This. If your business is to provide a trading platform, you can't forbid your clients of doing the business they want, with their money. You step in the middle of the process, you're liable for your interference.
Unfortunately, RH most likely made the decision already taking into account the potential costs of making it (including lawsuits and fines by regulators). Their alternative was probably “biting the hand that feeds them”, hence more likely an existential risk to them.
Being cynic about it, nothing of consequence will come out of this. RH will just pay up and continue business as usual. WallStreet will have successfully crushed the little guys, ironically, doing the same they are complaining about, market manipulation. And in the future people will think twice before attempting something like this again.
I dunno, if wall street had let the bubble burst, and WSB gets scared off with losses, this all could have gone down as "stupid emotional plebs and their tulips". But now that there is definitely lawsuit material, the bigger questions are now firmly part of the narrative and will continue to unfold in the media probably long past the extent of the bubble.
I think it's important to realize that all these knee jerk reactions were shown to be incorrect only 3 days later, but most people will never hear the truth. The truth is that the FTCC increased Robinhood's capital requirements, and they did not have the funds to meet this. Thus they could not allow buy orders legally, although they could allow cell orders because that would reduce their capital requirements.
Good point about keeping the game alive. I can't blame RH for making whatever call is in its best interest to survive. Whatever the outcome is here I hope it's transparent.
For RH to survive? They robbed us blindly this week. They created a buying dip on the backs on panic selling & people lost fortunes. This company is done for.
>RH most likely made the decision already taking into account the potential costs of making it (including lawsuits and fines by regulators).
Yep. It's very possible that RH just knowingly violated whatever rules/regulations in full expectation that this would still be in their long-run best interest, particularly if they were financially exposed in whatever ways on the shorts that were generating losses. We'll see how this works out for them - they'll take a reputational hit but honestly most people do not have an incentive to leave the platform other than smoldering moral outrage or because they think that GME-like opportunities will continue to present themselves in the future (unlikely imo.)
I’m not sure it’s that simple. They pissed off their most loyal and active customers. I doubt they’ll be back. What to say RH will not do this again in the future?
They picked their company name evoking a certain moral ethos, and the first time their customers consciously acted on that ethos, they pulled the plug.
Whether you agree with that ethos or not, I think we can at least agree that RH lacks the courage of its convictions.
And, much like Facebook, if you fail to deliver the product (customer data or customer trades) to your actual customer, you're still done. Their customers are surely thrilled by this Harakiri-maneuver.
Look at Facebook and Google, they keep abusing their users, but without a good alternative, there’s very little to do about it.
Edit: eloquently put by a sibling comment, the issue isn’t having an alternative today, but what would happen when those other alternatives are faced with the same conflict of interest as RH is facing, and the answer is that they would probably react the same way, here’s the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947300
There numerous retail equity brokers that now offer free trades, mobile apps, and every other feature provided by RobinHood. Unlike Facebook, there is no network effect and unlike Google vs other search engines, different brokers are largely fungible.
This suffers from the illusion that there always is some "choice" or power average people have if a big entity pushes them around in the market.
>doubt they'll be back
Going where instead? Perhaps going to nowhere and not investing anymore, but if that's the alternative RH won't lose much on the margins vs if the "free market" wasn't really just a meme.
We live in a financial oligarchy. If we didn't, this blatant corruption with no recourse wouldn't be happening.
To another brokerage? This question doesn't make sense. RH isn't the only brokerage around, and there is a mass migration of people into other brokerages. Their app is currently at 1.0 stars.
If other brokers had the mass of users attempting this same trade, it would have been halted there as well. I guess time will tell.. we can't run the experiment over again.
But the fact RH would simply throw its customers away to appease hedge funds tells you something about who's in charge.
To be clear I'm not saying people won't "want" to go somewhere else that let's them trade how they want to trade (though the low friction and UX on RH itself needs to be re-implemented to equate a like for like substitution), and I agree they should and RH deserves to get ruined by users leaving en masse... I'm saying they won't be allowed to do so if another instance of this same dynamic occurs. Additionally, that there are calls for censorship of wsb, the future co-ordination on social media is also in question
All the pretty UX in the world doesn't mean a thing if there's a pretty message in the app saying that you are not allowed to do the thing you want to do.
