Twist: Robinhood Helping the Rich?

Who said it is all about the money? Well… everyone. Robinhood, a stock-investing app, has limited the trades of stocks. Why? You guessed it. To help the big guns keep their money.

GameStop is a video game company that all the hedge funds did not expect to do very well in stocks.  So, when their stocks rose higher than 822%, from $17.25 at the beginning of the year to a high of $159.18 on Monday, the hedge funds had a major panic.  From January 12 to January 27, it jumped up 1,642%. The hedge funds themselves did not invest too much money into its stocks, and ended up losing money because of it.

GameStop is actually not the only rise in stocks that the hedge funds were not expecting. Other companies rose from what seemed to be a pointless investment to a prime way to make money, including AMC Entertainment Holdings, BlackBerry Ltd., Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., Express Inc., Koss Corp., Naked Brand Group and Nokia Corp. All of these companies have been restricted by Robinhood, and have been turned into “position closing only”, where no more stocks are up for sale. Eventually, Interactive Brokers shifted their options to “liquidation only”, where one cannot sell anything but can turn their profits in for cash.

When the rise in value of the stocks of these companies started, the hedge funds began to panic. Robinhood immediately halted and limited the sale and trade of stocks from these companies, fearing the investors making that much money while they were losing so much.

This action of limiting economic freedom in the stock market has created major upheaval across the United States. Robinhood took the side of the rich, which seems to go against everything it stands for. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, is the voice of many Americans who are upset by this blatant attempt to control the stock market. He says, “Somebody is going to have to explain to me in what world @RobinhoodApp and others literally trying to force a crash by closing the open market is fair? They should all be in jail.”

The control and keeping of people’s money in what they thought was the free stock market has created upheaval and unrest. Robinhood has made hedge funds their priority, when the people of the stock market should be kept at number one. Hedge funds should keep their investors happy to keep money in the stock market flowing and do their best to prevent another crash. Let’s keep economic depressions in our past.