Quote:
Originally Posted by berryberry
Most of the hedge funds were short on Gamestop - that is why this whole thing happened to begin with. Over 140% of the float was shorted creating the environment for a massive squeeze. Now I have no doubt that once the reddit folks started running up the price and creating the short squeeze that some other hedge funds jumped in on the long side of the trade, but make no mistake - most of the hedge fund money on Gamestop was short prior to the squeeze.
As to Robinhood (which started the $0 commission craze and was the broker used by a lot of the reddit crowd given how easy it is to set up an account) - Robinhood's main customer is Citadel. RH gets 50% to 60% of their revenue from Citadel as payment for order flow. Citadel is one of the firms that just this week bailed out a couple of the hedge funds that were short GME. Citadel had an investment to protect and could basically dictate to RH what to do.
So RH restricted trading at Citadel's direction on Thursday to only allow sell orders (along with some other brokers). This had the effect of crashing the prices in GME and a handful of others. There was still a lot of volume yesterday so who do you think was buying those GME shares? It was the hedge funds Citadel bailed out to cover their large short positions.
Basically they changed the rules in order to manipulate the market for a day to allow the hedge fund shorts to cover at depressed prices which is the real issue. Add in they shut down the WSB Discord server and it is yet another example of an assault on free speech by Big tech
I agree, the price of Gamestop is currently disconnected from reality - but it was disconnected from reality prior to all this as well due to the huge short interest. In the end Gamestop will end badly for those who get in last and are caught holding the bag. But that does not mean that it is ok what RH and Big tech did here
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Hey Berry - Citidel didn't "dictate to" or "direct" Robinhood to suspend trading in those stocks last Thursday. RH acted in response to a margin call from its clearinghouse. It has since raised more capital and increased its available credit lines to accommodate such contingencies in the future.
Today most of the Reddit stocks were way down in an up market.
Can you say "pump and dump"?
The Robinhood Non-Conspiracy
A margin call is not a Wall Street plot to fleece Reddit traders.
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 1, 2021 6:41 pm ET
So much for the “rigged” market, the supposed conspiracy to fleece Reddit traders, and other nonsense spouted about last week’s stock market ructions involving GameStop and other companies. It turns out
the controversy was essentially about a larger than normal clearinghouse call for capital.
As David Battan explains nearby, that’s almost certainly the story behind the decision by Robinhood, the internet trading app, to limit trades in certain stocks for a time late last week. Politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz and bar-stool financial analysts claimed to see a plot by the new Robber Barons.
The reality is more prosaic. Robinhood and other brokers were deluged by traders looking to invest in GameStop and other shares, often with options contracts that can increase leverage and trading risk. A clearinghouse that processes and settles trades watched the volatile trading and demanded more collateral to cope with potential losses.
Robinhood Chief Executive Vlad Tenev explained the demand Sunday night in an interview on a livestream on Clubhouse, a social-networking app. “The
request was around $3 billion, which is, you know, about an order of magnitude more than what it typically is,” Mr. Tenev said.
A margin call is not a conspiracy. A clearinghouse is an intermediary between buyers and sellers in a financial market. It “clears,” or finalizes, trades and makes sure the parties fulfill the contract and assets are delivered. It also mitigates risk by requiring that trades be backed by enough capital to reduce the chances that one of the trading parties goes bankrupt. This protects investors as well as brokers.
Robinhood clears its trades through the well-known Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., which is owned by a consortium of banks, broker-dealers and other financial firms. You can fantasize that the DTCC is part of the conspiracy and ganged up on Robinhood at the request of banks to help short-sellers who were being squeezed by the Reddit traders.
Perhaps you also still believe that Vladimir Putin stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump. The Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators should be able to figure out this one sooner than the two years it took special counsel Robert Mueller.
By restricting trades in some stocks for a time,
Robinhood has reduced the size of the DTCC’s capital demand. The firm also promptly
raised $1 billion in new capital last week and has since raised $2.4 billion more, the Journal reports. This should help the company serve customers while riding out the volatility in popular shares.
On Monday the Reddit crowds decided to bid up the price of silver, for whatever that exercise is worth. Such trading raves may continue for some time now that market players have found they can use social media to form an investing mob and catch hedge funds and others napping.
Short-sellers who were caught on the wrong side of the GameStop price movements have learned a hard lesson about risk in the current market. So much the better for price discovery and trading discipline. There are no sinners or saints on either side of these transactions. There are consenting adults trading with their own money.
In this era of limited social trust, financial markets are bound to become targets of populist conspiracy theorists on the right and left.
In the past, conservatives at least tried to understand how financial trading works before joining left-wingers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in forming a hang-’em-high posse against private markets. Alas, in this age of conspiracy, knowing less gets you more attention.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rob...cy-11612222878
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