Petition calls on Apple to remove Robinhood from App Store amid GameStop kerfuffle

AppleInsider

A new petition is calling on Apple to remove Robinhood from the App Store after the service froze trades of GameStop and other stocks backed by Redditors.

Credit: Robinhood

In January 2021, users on the WallStreetBets subreddit drove a handful of stocks, which were shorted by hedge funds, to unusually high prices. Amid the chaos, Robinhood and other trading services blocked trades of those stocks, citing "volatility."

The Change.org petition on Thursday called for Apple to remove Robinhood for engaging in "illegal, fraudulent, or manipulative activity." The argument is that Robinhood is stifling trading by individual investors and manipulating the market to benefit large hedge funds.

In a blog post, Robinhood called the to freeze trades a "risk-management decision." It added that it would "continue to monitor the situation and may make adjustments as needed."

The trading firm is already starting to backtrack from its position Thursday morning. According to The Verge, the platform will begin allowing "limited buys" on restricted stocks like GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia.

Robinhood wasn't the only platform that froze trades of the Redditor-backed stocks. Others, such as Public and E-Trade, also restricted them. But Robinhood has taken the brunt of the criticism, and is already facing lawsuits for its decision to block trades, Vice reported on Thursday.

In the wake of the stock freeze, Robinhood's pages on the Google Play Store also became inundated with negative reviews. Robinhood's listing on the App Store, however, hasn't changed much, leading some users to believe that Apple is "censoring" negative reviews.

A thread:
The @RobinhoodApp is now blocking all negative reviews on the App Store. This is a direct violation of the 2016 Consumer Review Fairness Act. This ends in one of three ways. #DDTG

-- Mike Kusy (@mikeywave_K)

January 28, 2021

pulseimages

So much for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. 

iadlib

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

maestro64

So the hedge fund guys do not like it when the individual investors pull their resources and use their strategies against them. Now they want to shut down the tools that people are using against them. That’s what happens when you short a stock and other’s feel it has value and drives up the stock. No one should be crying for the hedge fund managers.

 These are the same people who like driving Apple stock down.

edited January 2021

ackpfft

Yeah,  the trading platforms whacked them at the knees.     If I had been playing the momentum move - I’d have been 🤬‼️

entropys

How many hedge fund managers have signed the petition?

Once the hedge funds have burned through their doe buying exorbitant shares anyone still holding GME will face a falling stock price. In a way if you were Robinhood you would be worried that a lot of people will blame it.

that said this cancel culture crap has really got to stop.

spamsandwich

iadlib said:

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

You don’t understand it? Do you understand that if you choose to use a free stock trading app, you’re playing by their rules? Use a real stockbroker if you don’t like Robinhood. I smelled the stink on their app the first week it came out. “Free” is never really free, is it?

wood1208

Robinhood stepped out of it's legal authority to stop it's clients with money in account from trading. It is not Robinhood's job to interfere, manipulate stock by stopping clients to trade. By doing so, did Robinhood acted to help hedge fund's who were under big short squeeze ?  Expect class action law suits,SEC and Congressional hearings and fine.

This has nothing to do with Apple removing Robinhood App.

edited January 2021

entropys

Couldn’t you just use another trading platform? Even advocate an alternative?

this cancel culture crap has to stop.

mpantone

SpamSandwich said:

iadlib said:

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

You don’t understand it? Do you understand that if you choose to use a free stock trading app, you’re playing by their rules? Use a real stockbroker if you don’t like Robinhood. I smelled the stink on their app the first week it came out. “Free” is never really free, is it?

Once again, you don't get it.

The main point isn't whether or not a given stock brokerage has transaction fees. The point is that stock brokerages shouldn't be arbitrarily restricting retail investors from making trades on specific equities that were freely traded a few days ago.

This is a free market economy. If Robinhood assesses some sort of fee for all normal equities or not, that's fine. APPLY THE RULES EVENLY.

"You can buy BRK-B but you can't buy TSLA."

That's b*!!sh!t. Congresswoman AOC nailed this.

Robinhood is going to get punished for basically applying arbitrary rules to retail investors.

