Robinhood Stops Limiting GameStop Shares

Robinhood has lifted all the buying curbs imposed at the height of the battle between amateur investors and Wall Street hedge funds. The change comes one week after the online broker limited clients to only buying a single share of GameStop and expanded its list of restricted stocks from 13 to 50. Reuters reports: The videogame retailer, the initial trigger for the market slugfest, was up 8.4% in U.S. pre-market trading although the wild gyrations seen in the past two weeks appeared to have fizzled out. Robinhood, among the fee-free online brokers that are credited with fueling the trades, said late on Thursday it had removed all buying restrictions imposed due to a surge in clearing house deposit requirements last week. With many of the stocks involved in the so-called “Reddit rally” slumping this week, hedge funds with bearish positions on GameStop made $3.6 billion in profits compared to losses of $12.5 billion in January, financial analytics firm Ortex said on Friday. GameStop’s stock has crashed to about $53 after scaling as high as $483 last week, but is still up about 177% from the levels at the start of the rally. Shares of cinema operator AMC Entertainment have more than halved from a peak of $19.90. They were up 5.2% on Friday. Meanwhile, on WallStreetBets on Reddit, participants were still urging investors to stick with GameStop.