Assuming Robinhood's story was accurate that everyone was trading on margin (at least by default and thus a lot of traders) and that they were approaching some serious questions about if they had enough cash on had to cover the trades / possible losses ... I'm not sure what the right thing to do in that case would be.
Keep everyone trading and possibly run out of cash to cover everything? Or stop trading and possibly hose the folks trying to make trades?
The issue is not just trading on margin, it's trading with unsettled funds, which you can do in a non-margin account, because it's a non issue 99.999% of the time.
Because of T+2 settlement when you buy/sell stock the actual exchange of shares and money only happens 2 business days later. If you sell a stock and then buy a different stock the same day you're trading with money that technically is not in your account yet, even in a cash account.
It's fine because you wrote promissory note to pay $X in 2 days, but you're also holding a promissory note saying you are owed >=$X in 2 days. (And promissory notes to receive/deliver the respective shares). And there's a central clearinghouse enforcing this.
But part of the reason why it's low risk is that the clearinghouse requires brokers to put up large amounts of cash as collateral to ensure they can pay all their promissory notes even if they go bust. They are fairly conservative in their collateral requirements.
So when all your customers are trading a highly volatile stock with a notoriously high rate of failure to deliver (this is a whole other discussion), the clearinghouse gets antsy and may ask you to put up ridiculously large amounts of cash as collateral.
>Because of T+2 settlement when you buy/sell stock the actual exchange of shares and money only happens 2 business days later. If you sell a stock and then buy a different stock the same day you're trading with money that technically is not in your account yet, even in a cash account.
It's to do with T+2 settlement, but not with unsettled funds (funds you got from selling a stock, but hasn't settled yet). Basically, even if the funds were settled (eg. it's been sitting in your account for years), your broker has to put up the deposit on the day of trade, but can't use your money to do it. So if you bought $100 worth of shares and the deposit requirement was 100%, then your broker has to come up with $100 of their own cash (or borrow it from someone) to fulfill the trade.
>but our clearing firm simply cannot afford the cost to settle those trades. We cannot use customer funds to front that cost due to regulation. So the brokerages or the clearing firms have to go into their own pockets to do it. And they simply can't afford the cost of that trade clearance.
Say what? Why would brokers need to put up their own collateral to back customers’ long-settled cash? Because if the risk (to the rest of the market) that the broker doesn’t actually have that cash? That seems seriously messed up.
But wasn’t RH also prohibiting purchase even in non-margin accounts where the funds hadn’t moved at all for months and thus wasn’t going back and forth creating counterparty risk?
There have been several Congressional Hearings since January’s drama, and something definitely doesn’t add up.
Robinhood’s CEO stated, under oath, that they switched off buys of GME following discussions with the DTCC.
In a later hearing, the head of the DTCC stated — again, under oath and on the record — that Robinhood’s decision was entirely their own, and they had never spoken with Robinhood about it.
Someone is lying.
I would urge anyone interested in this (ongoing) saga to read this excellent investigative journalism piece here:
Or, both people are stating the story from their side, and there is context missing.
Robinhood: "We switch off after discussions with the DTCC [about increased reserve requirements which we could not meet]"
DTCC: "It was entirely their decision, we never spoke to them about [the explicit actions they would have to take. It's definitely a coincidence that most other brokers did the exact same thing]"
It’s clearly ambiguous. Retail investors were screwed over by someone, and there are thousands of people still following the situation, demanding answers.
Take a read of that article I linked, it gives an excellent and impartial summary of many of the conflicts of interests affecting all parties involved. It also brings up numerous issues I never see discussed here, given most people are only aware of the “mainstream narrative” — there is much more evidence being uncovered than most people are aware of.
That doesn't seem clear. Possible, but not for sure. Too much of this reads like hardcore conspiracy theorists, but maybe that's just biasing me against the legit bits.
They disabled the buy button when GME was over 400. But now the buy button is back and you can get twice as many shares for the same money. Sounds like a bargain!
The price was going up by $10s of dollars per minute in January.
It was a short squeeze of unprecedented scale — the first widespread opportunity for wealth redistribution of its kind, thanks largely to social media.
Where “Occupy Wall Street” failed, “Liquidate Wall Street” was winning.
The hedge funds blatantly rigged the public trading system to avoid bankruptcy. I can’t believe so many people still defend them.
They could have also said that they'll stop giving everyone secret margin trading accounts and tell users that any trade (due to market volatility) will take 2-3 days to close.
