GameStop shares surge after Robinhood eases trading restrictions

GameStop shares are surging again ahead of U.S. markets opening on Friday as online brokerage Robinhood eases restrictions on the purchase of certain shares. Robinhood had been faced with threats of a boycott from some Reddit users at the Wallstreetbets forum, who had bid up GameStop's shares prior to the trading ban.

"Robinhood could have changed the rules, but a complete restriction on trading was wrong and that is why we are seeing AOC and Ted Cruz on the same side of that argument," noted Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, in a Friday research note.

Already, the turmoil has sparked at least one lawsuit, with Rosen Law Firm saying on Thursday that it is "investigating potential securities claims on behalf of those who lost money" using Robinhood "resulting from allegations that Robinhood may have engaged in illegal market manipulation."

I’ll give you a parallel example from a client of mine who was doing IT work for a small energy company a few years ago. The company did oil/gas drilling in places like Texas, Pennsylvania and the Dakotas. Here’s the problem the energy company faced — which prompted them to hire my client in the first place ...

1. The company had hundreds of pieces of equipment all over the place. This included trucks, drilling rigs, lift equipment, tanks, etc.

2. As energy prices change and market conditions change, drilling operations are often forced to change fairly quickly.

3. When conditions changed, the company was often forced to make decisions about its equipment in certain locations. For example: “Should we move Equipment X from Texas to North Dakota, or lease it to another company in New Mexico and lease Equipment Y from a local outfit to do the same job in North Dakota?” The first option let them control their own resources, while the second option cost them less money.

4. As a result of this scenario playing out many times, the company ended up owning and leasing a mix of equipment that was getting increasingly difficult to track and manage.

5. It reached the point of absurdity around 2012 when they started a new operation in Pennsylvania and leased a drilling rig from a local outfit. It turned out it was THEIR OWN rig they were leasing. Over the course of 12-18 months it has changed hands several times. They leased it to Company A in Texas ... who then leased it to Company B in North Dakota ... who then moved it to Pennsylvania and leased it to Company C ... who needed it temporarily while they were waiting delivery of their new equipment ... who then leased it back to the original owner when their new equipment arrived and they didn’t need it anymore.

One piece of equipment ... multiple leases ... multiple lease holders ... multiple transactions.

That process was much more complicated because you’re dealing with a physical objects that had to be moved from one place to another. Imagine how much easier it is when you’re “leasing” electronic assets.

While I have come up to speed on the overall strategy of wealthy hedge funders Strategy in Predatory Shorting stocks, and the Strategy of a cooperating social media group of individual Retail Investors operating together to defeat the Predatory Short ploy, I do not know about the tactic of making Stock Trading Application Software user unfriendly slowing and obstructing necessary orders to counter ongoing Predatory Short Sale moves.

I'm sure they can make it difficult to execute counter moves it the "game".

"Ameritrade is auto filling the the price box with the BID number. It's impossible to get a sell order at anything other then the BID posted to the system unless you use a conditional bid. Highly unusual, makes it easier to bid down then up. I was just putting a sale order on to keep it committed."

Seems as if they are using ad hoc 'circuit-breakers' on the fly, short of actually circuit-breaking, which who knows maybe we could get there in the last hour. Oh wait it's after 3:25 just now, forget it, it's on like Donkey Kong:

Circuit breakers will kick in and halt trading at the following levels:

Level Action
Level 1: The S&P 500 declines
7% from its closing price the day before Trading is halted for 15 minutes, unless it’s after 3:25 p.m. Eastern time.
Level 2: A drop of 13% Trading is halted for 15 minutes, unless it’s after 3:25 p.m. Eastern time.
Level 3: A drop of 20% Marketwide trading is halted for the rest of the day.

"At the end of the day you have $3 worth of transactions using the same one dollar. The transactions are 300% of the available currency." Is this supposed to be a problem?"

It wouldn't be if that was the case but I don't think that's what happened with GME.

Either way the shorts went down on this one big time.

I don't know what to think about these reports of TD suspending GME, disappearing watch lists, etc.

I'm on TD throughout the day and could have bought or sold at any time.

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Level	Action
Level 1: The S&P 500 declines 7% from its closing price the day before	Trading is halted for 15 minutes, unless it’s after 3:25 p.m. Eastern time.
Level 2: A drop of 13%	Trading is halted for 15 minutes, unless it’s after 3:25 p.m. Eastern time.
Level 3: A drop of 20%	Marketwide trading is halted for the rest of the day.