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> "Not being able to transact GME" is one thing, but they disabled the ability to buy, and kept the ability to sell. It wasn't a symmetric freeze - it was a deliberate action that could only have one outcome on the stock price. Because Robinhood didn't have enough margin to keep buying GME. But if you sold GME, that reduced the margin Robinhood had to keep. ------- In other words: Robinhood has no more money to buy GME on behalf of its customers. It could sell however, because selling unwound Robinhood's GME position. Robinhood (and Robinhood's partners) are "on the hook" for all GME for the 2-days in the T-2 transaction period of modern US trading law. Trades take 2 days to take place, so somebody needs to be "the risky bagholder" whenever a stock's price changes dramatically. Robinhood only had enough money to support X amount of buys. When that money ran out, Robinhood was unable to buy, and could only sell GME. Of course, this only happened for 2 days as the stocks / money exchanged hands. But 2 days is apparently an eternity and none of these stock buyers were buying GME for the long term, just for the hype of it all. So it was all over by the time Robinhood was able to buy again. |  | |
I'm not confused why they did what they did. I understand the situation they were in. I'm saying they shouldn't have done it, and that there is an obvious conflict of interest when there's a short squeeze on hedge funds going on, and Robin Hood's paying customers are hedge funds. Stock freezes happen. They are, all things considered, fairly routine affairs. This was not a stock freeze - it was a company that got out over its skis, ran out of money, and screwed their users to ~unf*ck the situation~ unwind their position. | | | |
> I'm saying they shouldn't have done it They had no choice. They literally couldn't obtain any more GME stock. You cannot squeeze blood out of a stone. What do you want Robinhood to do? The GME situation got into a "sold out" situation. Much like how a toy-store runs out of Furbies back in the 90s, Robinhood ran out of GME-stock to sell to its customers. They would allow "selling", because Robinhood can then obtain that customer's GME stock, and then give it to another customer almost immediately. ------------ All of this margins and stuff is probably just overcomplicating things. You're basically getting mad at toy stores for running out of Furbies, PS5 (or whatever fad-toy is available) during Christmas. Sold-out means sold-out, they can't sell you anymore. But they were willing to accept sell orders (aka: buy GME stocks from others), because that would replenish their stocks of GME to sell to other customers. If some PS5 scalper came up to (insert store here) saying "I wanna sell my PS5 at market prices", of course the toy-store would buy the PS5 (and immediately sell it to the next customer for a higher price). | | | |
> The GME situation got into a "sold out" situation. Much like how a toy-store runs out of Furbies back in the 90s, Robinhood ran out of GME-stock to sell to its customers. This is a poor analogy. So long as there is a large enough float, which is a requirement to be listed on some exchanges, there should always be stock to buy and sell. Don't compare it to something else that's commonplace and misleading. I am aware of the margin requirements and what happened with DTCC and am purposefully avoiding that more complicated subject only to point out how much I dislike your analogy. | | | |
> This is a poor analogy. So long as there is a large enough float, which is a requirement to be listed on some exchanges, there should always be stock to buy and sell. Robinhood didn't have the money / collateral to obtain any more shares. As far as Robinhood is concerned, GME was sold out for that time period. It really is actually that simple. No shares for Robinhood meaning no new shares for Robinhood customers. In 2 days time, Robinhood T+2 settlements occurred and everything cleared up. Except the meme-stock buyers already lost interest because they had the attention span of gnats. > how much I dislike your analogy. Care to explain why its a bad analogy? The only meaningful difference I can think of is the whole T+2 settlement thing (but that's very much like "The next delivery of Furbies is in 2 days", yall can buy Furbies then). Perhaps this is stretching the analogy too far now but... the fundamental situation seems to be solid. | | | |
Y'all are actually arguing two different things. You're saying it's unavoidable and understandable for a company of Robinhoods size. Let's also avoid calling retail stock buyers "meme-stock buyers", now a year removed from that whole event it's plain to see that many of those people were acting altruistically. The other poster is saying outcomes matter more and that the perception and promises you make to users matter. Both valid points, but Robinhood losing their ass to perception, their direct fault or being the victim of a crappy system, is just the way the cookie crumbles. There is a play here which Robinhood hasn't considered: own up to it and build a plan to be reliable to retail investors and use realistic messaging while doing so. Their CEO is apologized but they've failed to unveil how they intend to be an ally to retail investors in the future: https://news.yahoo.com/robinhood-ceo-apologizes-restricting-... | | | |