The secret margin accounts is a red herring. They need to put up deposit with the DTCC even for stocks that's "paid"[1] with settled funds, and they can't use customer funds for it. So if you bought 1 share worth $100 and the deposit requirement was 100%, then robinhood has to come up with $100 of their own cash (or borrow it from someone) to fulfill the trade.
[1] quotes used because settlement actually happens 2 days after the trade is made.
Other brokers without liquidity issues enacted similar policies. But you’re right, the fault doesn’t lie with them.
The blame should go toward the DTCC who increased their margin requirements on buyers for seemingly no reason other than to coerce everyone into stopping retail investors from squeezing the rich shorts.
>[T+2 settlement] means that the seller takes two days of credit risk to the buyer. I see a stock trading at $400 on Monday, I push the button to buy it, I buy it from you at $400. On Tuesday the stock drops to $20. On Wednesday you show up with the stock that I bought on Monday, and you ask me for my $400. I am no longer super jazzed to give it to you. I might find a reason not to pay you. The reason might be that I’m bankrupt, from buying all that stock for $400 on Monday.
The future price of the stock has nothing to do with anything. If I want a $400 stock, and you agree to sell it to me for $400, it is a done deal, is it not? The order is filled, regardless of settlement time or future price changes.
>The future price of the stock has nothing to do with anything
The quote in my previous comment covers that, specifically:
>I am no longer super jazzed to give it to you. I might find a reason not to pay you. The reason might be that I’m bankrupt, from buying all that stock for $400 on Monday.
Yes, I read it. You can’t cancel an order in settlement because you’re “no longer super jazzed”, else every order where the stock price increased would be cancelled by the seller so they could sell again at the higher price. Do you have any evidence that orders can be cancelled in settlement?
>Do you have any evidence that orders can be cancelled in settlement
It's not that they'll show up and say "on second thought I don't want that stock anymore, please cancel my order". It's that they'll go bankrupt in the meantime. This was already mentioned in the original comment.
>The broker doesn’t have some way to credibly lock up the money
They do, that's what the collateral is for. From the linked article:
>The way that stock markets mostly deal with this risk is a system of clearinghouses. The stock trades are processed through a clearinghouse. The members of the clearinghouse are big brokerage firms—“clearing brokers”—who send trades to the clearinghouses and guarantee them. The clearing brokers post collateral with the clearinghouses: They put up some money to guarantee that they’ll show up to pay off all their settlement obligations. The clearing brokers have customers—institutional investors, smaller brokers—who post collateral with the clearing brokers to guarantee their obligations. The smaller brokers, in turn, have customers of their own—retail traders, etc.—and also have to make sure that, if a customer buys stock on a Monday, she’ll have the cash to pay for it on Wednesday.
The catch here seems to be that the broker can't use customer funds for collateral (see my other comments in this thread), so the broker has to come up with the money themselves by drawing on lines of credit. If those lines of credit run dry, then they can't take any more orders.
Right, that’s what’s confusing. To rephrase, I’m hearing that brokers can execute some primitive operation <lock up> which correctly and credibly persuades the financial market that $X is available to settle a transaction.
But <lock up> is only a “valid operation” when executed with “the broker’s own funds”. Why? To whom would “locking up $X from broker funds” be a valid operation, but “locking up $X from client funds” wouldn’t be?
Your comments are saying “that’s just how it is”, but that’s not a reason. Is it a wholly arbitrary operation handed down from on high that accomplishes nothing? Is it a matter of the financial system not being able to trust client-originating money?
>Is it a matter of the financial system not being able to trust client-originating money?
Yeah pretty much. If every trader had their funds sitting in one place (with the clearinghouse or the fed), then the clearinghouse wouldn't need a deposit system since they can easily validate whether everyone has the funds.
>I still don’t get the model whereby <lock up> is unsafe with client funds but not broker funds.
"unsafe" is the wrong word here. That would imply the clearinghouse doesn't think the collateral is as good if it came from the customer rather than the broker. This isn't the case. The requirement to use broker funds is not to protect the clearinghouse, it's to protect the customer in case the clearinghouse seizes the collateral (as they're allowed to do) when things go south. By using broker (or their creditor's funds), the customer's funds aren't at risk.
So ... the clearinghouse is perfectly capable of seizing collateral and running off without delivering the promised shares, but client funds "aren't at risk" when the broker puts up separate collateral, even though the clearinghouse could seize that just the same?