I'm not sure. Plenty of brokers are still allowing trades. I can buy and sell on Vanguard in my brokerage account right now. If there's an issue with my trade I can call them, they show their phone number on the confirmation page.
They have some warnings amounting to "this thing is crazy, we'll do our best", but they haven't stopped me from trading. Other brokers are the same.
I think Robinhood cost themselves their business today. Anytime someone says "what broker should I use" the first answer is going to be "not Robinhood, they screwed everyone over" regardless of how true that statement is. I think the industry is about to come under fire too. Heads are going to roll on this one. Action across the board is widely supported by both sides of government. If it is even close to as bad as it looks, Wall Street firms just cost themselves much more than their short positions.
Schwab has a note that they're limiting volumme on specific stocks today. I agree with the point that any of the major brokers would have done the same, but I think that's more an indictment of all of these organizations than a defense of RH.
I'm just not sure about that until I see the volume and see that as a reason for them to not let me buy a security. They can have their systems go down... I mean obviously that's not ideal but that's something that could happen due to volume - but Robinhood didn't go down. Vanguard didn't go down. I can still buy via Vanguard right this second - what does the volume have to do with it?
There are plenty of brokers which are being migrated to right now that are not stoppping trades. European brokers not at all, and in the US Fidelity and Vanguard are still accepting trades (and handling the massive sign-up influx).
Furthermore, the fact that EU brokerages are not stopping trades is something to be considered, no?
The people behind RH may come back, but the brand seems to be burned at this point.
We're not talking about a non-tangible issue here like Facebook abusing their users' privacy.
Customers see their raw money being lost by this service.
Perhaps that's the way a broker should be, but what Robinhood, TD and other brokers did is 100% legal and has been done thousands of times in the past. There's absolutely nothing new or illegal about brokers using their discretion to restrict trading of any stock or asset at any time for any reason.
With the risky bets Robinhood encourages, this is an interesting time to get a conscious. At lest the WSB crowd sort of knows what they're doing--it's not like the guy who committed suicide.
Spot on. When retail investors were losing their shirts, that was supposedly OK, but now that hedge funds are losing money suddenly there is so much "concern" about retail investors who have made a killing of a profit on the market.
I don't think the WSB crowd has a clue what they are doing. They practically turned GME into a ponzi scheme, encouraging more and more people to pump up the price by buying it.
It was funny when it was just hedge funds losing millions of dollars because they shorted it, but eventually all the WSB people buying the stock are going to be stuck with something worthless once it inevitably comes back down to Earth.
Trading on GME probably should have suspended a while ago. Now we're stuck in a situation where RH has blocked purchases, and people are going to blame them when the stock tanks and they lose their money rather than themselves for buying ridiculously overpriced stock to begin with.
Why is this the pertinent question? Even if it wasn't legal, they would just re-interpret the rules in their own favor.
Additionally, this is presented as if any of us had any say whatsoever in the writing of these laws or their enforcement or non-enforcement.
It's a distinction without a difference. It implies that "if we don't like it we should change the laws". But none of us wrote the laws in the first place, and certainly if we had the power to change the laws we never would have written them this way. If we had the power to change the laws we would change them. So it's an irrelevant point.
The entire point of the situation is "these are the laws" either officially, or unofficially but in practice.
But they didn't restrict the trading of stock. They restricted the buying of stock. People were still able to sell. Blocking only one side of the transactions is blatant market manipulation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they disallowed opening of new positions. I.e. if you are currently long, you can sell to close your position or if you are short, you can buy to close position, but you are not allowed to open new longs or new shorts.
But something like 99.9% (guesstimate) of the RH users happen to have long positions opened. So they're allowing something to the tune 99.9% of longs to close by selling, and 0.1% of shorts to close by buying (I take it the big shorters like Melvin Capital aren't shorting on RH).
This is so close to "allowing sells but not buys" that it is blatant market manipulation.
I think it all goes to show that manipulation is a fact of life, and especially of markets. There's 0 doubt that both sides are trying to manipulate to make money from the other. Maybe some folks on WSB believe GME is fairly valued at $80 or $100, but no one with half a brain truly thinks that it's worth $400 or $4200.69 or whatever price they want. I think it'll fall right back down to $20 once this sorts itself out eventually, and I think most of the WSB crowd thinks that too. The only reason people are buying at those prices is to try to force a short squeeze, to effectively steal money from the hedge funds by forcing them to buy at irrational prices as they get margin called.
