Hacker News Reader

Comment by kasey_junk | Hacker News Reader

Should the IB execs & TD Ameritrade execs be charged too?

What about APEX clearing which enforced this rule with all of their customers?

I don’t believe it was enforced across the board. I have yet to see a list but TastyWorks is an APEX customer and there were no restrictions put in place that I’m aware of. Surely there will be a compiled list of offenders and they will likely include the most heavily used retail “app brokers”.

Can’t confirm first hand but there were definitely reports of TastyWorks halting GME https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l70ysa/tast...

Thanks for the link. “Halted” doesn’t mean blocked though. Maybe bad wording by the OP on that thread. It was halted multiple times this week throughout each day. Multiple short interest stocks were many times.

Looks like it was briefly blocked on TW, though.

Here’s the email I got from Tastyworks:

> Apex Clearing, who acts as the custodian of all tastyworks accounts, has informed us that the following symbols (AMC, GME, & KOSS) will be set to closing only order status immediately. You will only be able to submit orders to close out any open positions that you have in these symbols.

> New opening orders will not be accepted at this time. We will update our clients should the clearing firm lift the Closing Only status in the near future.

Yes. The calculus in their heads that the SEC fines for doing this would be less than their losses from allowing trading to continue needs to die. The penalty for violating the law must always be greater than the consequences of following it.

What law do you suppose was broken?

As other have pointed out, this wasn’t applied as a blanket ban.

I was able to trade GME options in IBKR today without any restrictions.

Did TD halt trading in it? I thought they only raised margin requirements, which is reasonable. You can still buy if you have the cash.

They didn’t put a blanket halt in, just dramatically raised margin requirements. I’m trying to get a feel for what risk mitigation techniques are going to be prison worthy in our new Reddit fueled future.

They did disallow at least some buys. Including buy to close.

https://youtu.be/eiyfwZVAzGw

yes

And should fee free trading be outlawed?

Where does one get this army of straw men?

I’m trying to figure out what risk mitigation techniques and what trading pricing regimes are going to land people in prison after the fact in the Reddit future.

short selling more than 100% of the stock is an easy one

No one person is short selling over 100% of the stock. Its a combination of many different actors each one of them shorting a small %. What % of a company can you short without going to jail do you predict?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com