You can now trade GME freely again.
Robinhood is letting users trade all stocks without restrictions again. It’s been just over one week since the app restricted trading of and hid search results for $GME, $AMC and six other “meme stocks” after the Reddit community WallStreetBets caused a $GME gold rush that flipped the stock market upside down.
Rather than uploading a blog post or making an announcement via Twitter, as the company did when it first announced restrictions, Robinhood quietly updated a tab in its help center page that reads “There are currently no temporary limits to increasing your positions.” But the damage is already done. Redditors posting “diamond hands” memes be damned, $GME closed at $63.30 today, a far cry from it’s one-time peak of $483 per share last week — but not too far from the $76.79 per share last Monday that first caused hedge funds to panic.
In an instant, Robinhood’s public image went from platform of the people to Sheriff of Nottingham as major personalities and mobs of users railed against the app’s decision, which CEO Vladimir Tenev said was done to “protect the firm and protect our customers.” Though many downloaded the app to get in on the feeding frenzy, bumping its overall count to just under 3 million, it was also bombarded with negative reviews. Even Apple deleting thousands of negative reviews on the app’s page wasn’t enough to stop it’s near-perfect 4.7/5 rating from plummeting all the way down to 4.0.
Robinhood wasn’t the only platform to curb trading; TD Ameritrade and Interactive Brokers were among several other apps that blocked or restricted trading of meme stocks but have since restored normal access.
On Twitter, Tenev partially blamed the need for restrictions on the two-day trade settlement period, which causes investors and platforms like Robinhood to take on increased risk. This weekend, Robinhood is running an unfortunately timed ad at the Super Bowl called “We Are All Investors.”
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