Now the hedge funds are of course trying to prevent this by calling favors from the brokers and putting out fake news that they've already closed out. Both sides are using manipulation and displaying the worst parts of our markets, our capitalism and even our character for the whole world to see.
At the end of the day, humans are greedy beings. It's totally natural, and we need to accept that. But as we accept it, we need to figure out ways to regulate that greed so that it is a force for good overall. Capitalism is based on greed, but that doesn't mean it's not the best economic system. On the whole, a group of entirely self-interested individuals can still work together in a sense to grow our economy, build new technology and make the world a better place.
> The only reason people are buying at those prices is to try to force a short squeeze, to effectively steal money from the hedge funds by forcing them to buy at irrational prices as they get margin called.
Each trade is two way right? Who is buying the retail orders being forced to sell? Does being able to sell (to those already short, who can close their position) not seem like blatant manipulation to help those already short?
Or if only retail is unable to open new positions, why are institutional investors allowed to open new positions and profit from the moves while retail cannot?
That would be right if we were talking about a trading platform, but what we are actually talking about is a brokerage. A brokerage places orders on trading platforms on behalf of its customers and brokerages can make various rules about the orders they will or will not place. For example, Robinhood has restricted trading of box spreads for quite a while following an incident of attempted fraud on their platform (which was partially their fault to begin with). Brokerages also have leeway to stop potential crimes they observe their customers committing, which is what happened here.
For what it's worth, Robinhood was not the only brokerage that is restricting trading GME. TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, and WeBull also have restrictions in place right now.
The thing is ... If you don't step in, you could be liable. Let's not pretend that US financial regulation is fairly, evenly, or even logically applied.
I could see the case if trading for the stock was halted, they'd be liable for the inaction of continuing to allow trades on the platform.
But this is straight-up market manipulation. There's no justifiable reason to halt trading on GME except as a means of cooling the market long enough for Important People to exit their bleeding positions.
There's a big ass disclaimer that you sign saying that markets fluctuate and that Robinhood isn't liable for losses of capital.
No, it's not unusual. And, in fact, the exchanges HAVE used brief halts in trading to curb volatility in GameStop stock. But those were done in accordance with standard policies that simply reference a certain amount of change within a certain timeframe.
What Robinhood has done is apparently to ALLOW trading, but only selling, not buying. At a time when a close partner of theirs is at significant risk if the stock price goes up.
The justifiable reason is because if they continue to allow purchases of GME, they might get hit with an even bigger lawsuit from retail. See JumpCrisscross's comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25943058
Robinhood is stuck between a set of large lawsuits and a set of even bigger lawsuits. It seems like their internal counsel has decided halting trading will lead to the set containing the smaller lawsuits of the two.
If they halted selling you know as well as I do that there would have been an immediate "Robinhood is holding my money hostage! They didn't let me sell and the price dropped, so they are responsible for my losses" lawsuit.
Which, lets be honest, would have more merit than a "I missed out potential gains" lawsuit.
Selling is important because it lets people close out their positions as they need to. If Robinhood halted all trading they would have a huge mess à la the complete shutdown back in March.
Buying exposes them to additional risk in the form of potential future lawsuits.
You think they are legitimately scared of being successfully sued for "tricking people" into buying through gameification? That looks like CYA-BS from here. If that were a legitimate concern, why wasn't the interface de-gameified long ago?
Robinhood have themselves to blame. They made it dead-easy to trade on margin and do irresponsible naked option plays all these years. And they benefited from that massively in terms of revenue from Citadel (order flow) and raising their own valuation. All of a sudden they care about investor risk?
> If a retail customer loses money and makes a FINRA complaint that Robinhood induced them to buy through its gameified interface, it is liable
This seems like an attempt to pass the buck to FINRA, and I'm fairly skeptical, but open to being convinced. Have there been FINRA complaints that resulted in substantive enforcement actions centered on a broker's gamified user interface?
My understanding is that brokerages are generally not liable for what happens on their platform so long as they ensure trades remain legal (eg margin requirements) and they don't make false promises and keep appropriate disclaimers.
On the other hand, manipulating the market seems like a good way to lose a business.
Liable to get on the SEC, and industry's bad side.
