Robinhood: The trading app co-founded by Indian-American caught in GameStop storm
Co-founded by Baiju Bhatt, Robinhood is facing calls for a probe from Elon Musk and others for halting trade in GameStop that set off howls of protest from small traders.
File image: Robinhood app s loco on a smartphone. (Image: AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
Robinhood, a stock-trading application, is in the thick of the GameShop controversy after it abruptly blocked clients from purchasing shares of some companies whose stock prices had spiked dramatically and shaken up Wall Street.
This came a day after GameStop’s share price increased 135 percent. Some day traders had gotten together on social news aggregation website Reddit and bought shares and options in large numbers. The online day traders hoped to challenge Wall Street’s dominance. The subsequent rally in the struggling video game retailer s stock and others hit hedge funds, which had heavily shorted these shares, hard.