Article: Robinhood Gets Ready for the Meme Stock World It Created

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Robinhood Gets Ready for the Meme Stock World It Created

Annie Massa, 14 July 2021

Hi all, it’s Annie from Bloomberg’s investing team. Soon, Robinhood Markets Inc. will go public. The debut—which could happen in the coming weeks—will see Robinhood entrust its share price to the same retail investors who have been using its app to roil markets.

The free stock trading app has been around for eight eventful years. During the pandemic, Robinhood traders congregated on Reddit message boards and drove wild swings in the price of companies like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Then, when Robinhood put limits on customer purchases of those stocks, the startup incurred social media wrath, along with some lawsuits. Continue reading “Article: Robinhood Gets Ready for the Meme Stock World It Created”

Article: Anti-Money Laundering Issues, Robinhood Crypto To Pay Fine

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Anti-Money Laundering Issues, Robinhood Crypto To Pay Fine

Syed Ahad, 08 July 2021

Anti-Money Laundering Issues Robinhood Crypto to Pay $15M fine Over Security to resolve a legal dispute with NYDFS (New York State Department of Financial Services) over charges related to crypto unit’s handling of cybersecurity and anti-money laundering.

The $15 million fine by New York State is the newest in a series of consequences to hit Robinhood. It also highlights the governing risk of operating in the crypto circle. Continue reading “Article: Anti-Money Laundering Issues, Robinhood Crypto To Pay Fine”

Article: Money Stuff: Pump and Dump and Pull the Rug

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Money Stuff: Pump and Dump and Pull the Rug

Matt Levine, 01 July 2021

Here’s a thing you can do. You start a company and sell some stock to the public. You say “we are a good company and we plan to do good things, give us money to do them.” You sell, say, 10% of the company to the public at a low price. You keep the other 90% for yourself, as the founder of the company. Then you start putting out press releases saying “we did a bunch of good things!” These press releases are not true. Also you buy a bit of the publicly traded stock for yourself, to create volume and move the price up. Investors read the press releases and see the buying activity, and they think the stock is good. So they buy it. The stock — the 10% that is publicly traded — goes up. The price is now high. Then what you do is, you sell your stock — the 90% that you kept — at the new high price. Then you close up the company and move on to your next scam. Continue reading “Article: Money Stuff: Pump and Dump and Pull the Rug”

Article: Robinhood’s Luster Stained Again With a Record $70 Million Fine

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Robinhood’s Luster Stained Again With a Record $70 Million Fine

Annie Massa and Benjamin Bain, 30 June 2021

Robinhood Markets Inc. unleashed a revolution, marshaling throngs of new traders to financial markets in an upside-down year. But the free trading app’s breakneck growth hurt the same small-time investors it sought to empower.

That’s the accusation leveled by Wall Street’s self-funded watchdog, which extracted almost $70 million from the brokerage in a record settlement Wednesday, including a $57 million fine and about $12.6 million in payments to aggrieved customers. It follows Robinhood’s meteoric rise against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and the frenzy over hot stocks such as GameStop Corp. that warped the realm of retail trading. Continue reading “Article: Robinhood’s Luster Stained Again With a Record $70 Million Fine”

Article: FINRA Orders Record Financial Penalties Against Robinhood Financial LLC

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FINRA Orders Record Financial Penalties Against Robinhood Financial LLC
Firm Ordered to Pay Approximately $70 Million for Systemic Supervisory Failures and Significant Harm Suffered by Millions of Customers
WASHINGTON—FINRA announced today that it has fined Robinhood Financial LLC $57 million and ordered the firm to pay approximately $12.6 million in restitution, plus interest, to thousands of harmed customers. The sanctions represent the largest financial penalty ever ordered by FINRA and reflect the scope and seriousness of the violations. In determining the appropriate sanctions, FINRA considered the widespread and significant harm suffered by customers, including millions of customers who received false or misleading information from the firm, millions of customers affected by the firm’s systems outages in March 2020, and thousands of customers the firm approved to trade options even when it was not appropriate for the customers to do so.