Regulators are (intentionally) designed to be able to exert pressure with a lot of discretion. The financial industry is having a ferocious rage fit. The NASDAQ CEO even went on air calling for immediate SEC regulation... the irony didn't even seem lost to him.
Getting on the industry and SEC's bad side is the liability, and that kind of pressure is a big part of hw the SEC actually "regulates." It isn't strictly through rules.
Customers use a trading platform for access to buy and sell on stock markets. If one day you prevent me from doing that but don’t tell me before I sign up when you would restrict my ability to interface with the market it seems like a interference.
Platforms are there to enable interface with market, not decide what I can and cannot buy from that markets.
Some folks on WSB may know what they're doing, but many folks are joining Robinhood and buying GME and AMC due to the hype and that they heard they can make a quick buck. When GME eventually crashes, many of them will lose a fair bit of money and blame Robinhood for the poor experience.
I'm not arguing either of those (and wholeheartedly agree with you). I'm simply stating a potential concern/justification that Robinhood may have or use.
I think this is a reasonable attempt at "what RH did was right", although I'd certainly be happier if the timing and coordinating were brought to light:
You have been reading too many memes. Citizens United does not say money is speech.
Citizens United says specifically that when a bunch of people take their money and get together and start a new corporation (Citizens United) (a not-for-profit corporation in this case, though not a charity) and the corporation proceeds to engage in political speech (by filming a movie named Hillary: The Movie)...
then the corporation, as an entity, is considered to have the rights like the right to free speech, because it is owned by people who have rights, and this is a way for those people to exercise those rights together. Therefore this political speech is protected by the First Amendment, and restrictions on it are evaluated on the standard of strict scrutiny, and the FEC cannot halt this distribution just because the corporation was using money to make it happen.
(You will notice that people are not allowed to band together and exercise the right to vote, and thus corporations don't get to vote.)
The financial system has _many_ guard rails including licensure (see the FINRA exams), regulations and regulatory bodies, and orders to halt or limit trades and positions on volatile securities.
This concern is relevant to GME, BB, AMC, etc. because folks are joining Robinhood, Webull, and similar apps in record numbers in a rush to jump in on these hyped-up opportunity.
Right now the retail investors are winning. But imagine if they lost tons of money instead. You might have regulators yelling that Robinhood is not doing enough to inform and protect their customers from self harm. Or even that they were encouraging risky behavior.
Yeah, but all they can do is halt trading for everyone, that's not what Citadel wants.
Citadel wants to stop retail investors from buying so they can both buy and sell to themselves and drive the price down and scare retail investors into selling.
They were screwed if they did and screwed if they didn't.
If they didn't do anything, the precedent of courts and regulators giving retail investors wins because someone's gameified UI induced them to trade would leave them with untold liability. In this branch of reality, they're going to get sued--and deservedly.
With your money. Most people are trading on margin, because they're gambling addicts.
EDIT: I'm not sure if it's most that are trading on margin. Certainly it's everyone I've seen, but people who share their trades publicly are probably not representative.
Robinhood could put a margin freeze on trading these stocks on margin or borrowing against shares of GME. It would protect them and be fair to retail investors.
This is what I don't get. Why do they care if an investor is buying GME shares with their own money? They could easily disable margin trading. I can't point to anything other than blatant manipulation.
If we assume for a moment that Robinhood is acting in good faith (Seems like a stretch but work with me here).
It's possible they are doing this to protect investors. It's pretty clear GME is going to crash at some point in the near future. Having thousands of investors on their platform go broke at once is just bad for everyone (who isn't short). By blocking these trades, RH is protecting investors from potential loss.
In a way, it's almost like preventing someone from investing in a Ponzi scheme. While it might piss you off, it will save you in the long run.
Of course... that's assuming RH is acting in good faith.
I see what you’re saying. But I said in another comment that Robinhood has made it super easy over the years to do all kinds of irresponsible trading and have benefited from it. Today seems like a convenient time for them to be concerned about investor risks. This and their involvement with Citadel makes it hard for me to give them the benefit of doubt.
I guess I wasn't clear... I don't necessarily think RH is acting in good faith. I was just suggesting what I feel is the only possible good faith explanation. Not that I believe that is the case.
I can understand complaining about getting thrown out of a casino for winning too much. I can't understand complaining about getting thrown out for losing too much. The people "investing" in these companies are totally clueless and the majority of them are going to lose all their money. Cutting them off is clearly in their best interest.
