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Comment by seaman1921 | Hacker News Reader

seaman1921

You should watch their CEO Thomas Peterffy's interview during the gamestop situation - he basically said "shorting is illegal" and a lot of other such nonsense .. completely lost respect for IB after that, even though I still maintain an account.

https://streamable.com/ycdec9

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Give this woman an award: 03:00 "But, but, can I, if I, Thomas, if I can break in - and we should point out that Interactive Brokers is a sponsor of Bloomberg Radio and Bloomberg TV. So it's not the case that traders were doing anything wrong or illegal. It's just a case of logistically, there were going to be problems, right, in terms of clearinghouses. So that's more an operational problem versus a market problem or traders doing something wrong, correct?"

And Thomas responds: "No, no, no, not correct. So, so short squeezes are illegal. ..."

That's some inside baseball observation by her. See NSCC Procedure XV, on (virtual) page 294/385:

> Each Member of the Corporation, except as otherwise provided in this Procedure, is required to contribute to the Clearing Fund maintained by the Corporation an amount calculated by the Corporation equal to:

* https://www.dtcc.com/~/media/Files/Downloads/legal/rules/nsc...

Naked shorting is illegal

>Ask HN: Can I trust brokers with my stocks?

I'm not so sure I would be able to trust most of them with my laundry as much as the average dry cleaning professional.

Which one would be most likely to be wearing your best suit more often than you do while it is not in your possession?

>Naked shorting is illegal

Probably less obvious when wearing someone elses' outfit instead of nothing at all.

Where do you put your money?

Best place I've found is into a company where I own the majority of shares.

That's a long video. Can you link directly to the nonsensical statement you're referring to?

He says "so short squeezes are illegal" at about 3:30

Thomas says a lot of nonsensical things during those 4 minutes. He keeps on continually referring to the trading prices of GameStop, basically belittling the market price of $100~200 and continually insisting that it is a company worth a lot less (somewhere below $50, I forget). Even though he runs a brokerage firm, his personal opinion is very non-neutral and he wants to dictate a market direction.

Agree. If the OP's concern is the Gamestop fiasco, then IB is just as bad as Robinhood.

AFAIK, IB restricted only option trading, while RH also restricted buying actual stock.

My mistake, you're absolutely correct.

correction - i meant he said "short squeezing is illegal" which is why they stopped the trade. For those asking for timestamp, he says that around 3:30

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