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Elon Musk Grills Robinhood CEO Over GameStop Share Freezing


It’s been a year of headlines for the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. He’s backed two start-up app platforms, launched the worlds quickest production car, and now, the richest man in the world is using his new favourite social platform Clubhouse to help out the little guy.

In the wake of the GameStop share trading explosion, smartphone-friendly trading app Robinhood came under fire. The app temporarily stopped its users from purchasing GME shares – a move which billionaire turned investigative journalist, Elon Musk, had to get to the bottom of.

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Gamestop price fluctuation

By now, you would have seen the share price of US video game retailer GameStop soar after a Reddit group of online traders, WallStreetBets, organised a mass purchasing of the stock. Hitting US hedge funds that had ‘short’ positions in the company and were banking on it decreasing in value. Shortly after the surge, the purchasing of GME stocks was paused on one of the biggest trading apps in North America, Robinhood.

In response to Robinhood’s decision to cease the buying of GameStop shares last week, Musk interviewed chief executive Vlad Tenev. The interview was conducted over social media app Clubhouse, an exclusive app which Musk has backed previously. During the interview Tenev was pressed on the issue, “Spill the beans, man… What happened last week? Why couldn’t people buy the GameStop shares? The people demand answers, and they want to know the truth… Did something maybe shady go down there?” said Musk.

The criticism of Robinhood has been widely broadcast by both investors and politicians who ask whether Robinhood acted in its own interests by restricting trades. Tenev’s response was subsequently, underwhelming.

“We knew this was a bad outcome for customers,” Tenev said. “Part of what has been so difficult is Robinhood stands for democratising access to stocks and we want to give people the access so that’s been very, very challenging. But we had no choice, in this case, we had to conform to regulatory capital requirements.”

The Tesla co-founder has inserted himself as the influential voice that speaks on behalf of the ‘little guy’ through his Twitter page. A platform where he has encouraged retail investors to buy up shares in the past, including GameStop shares. In fact, it was his tweet “GameStonk!” from last week that helped kickstart the price surge.

From the outside, it’s hard to see Robinhood getting through this debacle unharmed. The platform has become the poster child for the everyman-trader looking to stick it to the corporate world. Sadly it seems, the interview with Musk, while short and sweet, did little to salvage the brand image. For all your trading secrets, you can check out Elon Musks Twitter account below.

Elon Musk WallStreetBets

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