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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

If it was decided that most people could only sell stock, not buy it - who exactly is buying the stock?

It was blocked in Robinhood's UI, but on the back end the hedge funds could trade at will. And the hedge funds had to buy a lot of stock to cover their shorts, so it was handy to get the retail buyers out of the way.

I would be rather surprised if there are serious hedge funds that buy stock using Robinhood’s backend.

It's not really Robinhood's backend, they outsource their order execution to Citadel.

No, but the retail buyers getting in their way were

How do you know this ?

I read a bunch of articles today and yesterday. Robinhood outsources their order execution to Citadel, which handles more than just Robinhood trades.

Or actually, "outsources" is a misnomer because Citadel pays them for the orders, so they can make money front-running them. That's why Robinhood trades are "free" for their retail users. You don't pay a fee but you get a slightly worse price.

Citadel also, fwiw, just loaned $2.5B to a fund with a lot of short exposure to GME.

Hedge funds and other big players of course

Not all brokerages have banned buying so those who are buying are using a different brokerage. A lot of Robinhood users are now moving to other discount brokers like Webull.

Webull has blocked it too. As has Cash App of all things.

This seems coordinated tbqh.

Webull had to because of Apex, midday they got that sorted out and allowed buying again

Ah that’s good to know (and I confirmed it with a mate too). Good luck everyone!

Lots of big funds trading back and forth to depress the price it would seem. Look at the bid/ask volume. Looks like a ladder attack.

Fidelity at least still allowed trading GME. I assume most brokers did.

The ones who shorted

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