The Robinhoodwink
Adi Robertson, reporting for The Verge:
Stock trading app Robinhood is facing dozens of lawsuits after the company restricted several stocks popular on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. At least 30 parties across 10 states have sued the company in federal court, many seeking class action status. They allege that Robinhood users lost millions of dollars because they were unable to buy or sell stock during the freeze, and that the company chose to “manipulate the market” to help other financial institutions.
[…]
Disgruntled users aren’t the only threat for Robinhood, however. The company’s decision drew bipartisan condemnation from lawmakers, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others calling to investigate the company’s decision.
Fuck Robinhood. What they did, regardless of the reason — let’s be clear, their own financial unpreparedness is not an excuse — was market manipulation and they should be held criminally liable. Even if their woe-is-me story about not having enough money to cover the trades makes sense, it’s much easier to believe that they did what they did because it directly benefited the hedge funds who were losing money even though it came at the expense of their users, for whom Robinhood claimed they were “democratizing the stock market.”
Many people didn’t realize this, but Robinhood is actually financed by those hedge funds. Their entire shady business model is based on selling information to hedge funds about what trades their users are making, so that the hedge funds can make split second trades before Robinhood actually processes their user’s trades. If you use Robinhood, you might as well delete your account because they’re more than willing to sell you out. I’ve already deleted my personal account.
Clearly, the free market is only free for the wealthy. When the little guy loses money on investments, they say “oh well, if you play the game you run the risk of losing,” but when it looks like big banks on Wall Street might lose, they just turn the game off.
Eat the rich.