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The Courts

Robinhood Hit with Class Action After Blocking GameStop Trades (vice.com) 216

Robinhood is already facing a class action lawsuit after the microtrading platform deliberately blocked users from trading GameStop stock as the stock catapulted in value. From a report: The news shows some nearly immediate impact to Robinhood after the snap decision. "Robinhood purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock 'GME' from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market," the class action complaint reads. Fox Business journalist Lydia Moynihan tweeted news of the class action earlier on Wednesday.
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Robinhood Hit with Class Action After Blocking GameStop Trades

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  • by zuckie13 ( 1334005 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:04PM (#61002014)

    Basically, they're suing because Robinhood is doing it's own manipulating to stop them from manipulating the stock. This is mostly a demonstration that any concept that stocks are anything other than a gamble is baloney.

    Isn't it wonderful how so many of us have our retirements tied to this garbage?

    • by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:08PM (#61002044) Journal

      If you have enough money to put into retirement, you're one of the rich, and Robinhood is stealing from you. Sounds legit.

      • Define "money".

        Becauuse you ain't buying my work force with anything made from gambling! Because I've got to actually work for that! So unless "you*" did too, fuck off!

        * I don't mean literally you, dear reader.

      • by Altus ( 1034 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @04:06PM (#61002622) Homepage

        if you think having a 401k makes you rich you have no real concept of exactly how unbelievably wealthy actual rich people are. The people you are calling rich are a lot closer to being homeless than they are to being, say, Mark Cuban.

        • Yeah, those poor guys. They're in a completely different camp [youtu.be] than Cuban.

        • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @05:30PM (#61003056)

          The people you are calling rich are a lot closer to being homeless than they are to being, say, Mark Cuban.

          If everything I own was given to a homeless person, their life would profoundly change. They could afford food, a home, and a comfortable life.

          If I was given Mark Cuban's wealth, it would make little difference in my life. I could afford a bigger house, but my kids are gone to college, and I already have more space than I need. I could afford a fancy car, but I am not a "car guy," so I don't care. I could buy a yacht, but I get seasick easily. I can't buy a better laptop because there are no special "laptops for billionaires".

      • I had no idea that attempting to be responsible for my own future instantly qualified me as "rich".

        Having savings used to be called "responsible".

    • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:11PM (#61002058) Homepage

      Stopping trading on an asset to give shorts an opportunity to cover or hedge at minimal expense is a bit different from pooling your money to buy call options. The latter can describe almost any corporation buying options.

    • âoe Isn't it wonderful how so many of us have our retirements tied to this garbage?â

      As opposed to what? Property? When the currencies collapse the cops will be too busy to defend what it says on your title. Cash? If the market implodes so will the value of cash. Glold or silver? Better be armed to the teeth and silent about possession, and willing to wait until society stabilizes enough that you can you say you told us so.

      You make the best decisions you can based on the short and medium term prosp

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by adonoman ( 624929 )
        Gold will be about as useful as rocks in a total collapse. Food, usable fuel, ammunition and solar/wind generators will be the non-renewable resources that have real value.
        • Gold will be about as useful as rocks in a total collapse. Food, usable fuel, ammunition and solar/wind generators will be the non-renewable resources that have real value.

          I see Dave Ramsey showed up. Gold has - literally - millennia of being a universal currency. Nothing will change that.

          If a hurricane wipes out your town drinkable water will be one of the most valuable commodities for a couple of weeks until utilities are restored.

          If a crazy government destroys your currency, on the other hand, gold will retain its value completely. Look at Zimbabwe, Venezuela, even Germany back in the day.

          • by lsllll ( 830002 )
            I hear you about gold and its history, but you missed the part about "total collapse". Imagine nuclear annihilation where 50% of the world's population are gone and another 30% are going to die within a year, or an asteroid hitting earth with dust that'll kill almost all vegetation for a year or two. Carrying gold will just weigh you down.
      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        The GP didn't say anything about a total societal collapse, just retirement. Property might actually be a decent investment as far as that goes. Of course, using property as an investment creates problems being able to afford a place to live for anyone who just wants to live somewhere.

    • by galvanash ( 631838 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:14PM (#61002074)

      > Basically, they're suing because Robinhood is doing it's own manipulating to stop them from manipulating the stock.

      This stock stopped being manipulated about a month ago after it got shorted all the way down to about $3 a share. That was market manipulation.

