"Sorry plebs, you can't use our tactics to make money." -Wall Street
Robinhood Says It Will Reopen GameStop Trading: Live Updates
Several retail stockbrokers, including Robinhood, said they would allow trades GameStop and other volatile companies after restricting customers’ ability to purchase securities earlier in the day.
“Starting tomorrow, we plan to allow limited buys of these securities,” Robinhood, a popular trading app, said. “We’ll continue to monitor the situation and may make adjustments as needed.”
Robinhood, which has attracted millions of millennials to trade on its platform by eliminating trading fees and making stock trading easy, had said Thursday morning that it would limit buying of the kinds of securities that have sparked an enormous rally in shares of GameStop, the video game retailer at the heart of the frenzy, and AMC Entertainment Holdings, the movie theater chain, and a number of other companies. The decision quickly drew fire. -snip
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive icon who represents parts of New York, called Robinhood’s move “unacceptable.”
“We now need to know more about Robinhood’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit,” she wrote on Twitter. “As a member of the Financial Services Committee, I’d support a hearing if necessary.” -snip
This is interesting, it started with GameStop after a hedge fund short-sold the stock in order to reap the rewards and Reddit users banded together and started buying GameStop stock, boosting it to a height of +1,700.00%, which caused the hedge fund to panic and start buying, costing them their fortunes, while the Reddit buyers profited.
The super-rich didn't like that, didn't like it one bit, so they used their powers to suspend trading in certain stocks as best they could, not for themselves of course, but among rabble buyers.