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Article: How the GameStop Hustle Worked

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How the GameStop Hustle Worked

Lucy Komisar, 22 June 2021

I have written previously for the Prospect about the frenzy over GameStop (GME), the video game and electronics company. By now, you know the story. Millions of retail investors made the stock soar by over 1,000 percent in January 2021. This brought disaster upon a handful of hedge funds that had bet on GameStop’s stock to drop. According to Markets Insider, one analyst estimated losses in February of roughly $19 billion. The hedge fund Melvin Capital reportedly closed out its position after taking a drubbing of 51 percent. Another fund, Maplelane, lost 40 percent.

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Matt Taibbi: Let the Apes Have Wall Street

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Let the Apes Have Wall Street
Matt Taibbi, 10 June 2021
The much-publicized war over “meme stocks” drags a longstanding Wall Street ripoff out of the shadows, to hilarious results

On CNBC’s Fast Money last week, anchor Melissa Lee appeared to mention the unmentionable. She was talking with Tim Seymour, CEO of Seymour Asset Management, who made offhand mention of the hedge funds shorting now-infamous stocks like AMC and GameStop. “Look, there are a lot of short sellers out there who have been borrowing stock they didn’t have,” Seymour said.

“Naked shorts, yeah,” said Lee.

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Article: “Get Shorty” – FINRA Requests Comment on Proposed Significant Changes to Short Position and Stock Loan Reporting

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“Get Shorty” – FINRA Requests Comment on Proposed Significant Changes to Short Position and Stock Loan Reporting

Sidley Austin LLP, 07 June 2021

On June 4, 2021, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) published Regulatory Notice 21-19 (the Notice), which requests comment on certain significant proposed changes to short position and stock loan reporting. Currently, FINRA Rule 4560 generally requires clearing firms/prime brokers that are FINRA members to report to FINRA twice per month aggregate settled short positions in firm and customer accounts, subject to certain exceptions. The short interest data collected by FINRA includes the reporting firm’s current aggregate settled short positions for each security and any short position changes at the firm since the prior reporting period. FINRA has requested comment on proposals that would, among other things, (i) increase the frequency of short interest reporting from twice per month to weekly or even daily; (ii) require clearing firms to report synthetic short exposure (e.g., long puts/short calls) in firm and customer accounts; (iii) require clearing firms to report loan obligations resulting from arranged financing and enhanced lending programs; (iv) require clearing firms to report to FINRA for regulatory purposes a report of daily allocations of fail to deliver positions under Rule 204(d) of Regulation SHO; and (v) consider requiring FINRA member firms to report to FINRA (for regulatory purposes but with an eye toward eventual public dissemination) certain information on stock loans.

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Article: What is market manipulation?

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What is market manipulation?

Thomas Dixon, 25 May 2021

“The market is manipulated by big sharks.”

“The price isn’t moving when it should be.”

And a lot more. That’s how people on the internet speak about stock manipulation or market manipulation. But, what is it, really?

What is manipulation?
Psychologically speaking, manipulation is a form of social control that uses indirect, misleading, or underhanded techniques to alter the behavior or opinion of others. Such tactics could be called exploitative and devious since they further the manipulator’s objectives at the cost of others. Continue reading “Article: What is market manipulation?”

Article: SEC chair Gensler says agency will enforce rules ‘aggressively’ against bad actors

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SEC chair Gensler says agency will enforce rules ‘aggressively’ against bad actors

Bob Pisani, 20 May 2021

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said he would be aggressively pursuing bad financial actors who were “playing with working families’ savings.”

Gensler made his remarks at a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority conference with Robert Cook, president and CEO of FINRA. FINRA is the agency that regulates broker-dealers and exchanges.

As he did in his recent Congressional testimony, Gensler emphasized that enforcement would be a key part of protecting the public.

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Anonymous Witness: GTII & FNGR In Deep Doo Doo

Tip

Its not done by Me way to much details.and zero errors BUT a great job

$GTII Naked Short Squeeze – Ultimate DD from GTII

Today GTII was Posted on REG SHO list. Means they are short so Much they cant hide it anymore. And the brokers cannot look the other way IT must be cleaned it. THE END IS NEAR. Today’s short was 300,000 out of 500,000 that traded wonder why it has taken so long. Maybe its was the 100’s of calls to SEC and FINRA

Continue reading “Anonymous Witness: GTII & FNGR In Deep Doo Doo”

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