Really looking forward to your reply... This is going to be FUN!

edited January 2021

davidw

maestro64 said:

So the hedge fund guys do not like it when the individual investors pull their resources and use their strategies against them. Now they want to shut down the tools that people are using against them. That’s what happens when you short a stock and other’s feel it has value and drives up the stock. No one should be crying for the hedge fund managers.

 These are the same people who like driving Apple stock down.

You're are being much too generous by calling them "investors". They are more like day traders and every research done have about 97% of them losing money within a year. 

By now, probably every true investor in GameStop have gotten out. The only "investors" buying now are the traders hoping to make a quick buck and maybe some not so bright "investors" that still have to cover their shorts. No investor in their right mind would buy GME at these prices. There are no fundamentals that support this stock at this price or even half of it. What investor would pay $193 for one share of GME when they could buy 1 share of AAPL at $139? Right now there are thousands of these GME "investors" dancing around the few remaining chairs and hoping they are the ones sitting when the music stops. 

And just like I won't cry if a hedge fund loses money by shorting a stock, I won't be shedding a tear when 97% of these "investors" loses their money day trading. The big difference is this, hedge funds are playing with other peoples money, while these "investors" are playing with their own money and most likely borrowing money just to stay in the game.

davidw

mpantone said:

SpamSandwich said:

iadlib said:

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

You don’t understand it? Do you understand that if you choose to use a free stock trading app, you’re playing by their rules? Use a real stockbroker if you don’t like Robinhood. I smelled the stink on their app the first week it came out. “Free” is never really free, is it?

Once again, you don't get it.

The main point isn't whether or not a given stock brokerage has transaction fees. The point is that stock brokerages shouldn't be arbitrarily restricting retail investors from making trades on specific equities that were freely traded a few days ago.

This is a free market economy. If Robinhood assesses some sort of fee for all normal equities or not, that's fine. APPLY THE RULES EVENLY.

"You can buy BRK-B but you can't buy TSLA."

That's b*!!sh!t. Congresswoman AOC nailed this.

Robinhood is going to get punished for basically applying arbitrary rules to retail investors.

Really looking forward to your reply... This is going to be FUN!

Any brokerage house can stop trading a stock based on too much volatility of that stock. This was not arbitrary. There was a valid reason. A reason that even the SEC uses to halt trading of any publicly traded stocks or all publicly traded stocks.

The SEC can halt trading on all stocks just based on too much volatility. And it's been done as recently as last year when all stock trading was halted for a couple of hours, for 3 days in March 2020, due to Corvid 19 concern. Each of those days, the DOW dropped over 7%, which triggered a volatility "circuit breaker" and all trading was halted for an hour or more.  

Plus, many buyers and traders shorting GME were borrowing from their margin accounts to pay for their trades. Basically, the brokerage firm was lending the borrower up to 40% of the value of their stock portfolio. For many, their margin borrowing power got a massive increase from the skyrocketing of GME. If GME were to crash or even just drop 50%, the brokerage firm would be force to sell the borrowers stocks, even at a lost, if the value of the borrowers portfolio dropped below that 40% margin borrowing threshold. And the borrower didn't have any other means of obtaining the money to pay that margin call, if they want to keep their stocks.

Here's run down of what happened, without the conspiracy theory. This might end up with the government knowing less about how Stock Market works, than they do about tech. 

https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/buying-stocks/articles/why-are-brokers-halting-gamestop-trading/ ;

entropys

davidw said:

maestro64 said:

So the hedge fund guys do not like it when the individual investors pull their resources and use their strategies against them. Now they want to shut down the tools that people are using against them. That’s what happens when you short a stock and other’s feel it has value and drives up the stock. No one should be crying for the hedge fund managers.

 These are the same people who like driving Apple stock down.

You're are being much too generous by calling them "investors". They are more like day traders and every research done have about 97% of them losing money within a year. 

By now, probably every true investor in GameStop have gotten out. The only "investors" buying now are the traders hoping to make a quick buck and maybe some not so bright "investors" that still have to cover their shorts. No investor in their right mind would buy GME at these prices. There are no fundamentals that support this stock at this price or even half of it. What investor would pay $193 for one share of GME when they could buy 1 share of AAPL at $139? Right now there are thousands of these GME "investors" dancing around the few remaining chairs and hoping they are the ones sitting when the music stops. 

