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Economy stonks v14, brokergate

https://www.barrons.com/articles/why-did-robinhood-stop-gamestop-trading-51611967696

A little-known intermediary in the process of buying and selling equities forced Robinhood and other brokers to restrict trading in several securities on Thursday, including GameStop, AMC Entertainment, BlackBerry, and Nokia. All have been swept up in the WallStreetBets-fueled short-squeeze phenomenon and have seen intense volatility in recent days.

Theories abounded online about Robinhood—a mobile-first, low-cost brokerage founded on the idea of expanding access to trading to more people—being in league with the “men in suits” at hedge funds on the losing side of those trades. Politicians on Twitter from across the political spectrum condemned the broker’s move. But Robinhood’s provided reason that it needed to restrict trading in those stocks until it could increase its collateral with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, or DTCC, holds water.

Explaining that requires getting into a bit of market plumbing and elements of the trading process that usually don’t get much attention.

When an investor orders their broker—Robinhood or E*Trade, for example—to buy or sell a security, the broker accepts the trade and sends it to an exchange like the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq. The exchange then matches buyers with sellers, and from the investor’s perspective, the transaction is as good as done. But there are still some mechanics that need to be worked out behind the scenes.


Investors may have noticed that the cash proceeds from selling a stock aren’t immediately available to withdraw from their account after a trade is completed—that usually takes a business day or two. Back in the day, that time was spent physically exchanging stock certificates between brokers. Today’s trading volumes make that an impossible task. (Curious readers should learn about the 1960s Paperwork Crisis.)

Today, after a stock exchange completes a trade, it sends the information to the DTCC, which keeps track of brokers’ books. The DTCC is a clearing house, an important part of the financial system. Clearing houses not only process and complete trades in an efficient manner, they help limit systemic risk. The clearing house promises to make good on all trades that happen regardless of what happens to an individual broker.

The DTCC is responsible for transferring ownership of the stock from the seller’s broker to the buyer’s broker—and vice versa for the cash involved. Rather than doing that after every single one of the trillions of dollars of trades each day, the DTCC waits until it can net several trades into “one position per security, per client, per settlement date,” according to its website. The settlement date is the day when the cash and securities involved in a trade actually change hands.

At the settlement date, which falls two days after the investor places their trade, the seller’s broker must deliver the stock being sold and the buyer’s broker must provide the cash. The DTCC guarantees that the transfer will happen and eliminates the risk of a single broker going under rippling across the market.

In exchange, the DTCC collects a fee per trade and requires some collateral from the brokers to ensure they have the assets to complete the transaction. It’s like putting a refundable deposit on a purchase that reduces the middleman’s risk while the package is in the mail, with full payment due once it arrives. The DTCC’s collateral requirements for brokers are calculated by a much more complex formula, based on the specific shares’ notional value, volatility, and other variables.

For a relatively risk-free transaction—in liquid, less volatile stocks like, say, Apple (AAPL) or Microsoft (MSFT)—that collateral requirement could be around the order of 10% of the transaction value. For a stock like GameStop this week, the DTCC’s formula might spit out a collateral requirement several times higher than that because it takes on greater risk. That’s because the DTCC could be on the hook to deliver an asset that’s worth a materially different amount on the settlement date than the trade date if one of the brokers involved can’t complete the transaction.

When traders are using margin to buy, the broker needs to come up with the cash on its own. And when there’s a large imbalance between a broker’s buy and sell orders for a given security, it doesn’t net out as cleanly at the end of the day, meaning more collateral is required.

All of those factors applied to Robinhood and Gamestop on Thursday. The stock traded in a wide range from $112 to $438 on heavy volume, its users were predominantly placing buy orders for the shares, and many were using margin.

And those are the reasons the DTCC asked brokers for more collateral for each such trade. The clearing house didn’t want to be caught with brokers not having the funds they need to settle. Therefore, Robinhood and others restricted buying on these highflying stocks until it could come up with enough cash to pay collateral. Robinhood allowed users to sell the stocks because the selling broker puts up the shares as collateral, not cash.

Since then, the brokerage has drawn down its credit lines at several banks and brought in $1 billion from existing investors to fund additional collateral requirements. On Friday, Robinhood reopened buying of Gamestop and other recently popular stocks.

The DTCC says it processes trillions of dollars of transactions a day, including equities, bonds, mutual funds, and derivatives. It said that collateral requirements for all of its broker clients were $33.5 billion on Thursday, up from $26 billion the day before.
 
Why did he delete his Twitter?

seems like GME might reveal how flawed stock market structure is and maybe lead to a crash. Which is good, but they’ll get bailed out again. Lol.

worst case scenario seems to be that funds need time to settle before they're credited to people's accounts.
 
yes. no one's broke. rh, ibkr, webull, etc seem to have tons of money.

If this is the case, probably smokescreen to the apps blocking meme stocks on Thursday and now pretending they’re doing it to non meme stocks?

Makes me even more pissed that they keep doubling down on their blatant manipulation yesterday. Holding on to GME baby!
 
Why did he delete his Twitter?

seems like GME might reveal how flawed stock market structure is and maybe lead to a crash. Which is good, but they’ll get bailed out again. Lol.
Stool President was going after him on twitter.
 
Why did he delete his Twitter?

seems like GME might reveal how flawed stock market structure is and maybe lead to a crash. Which is good, but they’ll get bailed out again. Lol.
No offense, but if they get bailed out again, I'm feeling that everyone is going to go apeshit, and this country is going to burn.
 
I don’t want the market to crash, obviously — as it is tied to so many Americans wealth. However, my god make some f’in reforms!
 
No offense, but if they get bailed out again, I'm feeling that everyone is going to go apeshit, and this country is going to burn.

I hope this country burns if Wall Street gets bailed out again. We should already be protesting right now because of the blatant market manipulation the past 2 days. Politicians will say once again we need Wall Street to keep economy afloat when in reality, it’s better to start from scratch.
 
I hope this country burns if Wall Street gets bailed out again. We should already be protesting right now because of the blatant market manipulation the past 2 days. Politicians will say once again we need Wall Street to keep economy afloat when in reality, it’s better to start from scratch.
Don’t you know. Socialism for the rich and bootstraps for everyone else.
 
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But seriously, why Rolls-Royce? That has 11m avg volume. Basically no one is trading that. Why on earth would you need to restrict how many shares people can own of Rolls-Royce?
 
Can't wait to see what happens next week. We're storming the citadel brothers.. Robinhood and those hedge fund fucks will probably try to spread misinformation and fake news about people selling. I'm watching the reddit forum of the 5 million strong warriors who will hold the line and make those fucks bleeeeeeeeeed.

tenor.gif


tumblr_ptu8g7iy2M1ru8yv8o1_500.gifv
 
But seriously, why Rolls-Royce? That has 11m avg volume. Basically no one is trading that. Why on earth would you need to restrict how many shares people can own of Rolls-Royce?

Its a smokescreen to make it seem like these apps are in trouble and just didn’t pick on the meme stocks but to random stocks. Part of Wall Street’s plan to hide the manipulation and beat Reddit.
 
Can't wait to see what happens next week. We're storming the citadel brothers.. Robinhood and those hedge fund fucks will probably try to spread misinformation and fake news about people selling. I'm watching the reddit forum of the 5 million strong warriors who will hold the line and make those fucks bleeeeeeeeeed.

tenor.gif


tumblr_ptu8g7iy2M1ru8yv8o1_500.gifv


honestly, you guys are the ones spreading fake news.
 
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