THE NOT-SO-FREE MARKET

Robinhood App Restricts Trading of GameStop Stock, Other Reddit Favorites

“In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only,” the company wrote in a statement.

After weeks of a Reddit-backed surge in GameStop stock, the financial trading app Robinhood is restricting users’ ability to trade shares in the company, as well as several others that had been popular on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit, it announced Thursday. “In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only,” the company wrote in a statement. Fellow r/wallstreetbets favorites such as BlackBerry, AMC, and Nokia were also placed under that restriction, the statement read. As The Daily Beast reported Wednesday, several Reddit users have profited handsomely through trading GameStop stock on the app, taking its share price from under $4 in February to upwards of $400 as of Thursday morning. On Wednesday, the popular messaging app Discord banned r/wallstreetbets’s server, though the company later stated that it was due to “hate speech,” rather than financial reasons.