Why wouldn't they be? You said the clearinghouse could seize the client purchase funds just as well as the collateral. Why couldn't they seize both? At the very least, it's a bizarre threat model that the clearinghouse can seize both, but it will only ever seize collateral (which is what your claim requires to make sense).
That is, it's some kind of capricious being capable of seizing and willing to seize any money trusted to them, with no recourse, but somehow the presence of collateral makes it all better, even though that could be seized too.
>Why wouldn't they be? You said the clearinghouse could seize the client purchase funds just as well as the collateral. Why couldn't they seize both?
Regulations? Presumably customer funds are segregated from company funds, so the company and the clearinghouse can't raid it if they need money.
>At the very least, it's a bizarre threat model that the clearinghouse can seize both, but it will only ever seize collateral (which is what your claim requires to make sense).
>That is, it's some kind of capricious being capable of seizing and willing to seize any money trusted to them, with no recourse, but somehow the presence of collateral makes it all better, even though that could be seized too.
by "seize" I don't mean the clearinghouse can walk into the offices (or bank accounts) of any of their member and grab whatever they want. They're seizing (or more accurately, refusing to return) the deposit that the member sent on the day of trade.
>Regulations? Presumably customer funds are segregated from company funds, so the company and the clearinghouse can't raid it if they need money.
Okay, and again, if "regulations" are enough for one case, why not the other? If a "regulation" can prevent the clearinghouse from holding on to asset they're not entitled to, why not use that instead of requiring the broker to put up money that will compensate the customer when the CH holds on to an asset they're not entitled to?
>by "seize" I don't mean the clearinghouse can walk into the offices (or bank accounts) of any of their member and grab whatever they want. They're seizing (or more accurately, refusing to return) the deposit that the member sent on the day of trade.
>Okay, and again, if "regulations" are enough for one case, why not the other? If a "regulation" can prevent the clearinghouse from holding on to asset they're not entitled to, why not use that instead of requiring the broker to put up money that will compensate the customer when the CH holds on to an asset they're not entitled to?
But the clearinghouse is entitled to it. The clearinghouse member's collateral is used to make up the difference (the credit risk) should the member fail to pay the required amount on the day of settlement. If you prohibit the clearinghouse from seizing it, then that kills the point of the collateral.
Yes, obviously the CH should seize assets they’re entitled to. I think that you forgot we were talking about the case where they seize money they’re not entitled to. (Which is how we got to talking about the need to protect the client from that, and why the broker has to put up the extra collateral, and how “regulations” stop that money from being misappropriated but somehow not the client funds.)
I think we’re going in circles. And if I may give some unsolicited feedback, if I understood this topic as well as you’re claiming to, I probably would have given answers that avoided reaching that point. If I didn’t, I would have confessed as much, earlier in the thread, once I started giving your answers.
Robinhood is and has been manipulative and predatory for years.
Arguing that Robinhood did illegal things "for the benefit of their banking partners" or whatever other conspiracy theory you're suggesting is just that, a conspiracy theory.
Let Robinhood be punished for the terrible things they have actually done instead of pointing at provably-false boogeymen.
Brokers have a duty of care and I can imagine Finra investigating if they took good care of their clients during this period, no matter the reason behind it.
Suggesting that a group should be investigated for "their actions" without providing any specifics is straight out of the conspiracy-theory playbook.
Any rebuttal is easily countered with "that's not the action I was talking about. I was referring to their other illegal actions."
You're setting up a non-falsifiable argument, which is the basis of a conspiracy theory. You're throwing out non-specified accusations and expecting your non-specified accusations to be disproven.
I'm out of the loop on what Robinhood did, and the news articles on this fine seem to be a bit vague. What did they do that is manipulative and predatory?
1. They released a "checking account" that they claimed was FDIC and/or SPIC insured when it was not. (yes, they backed off of this one when they got caught).
2. They've gamified buying/selling stocks using addictive dark patterns (like confetti explosions). FOMO-inspiring push notifications are another example here.
3. They have such a terrible level of support for a product which involves people's real money.
4. They let people start trading options without any of the due-diligence typically performed.
5. They released an initial options product which was quite literally "Do you think this stock is going to go UP or DOWN?"
6. Their entire product is based on people having margin accounts that do not know that they have margin accounts.
7. Their Payment for Order Flow is (or at least was) significantly higher than industry standard.
Overall, their business model is taking a variety of complex financial instruments and wrapping them up in lipstick to sell to people who overwhelmingly do not understand the thing they are actually buying (or selling).
I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple but I'm also multi-tasking at the moment.
