The Reddit hordes were at it again Friday, once again bidding up shares of GameStop Corp. and warring with hedge funds by seeking out targets such as Siebert Financial Corp. and Twinkie maker Hostess Brands Inc.
Hours after Robinhood Markets said it received a cash infusion of more than $1 billion, having just angered legions of retail investors by imposing a raft of trading restrictions, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it would look to identify potential misconduct and review decisions by brokerages to curtail transactions on certain stocks.
The fallout also humbled one of Wall Street’s best known contrarians, Andrew Left, whose Citron Research announced it will no longer publish short-selling analysis after a two-decade run.
Markets opened Friday with other heavily shorted and thinly traded stocks catching massive bids. Siebert Financial soared almost 399% at one point during regular trading, and Jefferies analyst Steven DeSanctis offered up other potential targets, including Hostess and mattress-maker Sleep Number Corp. And the stock that started it all, GameStop, surged 68% at 11:40 a.m. in New York.
By mid-afternoon, Robinhood announced that it had put limits on purchases of shares and options for 23 stocks, including vaccine maker Moderna Inc., Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. and Tootsie Roll Industries Inc.
The past few days have been a whirlwind for the Menlo Park, California-based brokerage.
New York markets had just fired up Thursday, and the investing world was tuning in for the latest episode of the continuing drama: Legions of Robinhood investors versus hedge-fund Goliaths.
But within minutes, a shock wave invisible to the outside world rattled the mechanics of Wall Street — sending Robinhood rushing for additional cash. The stock market’s central clearing hub had demanded large sums of collateral from brokerages including Robinhood that for weeks had facilitated spectacular jumps in shares such as GameStop Corp.
The Silicon Valley venture with the wildly popular no-fee trading app came to a crossroads. It reined in the risk to itself by banning certain trades and unwinding client bets — igniting an outcry from customers and even U.S. political leaders. By that night, word was emerging that Robinhood had raised more than $1 billion from existing investors and drawn hundreds of millions more from bank credit lines to weather the storm.
“Look, it is not negotiable for us to comply with our financial requirements and our clearinghouse deposits,” Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said in defending his firm’s decisions on Thursday in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We have to do that.”
The capital injection is “a strong sign of confidence from investors that will help us continue to further serve our customers,” a Robinhood spokesperson later said in an emailed statement. The money will allow the firm to “continue to invest in record growth.”
Robinhood took additional precautions, limiting purchases of fractional shares and cryptocurrencies.
When the history of this month’s stock mania is written, it may be a story of how retail traders set out from Reddit message boards to challenge Wall Street’s status quo — and ended up battering their beloved brokerage too.
For weeks, Robinhood, with a mission “to democratize finance for all,” has been their trading platform of choice as they inflicted billions of dollars of losses on hedge funds by sending stocks that those firms had shorted into the stratosphere — a sort-of populist crusade into the staid world of finance.
Robinhood’s trading restrictions made virtually nobody happy, except perhaps the hedge funds. In a surreal scene, political archenemies Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz found common ground in lashing the firm’s decisions. Conspiracy theories erupted online.
The question is whether such critics will dig into the industry’s inner workings, where pressure mounted on Robinhood and other firms to limit certain trades. That would put a rare spotlight on arcane parts of the market designed to prevent catastrophe, such as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
One key consideration for brokers, particularly around high-flying and volatile stocks like GameStop, is the money they must put up with the DTCC while waiting a few days for stock transactions to settle. Those outlays, which behave like margin in a brokerage account, can create a cash crunch on volatile days, say when GameStop falls from $483 to $112 like it did at one point during Thursday’s session.
“It’s not really Robinhood doing nefarious stuff,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Larry Tabb. “It’s the DTCC saying ‘This stuff is just too risky. We don’t trust that these guys have the cash to be able to withstand settling these things two days from now, because in two days, who knows what the price could be, it could be zero.’”
The trouble on Thursday began around 10 a.m., when after days of turbulence, the DTCC demanded significantly more collateral from member brokers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the DTCC wouldn’t specify how much it required from specific firms but said that by the end of the day industrywide collateral requirements jumped to $33.5 billion, up from $26 billion.
‘Rare Circumstances’
Brokerage executives rushed to figure out how to come up with the funds. Robinhood’s reaction drew the most public attention, but the firm wasn’t alone in limiting trading of stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.
Charles Schwab Corp.’s TD Ameritrade curbed transactions in both of those companies on Wednesday. Interactive Brokers Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade took similar action Thursday.
Thomas Peterffy, the billionaire chairman of Greenwich, Connecticut-based Interactive Brokers, told Bloomberg TV the restrictions were prompted by concerns “about the integrity of the marketplace and the system.”
E*Trade stressed that its measures were highly unusual. “We take actions like this seriously, and only initiate them in rare circumstances,” said spokesman Thayer Fox, adding that he expected normal trading to resume Friday.
Robinhood said after markets closed that it plans to allow “limited buys” to resume in affected securities. It also tried to assuage customer concerns with an email that evening: “This was a temporary decision made to best continue serving you, and was not an easy one to make.”
Credit Lines
The firm has tapped at least several hundred million dollars from its bank credit lines, a person with knowledge of the situation said. The company’s lenders include JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Representatives for Robinhood and those banks declined to comment.
Robinhood’s capital remains “strong,” CEO Tenev told Bloomberg TV, underscoring that the restrictions helped protect both the brokerage and its clients.
One question is whether frustrated customers will forgive what some see as a betrayal in their campaign against Wall Street’s financial elite.
Douglas Bray, a software developer from Connecticut who’s been using Robinhood for about five years, said he plans to withdraw about $100,000 after the trading restrictions.
