shares get sold and you get cash. If you've got the money, it probably makes sense to buy up to the nearest whole share before transferring. Even if the transfer process can handle a fraction, the new broker may not.

  • ...what **else** they might be manipulating.

    • You really wonder that?

      Robinhood makes most of its money by transferring its trading data, almost certainly in real time, to the hedge funds doing high frequency trading..
      In other words, giving the hedge fund information on how to frontrun Robinhoods own 'customers'.

      So, it you are a 'customer' then you are actually the product, paint me surprised.

  • Bullshit.

    Their business model is free trades for the masses that get routed to the big players, who use the data to get ahead of you and me via high-speed trading. We literally trade against ourselves on Robinhood. Without those market-makers, they cannot operate. The big players told them to bend over and they did.
  • This, by RH might be legal. But, it sure is not acting in what I consider good faith. https://www.trendsmap.com/twit... [trendsmap.com]
  • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @09:22PM (#61004210)

    A less conspiratorial motive [yahoo.com]:

    ANTHONY DENIER: Well, it wasn't our choice. Our clearing firm gave us a call and said we're going to have to stop allowing new opening positions in the three names, AMC, GME, and KOSS. Highly volatile, and what happens is this is not a political decision.
    [...]
    But in reality, what's going on is that there is a two-day settlement between if you buy the stock today, those brokerage firms that you bought that stock on have to fund that trade with the clearing central house called DTC for two whole days. And because of the volatility of stocks, DTC has made the cost of the collateral of the two-day holding period extremely expensive.

    And we just can't afford-- well, we're not a clearing firm, but our clearing firm simply cannot afford the cost to settle those trades. We cannot use customer funds to front that cost due to regulation. So the brokerages or the clearing firms have to go into their own pockets to do it. And they simply can't afford the cost of that trade clearance. That is the reason why these stocks are coming off. It has nothing to do with the decision or some sort of closed room cigar-- smoke-filled cigar room of Wall Street firms getting together to the dismay of the retail trader. This has to do with settlement mechanics of the market.

  • The fact of the matter is that large hedge funds shorted WAAAY beyond 100% - in other words, there were more shorts sold than there is available stock, creating an infinite loop as they are forced to buy stocks to cover their shorts - which aren't available, leaving them caught with their shorts down. It's part of an operation called a Ladder Sale that basically bets against a stock going up, forces it down, and allows assholes to buy entire companies for a few thousand bucks. It's thoroughly evil and this
  • I'd like to ask a question without trying to infer an opinion either way (so if this reads as though I have a view on this, feel free to discount that).

    RobinHood, a share trading platform, allows clients to buy and sell shares in listed companies to which the platform offers access. Recently, RobinHood decided to restrict the purchase of a particular group of stocks, in response to wider market conditions. Users of the platform have sued and Congress are showing signs of taking an interest.

    But in the

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