I am aware of that, and that is Robinhood being unable to manage their collateral requirements in order to continue trading GME. There were other brokers that managed to do it just fine. Robinhood messed up here. Really I think the DTCC is who messed up, but that's a much larger discussion. The reason I dislike the analogy is because brokers aren't (typically) supposed to run out of shares to buy and sell. Retail traders don't think of trying different brokers for availability like you might trying different toy stores. The point of having a large enough float is so that you can continue trading the stock. Market makers exist to provide liquidity. It's supposed to keep trading, and only some brokers like Robinhood were unable to manage this. | | | |
Personally speaking, I blame the customers. They are paying for $0 trades to a very, very small trading firm with well-known trade-execution problems months / years before the GME instance. No serious trader actually trusted Robinhood, and nobody was surprised when Robinhood's trading ability was shown to be so weak in that timeframe. There were many respectable banks with much stronger finances who were able to support the GME-rush. It was just the small guys without much $$$$ who failed, like Robinhood. -------- If you did a bit of research, you would have found Interactive Brokers (for instance). I'm not a customer of IB, but they have plenty of online material for what exactly you're paying for. And that is, trade execution. It matters, especially in times of trouble / times of risk. The stronger the bank, the better their ability to continue operations during weird times. > The reason I dislike the analogy is because brokers aren't (typically) supposed to run out of shares to buy and sell. Except they do. All the time when bubbles pop and other crisis form. Good luck selling stocks during the crash of (whatever). When the stock market is crashing, there's no buyers, so the price keeps dropping and dropping. Without any buyers, you will never be matched and you'll never be able to sell until its too late. Understanding these mechanics is very important to any market participant. "Flash crashes" with stop-loss orders are particularly lulzy. Your stock is automatically put up for a sale on a flash-crash. There's no buyers, so you sell the stock at a grossly lower price than expected (when some savvy buyer finally decides the price is low enough). That's when you're matched up. By the time you look at the stock, the "flash crash" is over, your stock is randomly sold and at a bad price. Etc. etc. Its annoying, but these sorts of events happen all the time, and its important to remember the mechanics of buying/selling stocks at all times when trading. | | | |
Wait... What? You are blaming customers for being... customers? You have repeated multiple times that Robinhood essentially ran out of money. But then finally you mentioned why people are leaving... Because they don't trust Robinhood. It doesn't matter why they stopped trading, it simply matters that they did. | | | |
The customers aren't to blame, but it's a little unfair to blame Robin Hood for what amounted to a black swan event. One of the main reasons they ran out of capital in this case was not because of the volume of trading, it was because of the one sidedness of the trades (lots of buys) and all being on one stock. RH's margin requirements skyrocketed because so much of their liability was concentrated in one stock. Risk (and this margin requirements) go up the more the risk is focused into a single point of failure. | | | | |
> Except they do. All the time when bubbles pop and other crisis form. Market halts are completely different from what we are discussing. And one of the purposes of market makers is to provide liquidity in extreme cases as you are describing (I'm not saying it works perfectly, but it's one of their reasons for existing). Anyway, I feel like we aren't quite getting our points across to each other. Not blaming you just saying let's agree to disagree. | | | |
> Market halts are completely different from what we are discussing I'm not talking about market halts. I'm saying when all the buy-orders vanish from the marketplace, it results in a "flash crash". Hitting the "sell" button will do really weird things at these times. After all, a "sell" can only mechanically happen if the market pairs you up with a "buy". That's just how the stock market works. If there's no buyers, you can't sell, even if you're hitting the "sell" button. | | | |
Then what you're saying makes even less sense. Because what happened with Robinhood is they turned off the buy button, but still people could sell (which means there were buyers from other brokers or outside retail). I realize every buy needs a sell. I also said "typically" and considering there obviously were buyers since you could still sell, everything you're saying is irrelevant to the discussion we had about GME in 2021. Anyway, we're not getting anywhere. You can respond but I'm not responding anymore. | | | |
>Because what happened with Robinhood is they turned off the buy button, but still people could sell (which means there were buyers from other brokers or outside retail) No, RH matched the sell order with an internal buy order and netted them out to reduce their collateral requirements over the T+2 settlement period. They didn't use cash to buy stock from other brokerages. | | | |
IB might not be the best example, as they also restricted GME option trading to liquidation only. | | | |
