[jimminy]

> Only buying was prevented, and only for some brokerages?

The first part of that has been a common bit of misinformation. Opening new positions (either by attempting to buy shares of the stock, or entering into a new short position) is what was prevented. Closing positions (selling for owners of shares, or in the case of short obligations buying shares) was still allowed as closing reduces credit risk for the broker.

The brokerages that did restrict, were smaller firms and did so to maintain liquidity for all assets, instead of allowing a vast amount of their capital to be consolidated largely into a few assets, due to the increased capital cost of clearing.

[lrem]

Hasn't the largest brokerage also restricted?

Edit: OK, I think the list I looked at is wrong. I meant Charles Schwab, but I don't know which one is _actually_ the largest.

[jimminy]

It's a fair question. A bunch of the larger guys like Charles Schwab and TD did implement restrictions as well.

In their case, it may not have been a necessity to maintain liquidity for other assets, but capping the exposure to how much capital they were putting down for it probably still made sense.

[3001]

Charles Schwab did not implement restrictions.They had a banner until last week saying that when you log in.Stop spreading misinformation

[jimminy]

> “The bottom line is that clients are still able to trade in GME, but we’ve put some restrictions on certain types of transactions in the interest of helping mitigate risk for our clients,” Schwab said Wednesday in a statement.[0]

They very much did 3 weeks ago. Not to the same degree as the smaller brokerages, but they still put limitations on margin trading, and restrictions on options.

[0] https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/01/29/gamestop-lawsuits-hi...

[nemothekid]

Schwab’s restrictions came down to:

1. Increased margin requirements for GME 2. Restrictions on naked strategies

Both of these are pretty much acceptable on a very volatile stock. They never prevented you from buying the stock or options. I think including Schwab or TD in this is near misinformation because 99% of users wouldn’t make use of the features that Schwab ended up restricting

[3001]

Right, can’t short sale and 100% margin requirements. How is that newsworthy or anything to Wimp about.

[onedognight]

RH kept you from buying GME; Schwab did not. This is a huge difference.

[perl4ever]

I think people may be mislead because they are looking back at the published restrictions, but those don't reflect immediately prior, when things were going nuts and brokers, not just Robinhood, were doing stuff without notifying customers.

TDA is a subsidiary of Schwab and was blocking some purchases for some period of time during the week, before they put out a statement that said they "will not prevent clients from making basic buy and sell transactions".

[seafoam]

The string "put" does not occur in the article referenced.

Existing restrictions became sizable due to the market volatility. This impacted certain clients of the brokerage that had significant exposure to the names relative to their account.

Not the same thing as the brokerage implementing new restrictions.

[derangedHorse]

I think he just posted the wrong link, but there is an article on thinkadvisor with the referenced quote: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/01/28/schwab-td-ameritrade...