What happened to GameStop’s stock was the first of it’s kind (probably), but it won’t be the last. Robinhood brought stock market investment to the masses, and we are grateful for that. However preventing their customers from purchasing certain stocks put us the commoners or retail investors in a disadvantageous position. Following the restrictions, Robinhood in a blog post shed some light on the rational behind the action, which was to control their risk and satisfy thresholds required by the clearinghouse. Regardless of the reason, investors have lost their trust in Robinhood and other brokers that enforced similar restrictions and are moving away from their platform. This is a good example of fragility of brands. A reputation made in 7 years fades away in a matter of hours. It is true that the same properties that allowed Robinhood to provide its customers investment at no fees and become for popular, instigate its failure. Moving forward we have to see how Robinhood’s management will convince the customers that they won’t be betrayed again.

Another interesting aspect of this incident was the opinion of so called politicians one the matter, their use of the word speculation. Their point was that such events should be prevented because the price hike is speculation and something about protecting the investors, while all they are actually doing is to trying to protect the hedge funds. The whole market is based on speculation and if you let the market free on its own! it will find it’s way. If the general public want to squeeze the hedge funds, they’ll keep doing that. If they don’t they will just sell their GME stock and move on with their lives. All we got to do is to wait and see how this unfolds.