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Comment by zarkov99 | Hacker News Reader

This is unbelievable. If there ever was a time to be outraged. This is naked corruption as usual hiding under the shabbiest veil of virtue. RobinHood traders can bankrupt and kill themselves, and that is fine, we will continue prodding them to trade more often, but once we get a call from one our hedge fund buddies, moaning about the rubes stopping him from raping another company, we will shut the rabble down.

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What matters is the lower 50% (aka the poor) get to see, for a brief moment, how the machine really works. WallSt will get their way this time, but I doubt those people will just live as usual with the gained knowledge.

We all collectively saw Wall St. dip into our pockets in 2008 yet here we are, aren't we?

I believe the government and taxpayers made money on the bailout, see sources like: https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/ The financial institutions got themselves in a bad spot, and instead of failing they were helped out, but they paid it back with interest.

Hey, crowd, you are not allowed to buy up the stock like that! Someone is gonna get hurt on the way down!

“Here let us help you” — closes down exchanges, panic sell — “isn’t that all better?”

People with their money stuck and unable to cash out... so much better eh?

I smell a huge class action lawsuit

Well, to be fair - they are at least allowing sales, just not purchases.

To be fair - this would be called illegal market manipulation (pushing stocks in a downward direction)

How convenient that people are now "allowed" to close their positions, now that the number of counterparties to that trade is dramatically reduced...

Who do you sell to if purchases aren't allowed?

other brokers still allow buying of gamestop stock. This is purely robinhoods decision to block trading using their app. There is no official market wide block.

The problem is that much of the buy demand seems to be on the retail side. But the retailers have shut that down, so you're left selling to a portion of the market that has the lease demand for what you're selling.

Most other major retail brokers are also locking out GME, AMC, and co.

For example Interactive Brokers and Revolut have followed suit. I believe Ameritrade is also restricting trading.

Which doesn't matter - averaging down is a valid strategy.

That's worse. Institutional investors want people to sell. It's in their advantage. It quite clearly a one way benefit for banning purchase but not selling.

Yeah, so incredibly messed up. How can we sell when there are no or very few buyers?

Simple, you sell to the shorts.

You see?

It could also be RobinHood trying to avoid their traders bankrupting and killing themselves by restricting them from buying gamestop etc. shares at 10x what they are worth.

Suuuuuuuuure

How could that possibly work, ever? If RH can stop me from making a trade they deem bad, why don't they just trade on my behalf? This is nonsense. Any pretense of caring for their users could be faked by simply putting a banner up on the forbidden securities. They do not care one iota beyond being able to generate fodder for the hedge funds who pay their bills.

That's indeed what they are claiming but it's pretty clearly just the easiest excuse they can give no matter the reason. Similar to how it's the easiest reason for discord to say they are banning wsb because of bad language.

https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-...

A stock market trading app, for consumers, trying to protect consumers by... not letting them buy stocks? If Robin Hood cared about consumers, they probably wouldn't have given them credit that they could then go buy options with.

Robinhood explicitly disavows itself of that responsibility. Quoting from their literature:

> If you are interested in opening an account where you do not receive recommendations or advice about whether to buy or sell investments or investment strategies or account monitoring, and you make all of your own investment decisions, then a self-directed brokerage like ours could be the right fit for you. Robinhood Financial does not have account minimums for any brokerage accounts. Robinhood Financial does not provide recommendations. We are not subject to a fiduciary duty to you and do not monitor or manage your account, including the monitoring of brokerage account investments, unless we state otherwise in writing. Since we do not provide recommendations and you must make all of your own investment decisions, the licenses, education and other qualifications of our financial professionals will not be relevant to your investment decisions. Robinhood Financial professionals are available only to provide account support through an online email system. If you choose our services, you must be comfortable with investing your assets on your own.

They are artificially reducing the buying volume. Anyone that bought GameStop recently on their platform is now stuck holding the bag or selling for less than it currently would be worth if they were not artificially reducing the buying demand. How do you think people that bought in over $300 feel now that Robinhood has done this? They made a decision knowing about the volatility and that it is likely to go up further due to short squeeze. Now RobinHood has changed the game in after-hours with no warning.

You realize Robinhood allows you to buy Dogecoin as well, right? Do you not see the hypocrisy?

It does? Amazing.

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