“I’m disappointed I could not keep my money in GME like any institutional investor could,” said Bray, 32, referring to GameStop’s ticker. “Hedge funds are on the brink of a massive short squeeze and appear to be calling in all the cavalry. So brokers are now ‘protecting’ customers as a facade so that they can appease their institutional backers. The entire community is outraged.”
Webull, which has expanded during the pandemic, saw new accounts soar 16-fold over the seven-day average, according to CEO Anthony Denier. Its app ranked as the second-most-popular free iPhone app in the U.S. on Thursday, up from No. 60 a day earlier, according to SensorTower, which gathers data on mobile apps. (Robinhood was still No. 1.)
Denier didn’t want to comment on the reason for the jump. Earlier Thursday, Webull also restricted trading on shares including GameStop and AMC, but then reversed its decision.
Robinhood has been expected for months to hold an initial public offering this year. Late Thursday, people with knowledge of those preparations said the plan is to press ahead sometime in the first half of 2021, despite the controversy and draw-down on credit lines.
But it remains to be seen what the lasting impact is from Robinhood’s association with the retail trading revolt — and now any strains in the firm’s relationship with the rebels behind it.
“The restrictions in trading today only worsened the situation,” Douglas Boneparth, who competes with Robinhood for customers as president of the wealth-management firm Bone Fide Wealth, said Thursday. “Many will ignore the fact that Robinhood faced increased costs that created an unsustainable business environment.”
TORONTO – Canada Goose Holdings Inc. says it has signed a deal that will result in the creation of its first eyewear collection.
The deal announced on Thursday by the Toronto-based luxury apparel company comes in the form of an exclusive, long-term global licensing agreement with Marchon Eyewear Inc.
The terms and value of the agreement were not disclosed, but Marchon produces eyewear for brands including Lacoste, Nike, Calvin Klein, Ferragamo, Longchamp and Zeiss.
Marchon plans to roll out both sunglasses and optical wear under the Canada Goose name next spring, starting in North America.
Canada Goose says the eyewear will be sold through optical retailers, department stores, Canada Goose shops and its website.
Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss told The Canadian Press in August that he envisioned his company eventually expanding into eyewear and luggage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Almost seven years since news broke of an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread across Canada, the saga isn’t over: the Competition Bureau continues to investigate the companies that may have been involved, and two class-action lawsuits continue to work their way through the courts.
Here’s a timeline of key events in the bread price-fixing case.
Oct. 31, 2017: The Competition Bureau says it’s investigating allegations of bread price-fixing and that it was granted search warrants in the case. Several grocers confirm they are co-operating in the probe.
Dec. 19, 2017: Loblaw and George Weston say they participated in an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” to raise the price of packaged bread. The companies say they have been co-operating in the Competition Bureau’s investigation since March 2015, when they self-reported to the bureau upon discovering anti-competitive behaviour, and are receiving immunity from prosecution. They announce they are offering $25 gift cards to customers amid the ongoing investigation into alleged bread price-fixing.
Jan. 31, 2018: In court documents, the Competition Bureau says at least $1.50 was added to the price of a loaf of bread between about 2001 and 2016.
Dec. 20, 2019: A class-action lawsuit in a Quebec court against multiple grocers and food companies is certified against a number of companies allegedly involved in bread price-fixing, including Loblaw, George Weston, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart Canada, Canada Bread and Giant Tiger (which have all denied involvement, except for Loblaw and George Weston, which later settled with the plaintiffs).
Dec. 31, 2021: A class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court covering all Canadian residents except those in Quebec who bought packaged bread from a company named in the suit is certified against roughly the same group of companies.
June 21, 2023: Bakery giant Canada Bread Co. is fined $50 million after pleading guilty to four counts of price-fixing under the Competition Act as part of the Competition Bureau’s ongoing investigation.
Oct. 25 2023: Canada Bread files a statement of defence in the Ontario class action denying participating in the alleged conspiracy and saying any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods, which is not a defendant in the case (neither is its current owner Grupo Bimbo). Maple Leaf calls Canada Bread’s accusations “baseless.”
Dec. 20, 2023: Metro files new documents in the Ontario class action accusing Loblaw and its parent company George Weston of conspiring to implicate it in the alleged scheme, denying involvement. Sobeys has made a similar claim. The two companies deny the allegations.
July 25, 2024: Loblaw and George Weston say they agreed to pay a combined $500 million to settle both the Ontario and Quebec class-action lawsuits. Loblaw’s share of the settlement includes a $96-million credit for the gift cards it gave out years earlier.
Sept. 12, 2024: Canada Bread files new documents in Ontario court as part of the class action, claiming Maple Leaf used it as a “shield” to avoid liability in the alleged scheme. Maple Leaf was a majority shareholder of Canada Bread until 2014, and the company claims it’s liable for any price-fixing activity. Maple Leaf refutes the claims.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:MFI, TSX:MRU, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:WN)
TORONTO – TD Bank Group, which is mired in a money laundering scandal in the U.S., says chief executive Bharat Masrani will retire next year.
Masrani, who will retire officially on April 10, 2025, says the bank’s, “anti-money laundering challenges,” took place on his watch and he takes full responsibility.
The bank named Raymond Chun, TD’s group head, Canadian personal banking, as his successor.
As part of a transition plan, Chun will become chief operating officer on Nov. 1 before taking over the top job when Masrani steps down at the bank’s annual meeting next year.
TD also announced that Riaz Ahmed, group head, wholesale banking and president and CEO of TD Securities, will retire at the end of January 2025.
TD has taken billions in charges related to ongoing U.S. investigations into the failure of its anti-money laundering program.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