> option trading Options are extremely different than the underlying stock. Options is everything we discussed except with way less volume and way more margin requirements. It doesn't seem like IB restricted GME-stock, only options-on-GME-stock, which is a very, very different instrument. ------ That being said, if I were a paying customer to IB and was hoping for good options-trades during that time, I guess I would have been pissed off. Still though, its a far more understandable issue to have a derivative-trade fall through rather than the underlying stock-trade fall through. | | | |
Yes, but the end result was still the same: customers couldn't trade what they wanted to, because the broker couldn't or didn't satisfy their collateral requirements. | | | |
I think many brokers had these restrictions, so what is the point of this discussion | | | |
> There were other brokers that managed to do it just fine. If Robinhood is taking a net inflow of shares, then logically other brokers must have a net outflow. So of course there would be other brokers with shares to buy. One reason you could go to some other broker and buy GME is because that broker had many other customers looking to offload an overhyped stock. You couldn't buy on Robinhood because their customer base was mostly retail traders looking only to buy. | | | |
It's not that bad of an analogy. When a toy store runs out of Furbies, that doesn't mean there's no Furbies available on the world market anymore. It just means that at that specific toy store you can't get any Furbies anymore. When they get resupplied (posted additional collateral, in the case of Robin Hood), you can buy from them again. | | | |
Unrelated, but when Furbies came out, my brother and I waited in line for some and we both got one. I had a furry white one and it was awesome. | | | |
You're saying they'd sell it to the next customer, but Robhinhood wouldn't sell it to the next customer - so that's where this seems to break down. When a RH user placed a sell order why couldn't the buy side of their order book add that? | | | |
Because there were more buyers than sellers within Robinhood. So when a RH user hit the buy button, RH couldn't find a seller within Robinhood and had to go to the clearinghouse to find other sellers. Robinhood maximized its buy orders to the clearinghouse (ran out of money), and that was it. RH couldn't afford finding sell-orders anymore. Game over. ------ Furthermore, the amount of money needed at the clearinghouse was clearly a burden to Robinhood. When they saw the bill, I'm sure they would have preferred for sell-orders to go to the clearinghouse (rather than internally), to unwind from DTCC. All stock brokers prefer trading "within" the system rather than seeking out 3rd party partners to find stocks / stock-buyers. Its cheaper and easier. | | | |
There's a big difference between a stock freeze imposed by an exchange, and a broker prohibiting its clients from trading a given stock. If you're actively preventing your clients from selling the stock they own, that costs them actual money if the stock goes down and can very well end in expensive lawsuits. If you prevent them from buying more stock, they only lose the opportunity cost, which is generally much harder to recover by legal means. | | | |
If a broker that handles a very large portion of retail trades suddenly blocks purchasing a security that retail trading has driven the price up then it stops retail pressure and the stock price will obviously drop.... you could say Robinhood cost retail money by removing the upward pressure on the stock. The SEC report on the incident mentions the price rise was mostly due to retail FOMO, and not the suspected short squeeze that got the early folks attention. A laymen would look at what Robinhood did and think Robinhood cut the fuse to the short squeeze bomb. | | | |
The problem with this analysis is that Robinhood didn't choose to block buy orders, they were forced to because they were no longer able to fulfill them. You can argue about whether Robinhood should've been better prepared for the volatility that arose (and that could be an interesting conversation by itself), but they weren't. GP claims "they shouldn't have done it", but continuing wasn't an option. The only other choice they had was to suspend trading in GME all together (both buy and sell orders), but I don't see how that wasn't strictly worse for them and their clients. | | | |
it might have made robinhood look better to uninformed retail traders if they disabled both the sell button as well as the buy button. | | | |
No it wouldn't have. People who knew they could sell in theory and couldn't in practice would complain to and maybe sue for damages (justified or not) the correct option would have been to let users "lend" robinhood the money for 2 days to process the transaction and have this be explained in the interface. | | | |
> the correct option would have been to let users "lend" robinhood the money for 2 days to process the transaction and have this be explained in the interface As explained elsewhere in this thread, regulations don't allow this. | | | |