      What is happening now is a bunch of ultra rich investors getting punished for being too greedy and robbing the same cookie jar multiple times. Play stupid games win stupid prizes and all that.

      Blocking average people from buying shares (but continuing to let the investment class buy them) does nothing but protect all those assholes as they desperately bail out of their short positions. This is literally the kind of thing the SEC exists to investigate, but they are worried about a bunch of guys in their moms basement making 3 figure investments. Disgusting.

      • Blocking average people from buying shares (but continuing to let the investment class buy them) does nothing but protect all those assholes as they desperately bail out of their short positions. This is literally the kind of thing the SEC exists to investigate, but they are worried about a bunch of guys in their moms basement making 3 figure investments. Disgusting.

        Welcome to high finance. The old boy's club is very very good at looking after its own and pretty hostile to outsiders. Things go up, things go

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:16PM (#61002090)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yeah, this is really only slightly different than speculating that any other stock is going to rise or fall for any other reason.

        Pandemic, so people are gonna have to buy more stuff online? Buy online-retail stock. Sell movie theater and restaurant stock.
        Company X is anticipated to post better than expected profits? Buy Company X stock
        Company Y, who has cornered a market, is about to be upset by a new competitor, Company Z? Sell Company Y stock

        Only in this case it's

        Notice that someone has put themselves in

      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        > a little disingenuous to say stock buyers are manipulating a stock by, you know, buying it.

        Yeah. What they're doing is no different than the guys who buy up all the bottled water and plywood for miles after a tornado goes through town. They're just trying to make a profit by selling it to people who need it more than they do, preferably the rich people who can pay the most. The intrinsic worth has nothing to do with it.
    • Isn't it wonderful how so many of us have our retirements tied to this garbage?

      That's as dumb as tying your health care to your job.

    • I wish I had the link, but RH apparently does some 40% of its business with Citadel Capital, which just bailed out Melvin to the tune of $2.4B. Weird that RH would suddenly stop trades, no?
    • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:19PM (#61002404) Homepage Journal

      Since the entire thing was in response to hedge funds manipulating stock prices in the first place, Robinhood has made it very clear that they have not suspended it because investors are manipulating the price, they suspended it because the wrong investors were manipulating the price.

    • "Risk-taking" and "Gambling" are two different things. We take risks many times throughout the day. Every time you get on the road, for example. We cannot exist without taking risks, but we can use our brains to judge the risks and only take ones worth taking.

      "Purchasing" and "gambling" are ALSO two different things. When you gamble you risk an amount of money in hopes of getting more in return. When purchasing you trade an amount of money in exchange for legal ownership of some kind of property. When

    • This argument that a group of people on Reddit are "manipulating the stock" is utter bullshit. Sorry, but momentum purchasing is a legitimate strategy employed by many fund managers. They see momentum (often in other funds) and they jump on it. Perfectly legal. Of course, these funds are really the only ones typically able to capitalize on momentum because they're able to utilize HFT and direct connections to the market to back out of the momentum swings faster than a retail trader (I won't even get int

      • >Buying the shares to drive up the price makes perfect sense.

        Speaking as an economics professor . . .

        Buying to drive up price doesn't work, the math is against it: the individual shareholder's fraction of the outstanding amount isn't enough to give him the equivalent of "market power" in monopoly/cartel activity.

        Even hordes of small investors don't have a rational path there, its a massive variation fo the Prisoners' Dilemma.

        As another cautionary issue, we *know* that once the dust settles, the price is

    • Basically, they're suing because Robinhood is doing it's own manipulating to stop them from manipulating the stock

      This is a gross mischaracterization of what's going on.
      The issue is that Wall Street is fine with just about any kind of gross manipulation when it's other people's money and livelihoods getting ruined in the process, but once someone beat them at their own game, they're trying to block people from carrying on through moves of incredibly dubious legality.

      Rules for thee but not for me at i

  • Grab popcorn (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ranton ( 36917 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:07PM (#61002030)

    This will be fun. They manipulated the market to stop us from manipulating the market to punish those who are manipulating the market. I hope people from all three groups can be found guilty for manipulating markets in some way.

    • by jebrick ( 164096 )

      No one is doing anything illegal but the reddit group is screwing around with the larger hedge funds at their own detriment.

