Hacker News Reader

Comment by whitepaint | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, all brokers are doing the same. How on earth is this possible?

Reuters are claiming short sellers have lost 70billion usd, when they are the sums involved, anything is possible.

There was someone claiming to be a robin hood employee, that the White House got involved. Obviously I would take this with an extreme pinch of salt but with those numbers there is every motivation from the powers that be

If you’re talking about this article https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-trading-shortbets-... the 70 billion number is loss on _all_ short sales YTD. GME is about 1 billion of that total.

I'm with Ally bank and right now they're telling people that it's their clearing firm (Apex Clearing Corp) that's blocking buys of GME and some other stocks.

Could it be that other trading platforms use the same clearing firm?

Apex is the clearing firm for Tastyworks and Webull too. I got an email from Tastyworks about restrictions (which just got lifted).

Interestingly, I bank with HSBC and I could buy and sell GME and AMC the whole time outside of when it was halted. I called them to ask why and they said they clear their own trades. Not sure how exactly that is possible though (if anyone can explain...)

Typically when you buy/sell a stock, it's not moving anywhere. Robinhood would try to sell the stock to someone on Robinhood buying the stock first. The big banks and brokerages have enough people buying/selling within its platform that it has enough supply to trade within itself.

For a small brokerage, they would have to work with other brokerages to help them trade, as they wouldn't have enough shares they already hold to trade them within their users. So Robinhood asks Apex for more shares, and Apex has to ask HSBC/Fidelity/JPMC/Goldman if Apex doesn't have any. At some point, all the other institutions also don't want to give up their shares because they need to satisfy demand from their own users. Trading with other firms tends to be really slow too.

It's a short squeeze too, by definition there's not enough stocks available for everyone who wants to buy. So some firms ran out and couldn't get more.

You may want to look up Reg NMS and the various rules about internalizers.

You left out the exchange. Why can't the small brokerages go directly to the exchange?

Defeats the purpose of using a broker/clearing house, there are products that let you trade on the exchange directly. RH probably figured there's no point in integrating all the way to the end if no one would normally use it.

Same with doing your own clearing, there's complexity involved with clearing and maybe you don't want to implement it all yourself when someone does it better for cheaper.

It's like asking why we don't all program in assembly all the time, or even have the option to mix assembly into our high level code. It's just nice having layers of abstraction that handle the annoying stuff for you, even if there's a minor cost. Why have complexity you don't expect to need?

Robinhood uses Apex behind the scenes too. Apex is probably having trouble clearing these trades (given how one sided it is) and just decided to not trade them, resulting in the butterfly effect of multiple brokerages not trading these stock.

>Apex is probably having trouble clearing these trades (given how one sided it is)

That's... not how stock markets work. For every buy there must be a seller. If there are too many buyers but not enough sellers the price simply goes up.

Sure, that's what would happen if buys and sells could reasonably be paired up. Robinhood/Apex could've just kept these buy orders open until it found a seller at any price and closed unfilled orders at the end of the day. That would probably be less preferable to all involved as I doubt these people were placing limit orders.

I don't think they use Apex anymore.

https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2018/10/9/introducing-cleari...

trading212 wouldn't let me buy, but fairtrade app did.

Vanguard has not blocked anything. Just wanted to throw that out there as I really like them as a company.

Also see GME in Fidelity

Right. I was able to buy/sell Nokia (NOK) and Build A Bear (BBW) today with no trouble. However, a colleague showed me they blocked BBW sales later (screenshot).

They all used the same logic to make this decision, that's how. They all saw suspicious patterns of trading by retail customers and made the typically overly cautious decision to restrict trading until they receive guidance from the powers that be.

You're going to have to source that claim, friend. There is nothing more fundamental than supply and demand. The action to allow people to sell but not buy is not overly cautious, it's obviously advantageous to the short interest.

Cartels... It's got Anti-Trust written all over it. Not sure the US will do much though.

Jesus, it kind of shows how corrupt the US really is. We're all basically watching a bunch of people commit crimes that from my quick Google carries a max sentence of 10 years with billons of dollars on the line and we're all pretty sure they're going to get away with it.

Though, I do think if Biden makes sure the justice hammer comes down on this, it'll win over a bunch of Trump supporters.

It was a strong anti trump sentiment that united the democrats but it’s easy to forget that Biden is still met with some caution in his own party as being the establishment candidate, not necessarily a corporate stooge but no Bernie either, it would do more to dispel that within his own party.

Ẃhy would his own party be pissed that he made sure the justice department properly investigated bankers manipulating the market? Honestly, I think this is one of those issues that will unify everyone to a common cause, god damn rich people screwing the little guy.

Read my comment again.

Yea. I misread, my bad.

This. It's been an incredibly eye opening week. From news trumpeting that Melvin Capital closed their short position [1] -- which is questionable at best -- to all major US brokerages preventing retail traders from participating in securities that they shorted. This is so surreal that it almost seems like a conspiracy, but i think in reality it just shows how corrupt the market really is and how much power these hedge funds hold. I'm eager to see the fallout from all of this and if SEC will take action. I didn't know that hedge funds aren't obligated to disclose their short positions on 13f. Maybe, for starters, the SEC could prevent them from hiding their shorts.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gamestop-melvin-idUSKBN29...

> Though, I do think if Biden makes sure the justice hammer comes down on this, it'll win over a bunch of Trump supporters.

I'm not sure anyone who still can be considered a “Trump supporter” is swayable; on the other hand, if Biden is seen as politicizing prosecutorial decisiones it’ll lose a bunch of Biden supporters.

It's also questionable how much influences Biden’s preferences have at Justice since his AG nominee hasn't been confirmed and everyone at levels requiring Senate confirmation there is a Trump carryover (though, to be fair, the Acting AG was appointed from within by Biden and wasn't out of order of seniority, IIRC, so he has exert what influence he can to select leadership given the constraints he faces.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com