[beezle]

Nothing in that regulation stipulates that a broker must provide access to a market in any (and therefore every) security. Specifically, it refers to any transaction Clearly, a transaction can't occur unless the broker agrees they will provide that security for trade.

As to your second point, it would not be in a broker's best interest to change access to certain securities 'willy nilly' as they will lose business and clients. Whap happened today was not an arbitrary decision.

Would you be arguing if these brokers raised the margin requirement on Gamestop, etc to 99%? That is within their rights to do so, the SEC only sets a regulatory minimum margin req, not (to the best of my knowledge) a maximum.

People seem to forget that many people "trading" Gamestop and the like are doing so on margin. As such, the broker dealer has financial risk that you will not be able to pay your loan back, ie by a close out of positions. Is it reasonable or unreasonable to expect that the eventual decline in these stocks will be rapid with sizable gaps? How many of the Robinhood traders are going to cry bloody murder when they are automatically closed out 10s, perhaps a hundred points lower from when the call was triggered?

[bingojess]

In my comment, I specifically said trading with cash. Easy to argue it was not arbitrary when there's a whale no one know about and the stock is obscure and the whale pays the brokerage more money that is worth to risk losing a few customers in that obscure stock. That's why these rules exist, even though they are more in-principle than anything