And just like I won't cry if a hedge fund loses money by shorting a stock, I won't be shedding a tear when 97% of these "investors" loses their money day trading. The big difference is this, hedge funds are playing with other peoples money, while these "investors" are playing with their own money and most likely borrowing money just to stay in the game.

From what I understand it the people holding shorts that represent 140% of shares that are caught by the short and curleys and are leaning on the likes of RobinHood to help them out of the hole they dug for themselves and the reddit crowd are busy filling in on top of them.
The people not their right mind buying the shares are the short sellers who have to make up the difference, and they are fighting over a very small pool of available shares compared with the number of shorts that have come due.
I think the reddit crowd are also well aware of the downside risk but they are in punishment mode and don’t care. 

What is interesting is the apparent moves of those in authority to protect the Wall Street types.

edited January 2021

inspiredcode

entropys said:

How many hedge fund managers have signed the petition?

Once the hedge funds have burned through their doe buying exorbitant shares anyone still holding GME will face a falling stock price. In a way if you were Robinhood you would be worried that a lot of people will blame it.

that said this cancel culture crap has really got to stop.

I don’t care for cancel culture for all the reasons it can be toxic, but I feel this is fine. If people want to band together and save beloved companies that should be allowed. Hedge funds should realize these shorts carry very high risk. History and nostalgia have a very high value. Nothing illegal here except robinhood manipulating the market to try to protect a bad bet made by their wall street friends. 

edited January 2021

maestro64

SpamSandwich said:

iadlib said:

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

You don’t understand it? Do you understand that if you choose to use a free stock trading app, you’re playing by their rules? Use a real stockbroker if you don’t like Robinhood. I smelled the stink on their app the first week it came out. “Free” is never really free, is it?

Actually even some brokers were stopped from trading those stocks as well. Since the shock exchanges got involved. I spoke with my broker which has his own company not one of the big guys and he said he could not buy or sell eithers. A good friend of mine happen to own BB not sure why but he bough at @ $2 and last week was telling me it was going up and where it was and I advised he should consider taking the profits and running. It made no sense why it was up when the fundamentals on the company and market did not change. We talk again this week and I said I felt something was up with this and another stock he had. Then we find out Wednesday what was going on and he attempted to sell his shares through Vanguard and was stopped and BB has already pulled back. It was not just Robinhood who stop investors from buying.

There is going to lawsuits that is for sure, not sure who will sued can not sue individual investors for forcing hedge funds automatic trading platform to buy a stock to cover it shorts, most likely the exchanges and brokerage houses will be sued for not allowing people to dump out to protect their gains. 

It will be interesting to see the dumb idea the government comes up to fix this, who side will they really be on. Yes there is institutional investors but even those are made up of individual investors. Like 401K, IRA, and Pension Fund, in those 3 there is over $1T in the market, those are all individual investors money being managed by institutions. If they favor the hedge fund guys then you know they do not care about the average citizens.

maestro64

davidw said:

maestro64 said:

So the hedge fund guys do not like it when the individual investors pull their resources and use their strategies against them. Now they want to shut down the tools that people are using against them. That’s what happens when you short a stock and other’s feel it has value and drives up the stock. No one should be crying for the hedge fund managers.

 These are the same people who like driving Apple stock down.

You're are being much too generous by calling them "investors". They are more like day traders and every research done have about 97% of them losing money within a year. 

By now, probably every true investor in GameStop have gotten out. The only "investors" buying now are the traders hoping to make a quick buck and maybe some not so bright "investors" that still have to cover their shorts. No investor in their right mind would buy GME at these prices. There are no fundamentals that support this stock at this price or even half of it. What investor would pay $193 for one share of GME when they could buy 1 share of AAPL at $139? Right now there are thousands of these GME "investors" dancing around the few remaining chairs and hoping they are the ones sitting when the music stops. 

