Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy said he lost $700,000 on "meme stocks" likeGameStop .- Portnoy tweeted that the CEO of the trading app
Robinhood "stole it from me and should be in jail." - The
stock market is reeling from a frenzy kicked off by a group of Redditors.
Barstool
Portnoy tweeted that he had officially sold all the stocks he purchased. He admonished the trading platform Robinhood and its CEO, Vlad Tenev, for preventing users from trading the stocks driven by the Reddit-fueled buying spree.
"Vlad and company stole it from me and should be in jail," Portnoy tweeted.
—Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) February 2, 2021
Portnoy's losses came on the heels of a stock-market frenzy drummed up by a group of people on Reddit who bought up stocks like GameStop, driving up the companies' values. Many people used trading apps like Robinhood to join in on the rally. Robinhood saw a surge in new members and was forced to temporarily stop users from buying shares of GameStop, AMC, and others; it said it was complying with financial requirements.
The move angered many of the app's users and lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Robinhood allowed the trading to resume but added limitations for 50 stocks, including GameStop - Robinhood said it would cap the number of GameStop shares that users could buy at 20.
Robinhood has raised more than $3 billion in emergency investments so far to compensate for the surge in trading on its platform. Tenev has defended the company's initial decision to halt the trading of certain stocks and said Robinhood was not struggling with liquidity issues.
And Tenev told Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an interview on Sunday that Robinhood was forced to restrict trading for users because the surge prompted the National Securities Clearing Corporation to ask for a $3 billion deposit.
Correction: This post has been updated to say Portnoy was critiquing Robinhood's decision to restrict the trading of certain stocks.