Whether or not that kind of paternalism is acceptable is another matter.
I think you're confusing options with margin. Most of the major WSB screenshots are options trading and are not on margin. Specifically they are nearly all call options being posted, which pose no risk to the brokerage.
No you really can't. The right to refuse service gets weird with trading platforms because if you're found to be doing because you're trying to influence the market then you're in hot water.
Can you imagine a trading platform just outright refusing to process your orders because it was better for them?
And what about the right to refuse helping people buying a stock that is being actively manipulated by people who have made thousands of public comments delcaring their intent to manipulate the price?
Very few retail investors trade on margin as it includes the brokerage holding on to significant amounts of your assets which many small retail investors just don't have.
A lot of the WSB members only invested for a few shares - less than $100. They were doing it for fun not profit. Requiring $2k is a big ask for this crowd of investment
Counterpoint: virtually everyone who would have been buying GME yesterday based on the pump nonsense would have lost all that money. Consumer platforms can likewise be understood to have an obligation to protect their customers from scams, and to the extent they don't they can also be reasonably held liable.
Basically: there's a reason for these trading controls to exist. And I really think people here are getting ahead of their skis. Almost everyone screaming about sticking it to Melvin is, as I see it, a victim of a trading scam.
Melvin seems to have lost a lot of money, sure, but... so have all the WSB folks. Very, very few people are going to come out of this ahead (and realistically some of those are going to end up in jail).
Counterpoint: You are assuming good faith behavior in RH, where I see blatant fraud. It is outright market manipulation that they stop people from buying, but not selling. That they stopped individuals like me, who know the risk and can afford the loss, while allowing their hedge fund buddies to buy the dump and cover shorts.
As for "this would have happened anyway", well that doesn't sound very free market to force the very thing you claim to be trying to stop. RH says "oh no we don't want you to lose money, so we're going to cause a crash on the stock. Feel free to sell".
Good thing people can still buy on RH, in order to close their short positions, because guess what? They restricted opening of new positions, meaning that if you have no position, you cannot buy or sell. It is common, it is normal, several other brokerages took similar actions, and it is commonly done when it looks like something illegal might be happening.
From what I understand, they are allowing selling shares, just restricting purchasing shares. That is what makes this market manipulation. A market freeze would block all transactions.
They are allowing people to close positions they currently hold, but not open new positions. That is not the same as only allowing people to sell shares, and it is not the same as suspending trading of the security.
> "close positions they currently hold, but not open new positions. That is not the same as only allowing people to sell shares"
Since RH doesn't allow shorting, the only way to close a position is by selling shares. So yes, it is exactly the same as only allowing people to sell shares.
If you know the risk, and can afford the loss, you can use a different platform, no?
This action is likely (at least partially) targeted to prevent new users who have never traded a stock from trying to hop on the train and follow a "How to buy GME Options to make BANK in 5 simple steps!" article from losing everything.
Do you think there would be less blow-back if Robinhood only restricted new accounts? Or maybe only people with minimum balances?
If they stopped allowing people to sell their existing positions, then a lawsuit about "Robinhood is holding my funds hostage, didn't let me sell, and now I lost money because of them" would have come in, and probably would have had a lot more merit.
Yes, I am 100% assuming that Robinhood is acting is "good faith" (the fact that I'm defending Robinhood feels gross to me).
If Robinhood just wanted to make money, they would have let this continue. People like to complain that RH gets payment for order flow, but they just knowingly cut off that order flow.
It feels like Occam's Razor should apply here. Either:
1. Robinhood felt that it's long term prospects were better if it's users weren't able to gamble and most likely lose all of their money, thus being scared away from the stock market forever.
2. There is a secret cobal that Robinhood, who was previous the "bad guy" of the financial world, is now in and tricked it's users into buying a stock that would be worthless just so that Robinhood could shut of trading at the peak, and let their secret hedge-fund buddies make a ton of money.
I'm not inclined to believe the conspiracy theory when there is a more more reasonable option.
The same firm, Citadel, that fills much of RH's orders is the firm that propped up Melvin Capital (the group that shorted GME and needed a bailout).
Option 3: The cabal is there, it isn't secret, and they were on the hook to lose so much money that it was cheaper to essentially sacrifice the RH brand than to let the short get fucked to infinity.
