Backdrop: Gamestop stock (ticker symbol: GME) was shorted over 100% of its float stock. An administrator of the reddit page “r/wallstreetbets” noticed this inconsistency and started posting about buying GME. An investment management fund called “Melvin Capital Management” placed an aggressive short sale bet and doubled down on their bet as more buyers of GME emerged causing the stock to rally more than 400%. As a result Melvin Capital became bankrupt. Robinhood took action of blocking their users from buying GME while allowing selling the stock. This action altered demand resulting in decline of the stock price and caused financial and emotional damages to investors not just on Robinhood platform but all investors across other platforms. Subsequently, individual investors have been playing game of cat and mouse with buying/ selling GME with continually changing restriction criteria by Robinhood. The number of stocks having restrictions has also quickly risen to 50 stocks. It is also noteworthy that short levels have continued to remain over 100% even after Melvin Capital liquidated all their positions which begs the question who else is behind the shorts? If this situation continues then it has the potential to spread to more stocks and is a threat to functioning of capital markets.

The whole situation has lead to many questions:

• Who was on the other side of the trade that was allowed to buy the stock?
• What is the tangle web of vested interests and what role did it play in action on part of Robinhood? e.g. Melvin Capital’s parent is “Citadel LLC” which is publicly known to have given Robinhood approximately 40% of their revenue.
• Was there anti-competitive and monopolistic laws violated?
• What was the legal basis for this action on part of Robinhood?
• What was reason Robinhood motivated by? It is noteworthy that Robinhood raised an additional 1 Billion USD. What was the purpose behind the same?
• Was there any criminal behavior on part of Robinhood management, Melvin Capital, or Citadel LLC?
• The broader question is why did all this happen in the first place and what can be done as immediate steps to protect investors ability to participate seamlessly in capital markets?

Asks:

* Ban short selling with immediate effect. Short sellers create no value and are leeching off of the taxpayer and common man. Note that there is a precedence of this in 2008 when SEC banned short selling of financial stocks.

* Ban hedge funds from levered short sale bets.

* Define new criteria for short selling to protect efficient functioning of markets.

* Transparency in reporting- Hedge Funds to report buys, sells, short sales, leverage on daily basis.

* Provide a level playing field to all investors and not just special privileges to hedge funds.

* SEC should NOT regulate valuation basis OR regulate risk investors can take. In a nutshell, SEC should not regulate how investors underwrite their investments in interest of supporting free markets.

* SEC to immediately launch an investigation into to whole episode.