After expecting to close a number of stores this year, GameStop—the American video game retailer where many of us have likely spent the entirety of our holiday funds at one point or another—became the subject of a frenzy of tweets this week thanks to a Reddit-spurred "David vs. Goliath" showdown between individual investors and hedge funds.
Quickly, the united effort grew to include other similarly positioned companies like AMC and BlackBerry, prompting Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade to apparently limit trading.
On Thursday, Robinhood—a stock trading and investing app—announced it would be restricting transactions for certain securities, citing "current market volatility" in its immediately criticized press release.
"In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AAL, $AMC, $BB, $BBY, $CTRM, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD, $NOK, $SNDL, $TR, and $TRVG," a Robinhood rep said on Thursday. "We also raised margin requirements for certain securities."
Among those who were quick to slam this decision was Ja Rule, who said multiple times "this is a fucking crime" and urged his followers who were in on the action to refrain from selling. His reactions to Robinhood's announcement began with a fan wishing him "good morning," to which the Venni Vetti Vecci artist responded by blaming the app for making such a day impossible.
Naturally, as is so often the case whenever Ja pops up in headlines in recent years, many wasted no time in responding to Ja's foray into the Robinhood controversy with everything from nods to the infamous Fyre Festival disaster to playful jokes by way of a classic Dave Chappelle bit.
