'The rules changed': Barstool Sports founder rips Robinhood stock app for limiting trading
CHICAGO - It was a roller coaster week on Wall Street driven by the little guys.
There is new frustration with a trading app that has become so powerful, it is influencing the market.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy ripped the free trading app Robinhood for its "out of the blue" move to limit stock trading.
Following the lead of small investors this week, Portnoy invested $2 million into Nokia, Blackberry and AMC stock.
He ended up taking a $700,000 hit.
"Spite motivates me when I feel like I've been wronged, and I fully believe I was on the short end of a stock manipulation," said Portnoy.
After hedge funds lost billions from the snowball of small traders, the Robinhood app throttled certain stocks on Thursday.
On Friday, the restrictions were loosened, but then tightened back up.
The list of restricted stocks went from 13 to 50.
"This would be like going into a football game where you have four downs to get a first down, and then they change it to six. The rules changed," said Portnoy.
Robinhood claims it was cash strapped and had to restrict trading to pay stockholders.
As proof, the company raised $1 billion from investors overnight to cover Friday's trading.
Multiple class action lawsuits have been filed including here in Chicago.
You may be asking, "What investor would lend money to a company that clearly miscalculated payouts?"
Well, those investors will get stock in the company.
Robinhood is expected to go public later this year - yet another wrinkle in the story.