And just like I won't cry if a hedge fund loses money by shorting a stock, I won't be shedding a tear when 97% of these "investors" loses their money day trading. The big difference is this, hedge funds are playing with other peoples money, while these "investors" are playing with their own money and most likely borrowing money just to stay in the game.

Hate to tell you day trading is out these day, the only day trader is the high speed trader with automatic systems. Robinhood take the investors money and gives to these high speed traders who then use it to make money and they shave point off the shares before given the Robinhood investor their shares. This is where Robinhood was making it money. Back in the day when day trading was big most people lost their shirts especially when the automatic systems showed up. This put the end to the everyday person trying to day trade. These folks were not trading daily, they were buying share which were heavily shorted which cause the Hedge funds to cover their shorts, what happen was the hedge fund bought more share to cover the shorts instead of selling the short at loose this automatic buying forced the stock up the hedge fund guys were competing against one another to cover their shorts and these investors knew this and used to their advantage.

mike1

InspiredCode said:

entropys said:

How many hedge fund managers have signed the petition?

Once the hedge funds have burned through their doe buying exorbitant shares anyone still holding GME will face a falling stock price. In a way if you were Robinhood you would be worried that a lot of people will blame it.

that said this cancel culture crap has really got to stop.

I don’t care for cancel culture for all the reasons it can be toxic, but I feel this is fine. If people want to band together and save beloved companies that should be allowed. Hedge funds should realize these shorts carry very high risk. History and nostalgia have a very high value. Nothing illegal here except robinhood manipulating the market to try to protect a bad bet made by their wall street friends. 

Wrong on so many levels.

Stock was manipulated by the day traders. There is NOTHING in the actual business of these companies that would support this artificial inflation of the stock price. This is the very definition of market manipulation.

Robinhood had every right to shut down if they suspected inappropriate, illegal or suspicious activity. Trading is stopped on various stocks or the entire market when such volatility exists.

You can bet the SEC will be investigating, but it's going to be the indivudual investors that are investigated for stock manipulation.

Artificially inflating the stock price will do nothing to "save" these companies. They were in trouble and are still in trouble. The value of the stock price does not change that at all.

daalseth

ROTFL
Everyone tries to find The Cause of any particular fiasco. What ONE thing did this. What ONE person can we pin this on. The truth is far deeper, far more pernicious.
Robinhood shares the blame because they've never really been in it for the small investor.
Hedge Fund managers share the blame for building a rigged system that works against the people who actually make the money and build the companies.
The SEC and other regulators share the blame for not overseeing things as tightly as they are supposed to.
But overlooked in this are the people who started this. The group on Reddit that pulled off this classic Pump & Dump scam. They bought in low, and have already cashed out. You can be sure that they are sitting back on their ill gotten wealth laughing at the rubes running around trying to blame everyone but them. 
The reality is the whole system is rigged. There's an old saying in gambling that The House Always Wins. Well, The Market is just another form of gambling and it ain't your house.

edited January 2021

n2macs

SpamSandwich said:

iadlib said:

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

You don’t understand it? Do you understand that if you choose to use a free stock trading app, you’re playing by their rules? Use a real stockbroker if you don’t like Robinhood. I smelled the stink on their app the first week it came out. “Free” is never really free, is it?

The so called “real trading apps” also blocked trades. They are all guilty and they all should be held accountable.

davgreg

I am sure if the whiners bothered to look in the EULA/Terms of Service they consented to when using the app/service they will find they agreed to allow such things happen. Almost every contract/EULA/Terms of Service has a force majeure clause. 

flydog

iadlib said:

I don’t understand how a trading platform can limit your access to purchasing shares of a publicly traded company so long as you have the funds to cover said purchase. It’s not a fraudulent transaction and any volatility it causes in the market is up to the SEC and the markets to deal with. Only the SEC and each individual market can temporarily halt or freeze trading and only under certain circumstances. This reeks of hypocrisy because a bunch of nerds on Reddit figured out how to expose that the market is inherently a fraudulent business. 

Because it's a private company and it can do whatever it wants within the confines of the law and the terms that you agree to when you create an account.

If it helps you understand, if the grocery store doesn't want to sell you bananas then that's their prerogative.