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that freezing selling as well as buying would have screwed their retail customers even worse? Temporarily halting all trading is something an exchange can reasonably do, sure. But for an individual retail brokerage to do it (instead of only halting buying) seems like something that straight-up shouldn't be legal. Basically because of the balance of upside and downside -- If I can't buy into a stock that's suddenly spiked, at best I'm experiencing FOMO and at worst I'm missing out on some potential profits. If I can't liquidate my position on a stock that's suddenly spiked, then at best I'm missing a chance to realize my gains and at worst I'm being forced to sit there and lose money. (I realize this is only considering long buying. TBH, I can't really think up a story for retail short sellers more compassionate than "caveat vendor." Nor am I sure why I should try to.) | | | |
> Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that freezing selling as well as buying would have screwed their retail customers even worse? You aren't missing anything. This is fairly obvious to anyone who understands how exchanges/brokers operate even on a basic level. The bottom line of it is, disabling buying was a hard necessity to avoid a complete disaster for everyone involved (including customers). Disabling selling wasn't a necessity in any way whatsoever. It wouldn't have solved any problem at all, and would only add an extra problem for customers who wish to exit their positions. | | | |
OK, thanks for the validation. I think the next step, then, is to observe that I don't see how this can be characterized as a case of Robinhood getting out over their skis. Gamestonk looks for all the world to me like it was a black swan event that nobody could have anticipated. And the amount of reserve money Robinhood's clearer required is, realistically, set by the clearer. I suppose technically Robinhood could have held more, but that seems like the kind of thing that no consortium of mere humans would ever actually do, right? Just something a monday morning quarterback might say they should have done. | | | |
> I suppose technically Robinhood could have held more, but that seems like the kind of thing that no consortium of mere humans would ever actually do, right? Yep. That's why RH wasn't the only major brokerage that disabled buying of GME on that day. They just got the most media coverage. Probably because most of superstonk users, I assume, used RH instead of other brokerages, or because RH was an easy target for the media. Webull, Schwab, IB, and some other brokers restricted GME trading activity during that time as well, here is a list with details on each major brokerage someone on WSB has compiled[0]. I cannot verify all of those myself, but I can confirm that Webull definitely restricted it as well, as I used it myself during that time period. But that little fact wouldn't support the whole "shadow cabal" conspiracy theory though, so it gets conveniently omitted in almost every discussion of it by superstonk users. 0. https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6xlw3/robi... | | | |
They only did what they were forced to. Making an active choice to arbitrarily restrict selling as well would have been an insane move -- who are they to tell their customers they cannot sell something they own? | | | |
>who are they to tell their customers they cannot sell something they own? To be fair exchanges do that all the time (ie. trading halts). | | | |
Not doing it would have resulted in Robinhood being declared insolvent and entered into receivership at the close of trading day. All investment accounts would have been frozen for at least a year as the insolvency is unwound. Financial firms (including brokerages) don't go through "bankruptcy" like other corporations. They are liquidated during the nightly clearing process. The SEC report says the short squeeze drove the initial price action, but retail attempting to chase the short squeeze drove the majority of the price increase when RH was shutting down trading. (Graph on page 28 or 29 of the SEC report shows this). | | | |
I wonder if Robinhood could have changed their GME margin requirements?Not sure if that's allowed, but surely that would have allowed them to unwind some (margin call everyone who is leveraged long), and some customers who were willing to put up 100% to cover their GME buys could keep buying. | | | | |
No, the clearinghouse wasn’t going to change margin requirements, because those exist so transactions are completed………it’s the entire purpose of a clearinghouse. This subject is infuriating to discuss, nobody understands the basics of why it happened!! | | | |
This is another way of saying Robinhood did not have the capital reserves required to fulfill their obligations as a broker-dealer to their customers. Also, it is not correct that they "didn't have enough money to buy GME". Restricting trading of GME was a choice they made to post less collateral, which they didn't have. | | | |
> This is another way of saying Robinhood did not have the capital reserves required to fulfill their obligations as a broker-dealer to their customers. That's basically how the entire financial system works. You're supposed to be able to withdraw deposits as cash, but if everybody does it (from say, an internet meme event), the banks obviously wouldn't be able to "fulfill their obligations [...] to their customers". It's also unreasonable to have 100% of deposits as cash on hand on the unlikely chance that occurs. >Also, it is not correct that they "didn't have enough money to buy GME". Restricting trading of GME was a choice they made to post less collateral, which they didn't have. I don't get what distinction you're trying to make here? That "money" doesn't mean "collateral"? Those seem fairly interchangeable in this context. | | | |