      If you want to see what the big boys do, read Michael Lewis' book Flash Boys. short version - Day traders are basically screwed

    • Re:Grab popcorn (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rapierian ( 608068 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:23PM (#61002140)
      Nothing from the redditor's side has been illegal. They're buying stocks, into a bubble that they know is a bubble. It's fine. What was immoral was the Hedge Fund shorting 140% of the volume of Gamestop shares in existence because they backed their shorts with options.
      • by ranton ( 36917 )

        Nothing from the redditor's side has been illegal. They're buying stocks, into a bubble that they know is a bubble.

        If that is all they are doing, there is nothing illegal happening. But what reports seem to indicate is they are trading based on reasons outside of market fundamentals. They are intentionally trying to trigger trading activity which would benefit them, instead of trading based on their view of a stock's worth. That is what market manipulation is.

        Wash Trading [investopedia.com] is the closest defined form of market manipulation I know of which illustrates similar behavior. It involves buying and selling stocks very quickly to

        • Hmm, maybe: but let me ask you: if a stock has 1 million shares, and a company has signed a contractual obligation to buy 1.4 million of it's shares over the course of the next week at whatever the price may be...is it "market manipulation" if I say it's worth it to get in ahead of that contractual buy? The market fundamental isn't about whatever the company is worth, but about the fact that you've made a really, really stupid contract.
      • incorrect, for the majority of redditor's they are not doing anything illegal. Their will almost certainly be a subset doing the touting to manipulate the market up so that they are making large profit's off this. Those guys are almost certainly going to feel the pointy end of the SEC and a court room.
    • Yo, dawg...
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:08PM (#61002046)

    This is just one guy on Twitter, but if true...

    Robihood is selling user shares without permission [twitter.com].

    • This was probably a margin call.

      • This was probably a margin call.

        A margin call on 0.09 shares of stock? With the sell price of $330, around where the stock was for a while at that point?

        More like, Robinhood thinking "hey if we just autosell shares for everyone who owns under one whole share, no-one will ever notice". In total that could be in the hundreds of thousands (or more) shares as there was a widespread group of people buying.

        • Fractional shares are inherently margin securities on most platforms. When securities have unstable price activity, margin requirements increase; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the bubble will pop eventually with the run-up that was created.

          I thought about buying a put today for shits and giggles, but the premiums were just WAY out of whack for me.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )

        This was probably a margin call.

        I am not savvy enough to know, so asking. Can they do that while you are solidly in green?

  • There must be a Juicero bag flavor called "short" that we can squeeze for this. The whole story gets juicier by the minute. The Juicero story reminds me that shorts have their place--why else would anybody disassemble a juicer or analyze a business to find its flaws; but everything has its limits. These shorts went way past their limits, and the justice juice is flowing!

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:11PM (#61002060) Homepage Journal
    If the government wants to reform the market, end shorting, margins, and complex transactions. Remember the housing bust and subsequent debacle was cause by complex mortgage packaging and, as a result, foreclosures that were arbitrary and illegal because no one one person owned the paper.

    This is mostly just people using their own money to cause problems for people whose trading practices they donâ(TM)t like. Nothing illegal. If I would be such a person, it would have been fun. I have a few hundred floating around trading accounts. Could have bought early, and if it were all gone, well, I donâ(TM)t a few nights in a bar.

    Robin Hood and all the firms that limit the free speech, and SCOTUS has equated money with free speech, just to protect their rich friends and family, deserve to be hammered in the courts, in my opinion to the point of bankruptcy. There is no basis to limit trading here, as long as trades are in cash. Again, end margins and shorting, fine. But we should be free to trade whatever we wish using our own money, no matter how stupid or inconvenient others think it is.

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thadtheman ( 4911885 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:20PM (#61002114)

      Shorts in and of themselves are not bad things. farmers for example short their own crops ( actually it's more complicated). That the whole basis of the options markets. For the farmers it means they make less money when they have a bumper crop, but they make more money when they have a bad crop. It evens out their income year after year and there are less farm bankruptcies.

      The problem is that these hedge funds have streched all marketing techniques way out of shape.

      • by ranton ( 36917 )

        Shorts in and of themselves are not bad things. farmers for example short their own crops

        The good thing about laws is you can make things legal or illegal based on intent instead of just the activity itself. While there are enough technical differences between put options that farmers use and short selling to craft laws that affect one and not the other, you shouldn't even really have to. Just enact rules to target those with the intent to short stocks for speculative purposes. Those are harder to prosecute but would at least have the ability to punish wrongdoing without removing the benefits t

        • The good thing about laws is you can make things legal or illegal based on intent instead of just the activity itself.

