Robinhood is stuck between a set of large lawsuits and a set of even bigger lawsuits. It seems like their internal counsel has decided halting trading will lead to the set containing the smaller lawsuits of the two.
If it was purely a halt on all trading I could see the logic, but only preventing people from buying seems fishy to me.
(I'm not involved one way or the other; I don't trade shares at all)
Which, lets be honest, would have more merit than a "I missed out potential gains" lawsuit.
Buying exposes them to additional risk in the form of potential future lawsuits.
You think they are legitimately scared of being successfully sued for "tricking people" into buying through gameification? That looks like CYA-BS from here. If that were a legitimate concern, why wasn't the interface de-gameified long ago?
> If a retail customer loses money and makes a FINRA complaint that Robinhood induced them to buy through its gameified interface, it is liable
This seems like an attempt to pass the buck to FINRA, and I'm fairly skeptical, but open to being convinced. Have there been FINRA complaints that resulted in substantive enforcement actions centered on a broker's gamified user interface?