Robinhood continues to restrict GameStop stock trading

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GameStop: The shares of the video game seller are still not freely tradable via Robinhood

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SHAWN THEW / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

Robinhood says it only wants to regulate trading in eight instead of the previous 50 shares.

Users of the broker app are still only allowed to buy a certain number of securities from and options on companies such as GameStop, Blackberry, AMC Entertainment or Nokia, as the company announced late on Sunday evening.

In some cases, only a single share may be acquired.

Neotrader, who was heavily criticized for its usage restrictions and sued in a row last week, justified his decision with "persistent market volatility" and reserved the right to make further changes.

Because something like this is also in its terms of use, which all users must agree to, Robinhood has little to fear in the opinion of legal experts, as reported by Reuters.

The provider, which is particularly popular with younger investors, surprisingly suspended trading in certain stocks for several hours on Thursday.

As a result, prices of affected companies crashed.

Companies such as Starbucks, Trivago or Moderna were also affected, which, in contrast to Robinhood's presentation, were not subject to any particular exchange rate fluctuations.

Brokers such as the smartphone apps Trade Republic or Trading212 were also in trouble in Germany because they forbade their users full access to the free market.

At times, only the sale of certain securities was permitted, but not the purchase of new shares.

GameStop and AMC shares have been particularly popular with Reddit users in recent weeks.

In doing so, they opposed so-called shortsellers such as Citron Research and Melvin Capital, who had placed massive bets on falling prices for the companies in question.

As a result, stock prices shot up and some hedge funds suffered extremely heavy losses.

Due to the trading restrictions of brokers like Robinhood, the small investors now saw themselves slowed down on their profit path.

They suspect that the trading platforms have their backs on the hedge funds.

Robinhood and Co. deny this, but the outrage is not only great among the investor community, but also in politics.

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pbe / dpa