          Thats actually a terrible thing, and so is any other idea you have about making things illegal based on other strictly unprovable things.

          • by ranton ( 36917 )

            Thats actually a terrible thing, and so is any other idea you have about making things illegal based on other strictly unprovable things.

            While it seems we disagree, I can assure you intent is a very important part of our legal system. Most crimes require intent for an act to be considered illegal.

      • by Amouth ( 879122 )

        futures contracts on actual commodities make since - it is paying a price today for a product produced tomorrow giving confidence and means to the producer. Big difference is I have the $ for the product and they will produce the product and then the product is consumed..

        Stocks are not commodities.... I wish they would go back to simple you have to have it to sell it and you have to have the $ to buy it aka. trading....

      • by hawk ( 1151 )

        to be clear, a farmer pre-selling (by whatever means) 80% of his crop is hedging and reducing risks.

        A farmer entering these transactions for 120% of his crop this way is gambling/speculating/increasing risk.

    • by dargaud ( 518470 )
      And also tax them inversely proportional to the duration they are held: 40 years for your retirement ? No tax. 7 days for 'playing the game' ? 10 or so %. 0.01ms ? 90% tax !
    • why the hell would you end margins? a margin is just a business loan.
  • Can the SEC force price changes and reversals?

    Best case say it's rolled back to the when they stopped the buying?
    or maybe go back 1 week and fully refund all buys cash + ALL FEES and let the shouter keep there funds.

    But don't refund buys - fees or force them to take and loss + fees and let the big ones off to make $$$ off there shorts

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:19PM (#61002112)

    I am really looking forward to finding out exactly what motivated the Robinhood execs to try to push down the GameStop stock. They took clear and documented action against one class of investors in favor of others. Clearly someone has a direct interest, or someone called them in a panic for a personal favor.

    House representatives are now calling for investigations.

    I don't see any good outcome for them about this. The best they can hope for at this point is to get an out-of-court settlement under NDA. And I doubt they can afford it.

    • House representatives are now calling for investigations.

      Even better than that, not just house members but also Ted Cruz is agreeing with democrats in the house (well AOC anyway) calling for investigations... this could finally be the thing that unites the populist left and right, to fight against BigCorp left and right.

      Maybe this is where people realize the real party lines are not where they thought at all...

      My hope would be this puts rapid and extreme pressure on the SEC to not be acting solely on behalf

      • GME still at $230 or thereabouts. To paraphrase a Klingon, today is a good day to buy.

        You think so? I question how long the rag tag rebel army can keep this up, much less push up far enough to make the risk worth it. I have no great love for the ghoulish short traders that were trying to destroy the company for an easy profit, but I am not rich enough to want to commit capital I would lose once the bubble bursts.

        The current valuation is incredible and has nothing other than the desire of a social media group to prop it up. What value do you think they will get it up to?

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Nah, Cruz is just grandstanding, that's pretty much all he ever does. A nice "campaign contribution" from Goldman Sachs or some interesting insider information and you'll see him change course so fast you get whiplash.

    • Or what they really do is trading against their clients.

    • by Synonymous Cowered ( 6159202 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:33PM (#61002474)

      I am really looking forward to finding out exactly what motivated the Robinhood execs to try to push down the GameStop stock. They took clear and documented action against one class of investors in favor of others. Clearly someone has a direct interest, or someone called them in a panic for a personal favor.

      We already know what motivated Robinhood. Robinhoods trades are handled by Citadel (Citadel handles the trades for about 40% of the individual investor market, and Citadel is also a large source of Robinhood's revenue). Citadel recently invested $2 billion into Melvin Capital Management, the firm that is making all the short trades which the WSB folks are trying to squeeze. So Citadel has a vested interest in making sure Melvin doesn't lose money.

      Melvin shorted the stock, hoping it would drop and they can profit. But the stock price has gone up, so Melvin is actually in the red right now. Normally they could just ride it back out (nobody in their right mind believes the current GME value is representative of the company's real value...it's a bubble, and it's going to burst), but if the WSB folks can push the stock price high enough, Melvin can be forced to close out their position to cover their short (alternatively they can inject more money to cover their position, if they can get someone to give them more money, which is how Citadel got involved in the first place).

      So Melvin (and thus Citadel) would like to see the stock price not go up, or better yet, drop. Well, what happens when holders of GME stock want to sell their position but a large portion of the market is forbidden from buying? Well, with less buyer competition, the price drops.