> It's also unreasonable to have 100% of deposits as cash on hand on the unlikely chance that occurs. Indeed, that's the whole point of fractional reserve. | | | |
> Also, it is not correct that they "didn't have enough money to buy GME". Restricting trading of GME was a choice they made to post less collateral, which they didn't have. Collateral in this case is just a fancy word meaning "money". | | | |
If majority of retail was blocked out of buying during this period, then who was on the other end of the transaction and why do you think they would be buying when retail has the buy button turned off and the stock is 'severely disconnected from reality'? Could Robinhood have disabled margin accounts and only allowed people to purchase with settled cash as a way to keep the margin requirements in check? It seems big money was conspiring against retail and makes it difficult to trust the current opaque system. | | | |
> If majority of retail was blocked out of buying during this period They weren't. IB halted options but the actual stock GME kept trading. I myself made a buy/sell order on TD Ameritrade in that time period and I got the receipts to prove it. It was just a few exchanges: Robinhood and some other one, that turned off GME buys. > Could Robinhood have disabled margin accounts and only allowed people to purchase with settled cash as a way to keep the margin requirements in check? No. Because it takes 2 days for funds to settle, and Robinhood couldn't afford to get any more stock from their partners. You understand that when you buy a stock on Robinhood, Robinhood has to _FIND_ that stock for you from somewhere, right? Generally speaking, it is from a seller somewhere else. If those sellers aren't giving Robinhood any shares, then Robinhood can't give any shares to their customers. > It seems big money was conspiring against retail and makes it difficult to trust the current opaque system. It was Robinhood's fault for not having enough collateral, and it was Robinhood's customer's fault for placing their trust in such a crappy company. This wasn't the first time Robinhood screwed things up, and it won't be the last. | | | |
a) "big money" -- (such as retirement accounts or other institutions) -- don't care about "retail." They have to follow certain risk regulations and plans and will follow them, and that's it. Market makers will try to drive ahead of the market in an effort to provide liquidity (and make money to live and prosper in the process). b) Robinhood was "blocked" because it decided to not do any serious risk management. And by blocked we mean it didn't have the cash that the clearinghouse required to service them. c) No the collateral is for the clearance. The margin you refer to is what Robinhood lends you the customer. They are handling (mishandling in the case of Robinhood) their own equivalent side to be able to provide you with those stock trades. What you see as a successful trade is only the execution of the trade -- that is someone has agreed to buy or sell at the price you asked/bid for. Next someone (broker + clearing house) needs to clear (Robinhood f*cked up here) and then needs to settle. The clearing house takes the risk in case one of the counterparties falters or becomes insolvent, to ensure transactions do happen. It takes 2 days to trade (execution to settlement) non-options in most systems I am aware of these days. c') Robinhood was just blind sided when its clearinghouse said "Hey, you know you actually just have way more buys that are more volatile than normal to the point of issues at clearing is 1, so increase your collateral." Robinhood said:"No money." Clearinghouse: "No worries, no trades, until you change your risk profile." (Here is a quick link (just googled, couldn't find a better article I like) outlining the process https://thismatter.com/money/stocks/settlement-and-clearing..... P.S. (@Edit): Also the brokers can not legally touch the customers' "hard cash" money and post it to cover their own obligations -- that would be commingling and let us say it is not good. I am not going to even begin imagining the issues, but people continuously get screwed due to commingling of funds. | | | |
Yes but it could give users the option to lend money to Robinhood to perform the transaction or have no transaction. | | | |
You're missing the point on behalf of some other people that are missing the point. If they didn't have the conflict of interest it would have been obvious to them that they needed to disable sells as well as the buys. Just freeze the stock, instead of only considering the freezing of the buys as a mere technicality while being pushed towards the convenience of keeping sells open. The point is for them to think of their users and balance decisions with what users would think. | | | |
Disabling sells and not letting someone exit a position is infinitely worse then not letting someone buy to enter a position. The latter is only theoretically harmed and has no case to sue; the former is provably harmed and can sue. | | | |
It is hard to say the latter is only theoretically harmed when the rising price was caused by retail FOMO (according to SEC report) and Robinhood managed the majority of retail orders.... | | | |
