5 Min Read
WASHINGTON/BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tension, irate questions, people talking over one another, and a cat photo. Thursday’s five-plus hour U.S. congressional hearing on GameStop had all of that, as top hedge fund managers, the head of Robinhood, and Roaring Kitty himself answered a barrage of questions over who was at fault in January’s trading frenzy.
GameStop rose more than 1,000% during two weeks as retail traders using the Reddit platform encouraged each other to pile in, socking it to hedge fund managers who were short the stock - a bet GameStop would fall.
The trade deflated, however, after online brokerage Robinhood and several other brokers controversially restricted buying GameStop’s shares - leaving retail investors frustrated but capping the losses for the hedge funds.
Short selling was under the microscope on Thursday as a U.S. House committee grilled executives from trading app Robinhood and hedge funds Melvin Capital and Citadel over the GameStop Corp trading frenzy, with some calling for change.
At a grilling by lawmakers over the frenzied trading in retailer GameStop, Keith Gill, a YouTube streamer known as Roaring Kitty, hedge fund managers and the head of Robinhood and Reddit defended their actions.
5 Min Read
WASHINGTON/BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tension, irate questions, people talking over one another, and a cat photo. Thursday’s five-plus hour U.S. congressional hearing on GameStop had all of that, as top hedge fund managers, the head of Robinhood, and Roaring Kitty himself answered a barrage of questions over who was at fault in January’s trading frenzy.
GameStop rose more than 1,000% during two weeks as retail traders using the Reddit platform encouraged each other to pile in, socking it to hedge fund managers who were short the stock - a bet GameStop would fall.
The trade deflated, however, after online brokerage Robinhood and several other brokers controversially restricted buying GameStop’s shares - leaving retail investors frustrated but capping the losses for the hedge funds.
A raft of federal agencies are probing last month's "Reddit rally" in which Reddit users trading on low cost retail platforms banded together to push up GameStop Corp and other stocks, burning hedge funds that had bet against the companies.