      It's clear as day how the manipulation is working here.

      • It's clear as day how the manipulation is working here.

        Thanks for this explanation. Somebody please mod that up.

  • really fast. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.
  • Generally, services like this have a "User Agreement" which lets them do just about anything they like. Don't be surprised when they point out that every agreed to allow them to do this.

    • &EULA ... do just about everything

      Except in civilized countries with a legal system, of course.

      • We have a legal system. Its run by lawyers from Harvard and Yale and, not surprisingly, defends the interests of the wealthy and powerful. But don't worry, you have a constitutional right to complain as long as it is to no effect.
  • BTW Silver (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Thursday January 28, 2021 @02:42PM (#61002210) Homepage
    This is exactly what they did to the Hunt Brothers [wikipedia.org] in 1980 when they tried to corner the silver market. Wall Street suddenly decided to allow only selling silver, but not buying.
    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      Eh, the commodities market is not at all similar to the stock market. When the Hunt Brothers bought a lot of the world's silver, entire industries such us jewellery makers etc who still needed to buy silver had to pay inflated prices. Also, note that the Hunt Brothers had bought heavily on margin - i.e. they were basically borrowing to corner the market.
      In the stockmarket, nobody "needs" the stock that you bought, except of course short sellers who had knowingly placed a dangerous bet out of greed (and prob

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      >Wall Street suddenly decided to allow only selling silver, but not buying.

      That's, err, impossible.

      There's no way to sell without someone buying at the same time.

      Certain *types* of transactions can be limited, such as, for example, buying on margin.

      Those who attempt to corner a market usually fail. And when they fail, they tend to do so in a spectacular manner. Trading Places wasn't particularly inaccurate in the depiction.

      hawk

  • If I was drafting TOS for an online service in a highly regulated field, I would:

    1. 1) Allow the immediate suspension of service if, in my sole discretion, I thought that the user was using the service to do something illegal.
    2. 2) Require arbitration for all disputes with the company

    At this point it is hard to tell if this is a legitimate peasant revolt or a pump-and-dump. But the outcome will be the same and I don't think it involves RobinHood becoming a stock trading co-op..

    The market has remained irrationa

  • by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:10PM (#61002364)
    with the companies I bought a few thousand shares of back in March when the market tanked. Dang, I wish I had bought 5000 shares of Gamestop back then instead. Even at four bucks a share, I could've made over a million dollars if I sold it at 300, and if I managed 400 it would've been almost two million in profit. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and I never would've guessed it would've gone this high, even temporarily.

    This is why I tend to stick with "regular" investments, I suck at predicting the thundering herd. I've never made a ton of money, unfortunately, but I've never been on the losing end very badly either. Just a steady, if not slow, tick upwards that's better than the rate of inflation.
  • (More detailed version here [battleswarmblog.com].)

    1. Some big hedge funds shorted more GameStop stock than actual shares outstanding. This is called a "naked short" and is illegal.
    2. Some redditors noticed this, and bought the stock.
    3. The stock soared as more and more investors bought.
    4. To close out their short positions, those hedge funds must purchase shares of GameStop, even if it means suffering a huge loss. This is what's know as a "short squeeze."
    5. Rather than sucking it up and taking their losses, many hedge funds not only doubled down on shorts, they went crying to the Biden Administration and their friends in the media that it was unfair they had been beaten at their own game.
    6. Result: Ameritrade, Robinhood and others halt retail accounts from buying the stock, ostensibly due to "volatility," but actually to bail out the hedge funds.

    • Some big hedge funds shorted more GameStop stock than actual shares outstanding. This is called a "naked short" and is illegal.

      Do you have a source for this naked short claim?

  • And why are people singling out reddit as the source of investors?
    Robinhood and some reddit group together don't have the $ power of any of the individual big banks or investment firms, and those have been involved in these market manipulations for freaking ever.
    Is some other manipulator being covered up and/or is this just an excuse to tax the small investor more?
    WTF?
  • Honestly, this looks like something that could have happened automatically in the face of events that would otherwise cause the company to lose money if they had not ceased trading.on the stock.

    Can you (rightfully) sue a company for not doing business with you when they would have otherwise only been able to do so at a financial loss in the first place?

  • Robin Hood (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nugoo ( 1794744 ) on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:34PM (#61002476)
    Seems like Robinhood should have chosen a different namesake.

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