It is a theoretical harm. Securities law focuses on "obviously lost money" such as not being able to sell at the highs when you own the stock. This is very different from the theoretical price ceiling caused by retail FOMO. Otherwise every person on earth could sue to claim they were harmed by not being able to buy. From the SEC's POV, a single brokerage stopping buying still means there was an open market. Robinhood FOMOers used margin accounts and instant deposit feature to drive the price up until Robinhood could no longer afford the loans they were offering. Fidelity never stopped allowing buys because they could afford the settlement collateral. | | | |
> If they didn't have the conflict of interest it would have been obvious to them that they needed to disable sells as well as the buys. Why? Robinhood wanted more GME for themselves so that they can sell it to other customers, who were furiously buying up GME to the point that Robinhood ran out of GME to sell. ------- That's like a Gamestop banning used PS5 during Christmas. Erm... wait, you want to sell me your used PS5 when no one else can get it? Sure, I'll buy it from you (and immediately resell it within 5 minutes). The problem is that there's this *myth*, this *conspiracy* where a cabal of shadowy people were "owned" by the noble Redditors / meme-stonk buyers who saved the world... and people who participated in the myth want to be seen as the "good guys". But in actuality, they're jumping at shadows and inventing boogiemen, and fundamentally misunderstanding the situation. I mean, whatever. Its what people do and it happens all the time. But Imma call people's idiocy out when it happens. For people who actually want to understand the GME event, feel free to read the GME report from the SEC: https://www.sec.gov/page/sec-staff-release-gamestop-report And stay away from the meme-stonk myths. Those guys don't know what they're talking about. | | | |
Broker level stock halts happen all the time too, it was an option. Robinhood has conflicts of interest that don't require meme stock myths. The collateral requirements was from DTCC which affected many brokers and Robinhood simply got all the attention and is unrelated to Robinhood's conflict of interest, doesnt that prove I'm not subscribing to the conspiracies? The conflict of interest is that Citadel is their primary customer who gets all the trade data from robinhood's user. Citadel infused capital into Melvin which was the main fund Robinhood's users were trying to target because of Melvin's short position in Gamestop. The shadowy cabal conversation never needs to occur. Robinhood reacted to the DTCC collateral requirements, they should have reacted to their users as well, having a little drop of emotional intelligence to say "oh yeah this is reason to do a stock halt" instead of an asymmetric one. | | | |
You'll have to forgive me, but my opinion of the cabal of GME-pumpers hyping the hell out of the stock on Reddit/WallStreetBets is not a group of conspirators I have much faith in. They create a boogieman who doesn't exist ("The big banks") without actually defining who the hell they are. All the while, they're literally conspiring to Gamma Squeeze the stock up to $1000. Then they get mad at their crappy brokerage for being crap. (I mean... maybe Robinhood shouldn't have been crap. But everyone knew it was a subpar brokerage built on hype and plenty of SEC complaints before the GME-event of January 2021). Then one of them named Roaring Kitty gets incredibly rich from the whole situation, sells off a huge chunk of their stocks, goes quiet for a while and apparently is the good guy. A few days in Congressional hearings later, it becomes blatantly obvious that no one knows what they're talking about and here we are now today. ------ I absolutely see a group of conspirators here. And its not "the big banks". I'm not sure what the legality of the whole exercise was (apparently it was legal?), but I'm not exactly seeing much altruism on the "buy buy buy" crowd. And no. Buying a terribly priced stock when everyone else is buying it isn't "saving the stock market". Its just rocking the boat and pumping the stock price higher. If that's what people want to do with their money that's their business, but don't pretend its some kind of noble effort. I'm not necessarily going to call the /r/WSB group "evil". But they're certainly not "good" either. And their obsession with finding boogiemen to yell at is dangerous mob-like rhetoric. ------ I get that it was a big social event, that large crowds moved and coordinated together, and they all felt very fun to the participants. But guess what? So was the Anti-COVID19 Trucker Convoy as well as Occupy Wall Street. It was a spontaneous mob, coordinated thanks to modern social media. That's all I see the event as honestly. It did some weird and interesting things to some smaller scale brokerages who couldn't handle the buy/sell orders, and it taught me a few things about the nature of exchanges and brokerages. But it wasn't some kind of altruistic event or heroic effort. Thanks to modern social media, I expect these spontaneous crowds to erupt into other forms and other locations... be it online or in meatspace (as per "Twitter Flash Mobs", which were probably their prototype when Social Media was younger). Maybe it was your first spontaneous internet mob, but it wasn't mine. I've seen them before and I know they'll come again. | | | 
