The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services just published a press release stating Robinhood and Citadel Securities engaged in ‘blunt’ negotiations before the trading of ‘meme stocks’ occurred.
The press release states that talks regarding lowering PFOF (payment for order flow) rates happened just a night before trading restrictions.
The “GameStopped” report issued by the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services greatly details how the NSCC saved Robinhood from defaulting due to failing to meet collateral obligations.
This article is going to highlight key points relating to the ‘meme stock’ halts that occurred in late January of 2021.
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GameStopped report
The GameStopped report highlights Robinhood’s lack of liquidity, conversations between Citadel and Robinhood, and the process leading to the halting of ‘meme stocks’ such as AMC and GameStop.
On January 28th, 2021, Robinhood routed orders to six market makers for equities: Citadel Securities, G1 Execution Services, Morgan Stanley, Two Sigma Securities, Virtu, and Wolverine.
Citadel, Morgan Stanley, and Wolverine are short on AMC to this day.
The conversations between Robinhood and Citadel were tense as the two negotiated the price of PFOF rebate rates and price caps for AMC and GameStop.
Furthermore, Robinhood received a massive waiver of its deposit requirement from the DTCC.
And according to the report, without this waiver, Robinhood would have defaulted on its regulatory collateral obligations.
NSCC officials say the waiver was necessary to avoid systemic risk to the market.
They explained that the extraordinary spike in ‘meme stocks’ contributed to increased clearing fund requirements for several firms.
Brokers halted the buying of AMC, GameStop, and other tickers when short sellers began to close their short positions, causing share prices to skyrocket.
The halting occurred due to a lack of liquidity where certain brokers were unable to cover the minimum collateral requirements.
The DTCC waived a total of $9.7 billion of collateral deposit requirements on January 28, 2021.
Retail feels cheated
Retail investors feel they were robbed when brokers took away the ‘buy’ button by restricting trading in AMC, GameStop, and other ‘meme stocks’.
The DTCC jumped in and saved Robinhood from defaulting, cut Citadel’s losses short, and prevented retail investors bets from reaching maximum potential.
No one has been held accountable for these actions primarily because the system is justifying the actions as saving the market from total collapse.
But the system stole from retail investors to save institutional investors.
Regulators intervened to save institutions while they capped retail investor gains.
Still, hedge funds lost billions of dollars during the process.
GameStop broke Melvin Capital.
The hedge fund was not able to recover from its massive losses and has now shut down.
But Citadel nor Robinhood have faced any severe consequences that money can’t buy them out from.
Retail investors are now looking at our government and regulators as complicit to fraud and market manipulation.
You can view the full detailed report here.
What are your thoughts on the incidents that occurred during this time?
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