Edit: They have stated on a blog post that this was a risk management move on their part - not strictly in the interest of the customer.
> I believe they are committing fraud and stock manipulation.
The stock is already manipulated, though. No one racing to buy GME is doing so because a genuine desire to receive dividends, exercise voting power over corporate governance, etc... They're doing it because they read on wallstreetbets that a magical "short call" was coming tomorrow which would spike the stock.
That's a SCAM. It's not going to happen that way. The owners of all those early shorts have already settled their positions (and, yes, lost a lot of money in the process) and all you're seeing now is a tulip-style pump and dump.
You got scammed. You're not a hero. Robinhood might well not be acting in your best interests but they almost certainly saved you money.
The users on WSB used publicly available data to see that the shorting was occurring. They did what "the pros" constantly do, which is pool resources and make moves collectively. That is not "manipulation" in the legal form of the word. Not like shutting down trading, in one direction only, for retail only.
Since it is individual users on a public forum winning, instead of the guild of hedge fund bros, the power player (Citadel) is forcing the shutdown.
Whether or not pumped up stocks are wise is irrelevant. The fact that something that happens constantly gets axed because the wrong people are winning is the issue.
> Basically: there's a reason for these trading controls to exist.
There is a reason for trading controls by a neutral third party. Trading controls created and manipulated by a stakeholder is market manipulation and illegal.
Edit: multiple responses seizing on what can only be called a conspiracy theory at this point that some how absent Robinhood's tiny trade volume this stock would somehow still be going up from a 500% increase.
Guys, YES, the system is kinda rigged. What happened here is that you all GOT SCAMMED. There is no magic short call coming tomorrow. The stock was pumped (starting originally with a short squeeze, but of course now it's just a regular bubble), and you were fooled into trying to buy it high. You are the victims here, not the heroes.
They’ll probably use that argument to justify their action. “See we saved you from yourself, look how low it got”. But who knows what would have happened if the trades weren’t stopped. The system is rigged.
That's true. Most people involved are driven by profit, not by screwing up hedge funds. Trading controls are important but it's problematic that Robinhood has this kind of power. That's usually something that exchanges control.
Legally speaking, Robinhood is a private entity with no obligations to provide users the ability to trade. Users can still sell or trade their assets out of Robinhood, they just can't open new positions with Robinhood's platform. Users are free to use another platform if they so wish.
Not saying its moral or not incredibly corrupt, but I can definitely see Robinhood having the legal equivalent of "our platform, our rules" here.
> Legally speaking, Robinhood is a private entity with no obligations to provide users the ability to trade.
This is mostly false. trading platforms are regulated by a bunch of orgs like the SEC, they absolutely cannot do whatever they want, there are heavy regulations on these activities or it would be easy for a broker to scam their clients out of their money with backroom deals with this or that third party and create conflict of interests.
Those regulations still allow brokers some freedom in how they run their business, and even require brokers to take actions like this (according to some interpretations). AFAIK, there isn't an SEC regulation requiring all brokers to provide services for every stock. In fact, brokers have limited the buying and selling of stocks in the past, so there is precedent here.
The SEC is also extremely strict about market manipulation, and especially when there's a conflict of interest. RH uses Citadel which had billions of dollars invested into Melvin. RH is saving its partner billions of dollars with this action to the detriment of its actual users.
No they don't. All trading platforms are bound by SEC and federal regulations.
The terms "broker" and"market maker" aren't slang words. There are strict requirements for platforms who do business under these financial titles.
Nah. FINRA and the SEC eat this kind of argument for lunch. It's Robinhood's platform, but they have to follow the law just like anyone else.
"Fair, orderly, and efficient markets" doesn't mean that you take away someone's seat at the table just because he's winning. If it were Pershing Square driving the long side instead of r/WallStreetBets, there's no chance in hell that Goldman (Ackman's PB if I'm not mistaken) would block opening trades.
Brokers have been doing this for decades; it's clearly within the bounds of what they are allowed to do [0]. Maybe this lawsuit can prove that they are conspiring with hedge funds to manipulate the market (which would be illegal), but just this act alone is not illegal.
Short squeezes happen all the time and RH does absolutely nothing about it. The only time they stepped in was when their partner (Citadel) had an investment in a firm that was losing billions of dollars. I think the burden is on them to prove this wasn't manipulation because it's otherwise so blatant.
