> there’s more than enough conflict of interest and unprecedented behavior to call for an investigation
Fair. I don't think anyone is reasonably calling for investigations to be halted. At the very least, there is public education required.
But there is a difference between saying "whoah, that's weird" and the combination of trading on it, encouraging others to trade on it, spreading one's hypothesis with zero facts and calling everyone who points out the issues with one's argument [1] a shill. There was a lot of the latter.
[1] With respect to why "fully cleared non-margin cash accounts" got restricted, it's because the bottleneck was clearing collateral. Not Robinhood's margin risk. Clearinghouses don't care about how a trade was financed. They care about the risk of (a) the broker going under and (b) the collateral being insufficient to settle the trades. When their risk limits get hit, the broker has to reduce flow and/or pony up.
Fair. I don't think anyone is reasonably calling for investigations to be halted. At the very least, there is public education required.
But there is a difference between saying "whoah, that's weird" and the combination of trading on it, encouraging others to trade on it, spreading one's hypothesis with zero facts and calling everyone who points out the issues with one's argument [1] a shill. There was a lot of the latter.
[1] With respect to why "fully cleared non-margin cash accounts" got restricted, it's because the bottleneck was clearing collateral. Not Robinhood's margin risk. Clearinghouses don't care about how a trade was financed. They care about the risk of (a) the broker going under and (b) the collateral being insufficient to settle the trades. When their risk limits get hit, the broker has to reduce flow and/or pony up.