Edit:
I forgot about the "infinite money" "glitch", which was a situation explicitly called out in regulation as prohibited (regarding counting outstanding margin credit as assets when calculating margin credit)
> 7. Their Payment for Order Flow is (or at least was) significantly higher than industry standard.
Just to elaborate a bit, with payment for order flow the broker essentially gets a kickback for executing a trade with a particular firm. They pass on part of the kickback to the customer as a rebate, and keep some of it for themselves.
Robinhood was (is?) keeping a bigger cut for themselves than other brokers who do payment for order flow (practically all retail brokers at this point, I guess), while advertising that they have the best execution.
If I remember right, they didn't get dinged for keeping a bigger cut because that's not necessarily illegal, they got dinged for lying about it - you can't say you have the best execution in the industry if you're taking more hidden fees than everyone else.
Many of your points were being lauded as good things just a year ago. "Robinhood made advanced financial instruments accessible to the average Joe" now that the average joe has continuously shot himself in the foot, people are realizing it might not have been the best idea.
How's this for some proposed legislation/regulation: Anyone who wants to use a share trading service has to first complete a one month "training period" where they use the service with virtual money only. The UI would be exactly the same, but you couldn't top-up or cash-out your balance.
The catch, though, is that you "fail" this training period if you don't make a profit (or enough trades) during that month. You are also prevented from attempting another training period with that service (or any other service) for another 11 months.
This would have the dual effect of locking out the large proportion of users who don't know what they are doing, and also preventing a sudden influx of users from taking advantage of (or falling victim to) some meme scheme that generates a lot of short-term media attention.
Making money on trades within a month doesn't tell you whether you know what you're doing. It only tells you if you're lucky.
We should not be encouraging day trading. A better test would be if you put the money in non-penny/non-meme stocks and didn't touch it for the remainder of the month.
The FDIC-insured nonsense alone perplexes me. There is no web to spin here that favors them.
Did they really think they could get away with this? Or did they have a severe cascade of miscommunication? It is incredibly irresponsible and careless behavior either way.
It's neither good nor bad, but robinhood also simplified the UX to quote the bid ask midpoint as the "price", then attracted a great many poorly informed speculators who like to trade illiquid options on shitstonks with wide spreads, who then complain the "price" moves when they submit order. Outrageous front running!
The combination of robinhood's ineptness and their users ignorance created an environment in which a lot of crazy thrived.
They are paid to route their order flow through the same firm that is heavily invested in shorting GameStop. The specific action I’m referring to is the banning of buying any more shares of $GME. Assuming everyone was playing by the rules, there should be no reason why margin requirements would increase for buyers of a stock but not for the shorts whose collective positions had recently become net-negative in the $10,000,000,000+ range.
Robinhood may have simply been coerced to do this, but regardless, it eroded my trust in their ability to provide me with any share I want in any quantity I can afford. I and many other retail investors switched to bigger firms that won’t have liquidity issues, or enact arbitrary restrictions on stock purchases because of those issues or their close relationships with the billionaires on the other side of the trade.
> no reason why margin requirements would increase for buyers of a stock but not for the shorts
There are tons of reasons why (counter-party risk, correlated risk of brokerages with high exposure, T+2 settlement, etc). You seem particularly keen on ignoring them though.
> Robinhood may have simply been coerced to do this, but regardless
Please stop ignoring known facts in favor of your conspiracy theory.
> I and many other retail investors switched to bigger firms that won’t have liquidity issues
It is completely logical that larger brokerages will be able to weather liquidity issues more easily. If this was super important to you, going with the discount brokerage was a poor decision in the first place.
>there should be no reason why margin requirements would increase for buyers of a stock but not for the shorts
source for margin requirement only increasing for longs but not shorts?
Some non-nefarious explanations I can think off the top of my head:
* hedge funds and their prime brokers has much easier access to credit than retail brokerages, which allow them fulfill their deposit obligations than a discount brokerage
* since the hedge funds shorted GME a long time ago, the trades were already settled, so they're not subject to any deposit obligations (since deposit obligations only exist for unsettled trades)
> which allow them fulfill their deposit obligations than a discount brokerage
Not even just easier access to new capital, but you can be sure they are able to move money faster than someone doing an ACH transaction to Robinhood that would take multiple days to actually settle.
They didn’t do anything illegal during that time. There is nothing illegal about restricting highly volatile equities pretty much every brokerage does this. Don’t know how many times this has to be said here before people stop making this accusation
