Robinhood chief confronts Elon Musk, Wallstreetbets to be filmed

Robinhood boss Tenev takes on Elon Musk, Wallstreetbets gets filmed

Hedge fund Melvin Capital is licking its wounds after its GameStop gamble backfired. Meanwhile, Tesla boss Elon Musk is giving the Robinhood founder a piece of his mind, while plans are already underway for a film version of the legendary stock drama.

The supposed riot of r/wallstreetbets small investors has cost Melvin, the hedge fund that tried to short Gamestop stock with uncovered short selling, a fortune. According to the Wall Street Journal, citing insiders, the hedge fund’s Bitcoin Victory short positions for GME and other stocks reportedly lost more than 53 per cent of their value in January. Melvin has since abandoned his bet against GameStop. At the time of going to press, the GME share price had started its journey south again. GME is currently trading at 147 euros – a slump of almost 30 per cent compared to the previous day. Meanwhile, the GameStop affair has spread far and wide. Now Tesla CEO and Bitcoin fan Elon Musk has joined the discussion about GME, Wallstreetbets and Robinhood.

Elon Musk takes Robinhood boss Tenev to task

Tech entrepreneur Musk got an unexpected visitor during a clubhouse meeting. Vlad Tenev, the founder of the trading app Robinhood, took part in Musk’s Clubhouse chat. Robinhood had come in for harsh criticism for deactivating call options on some shares, including GME. The accusation was that Robinhood had stopped trading at the behest of hedge funds, namely Citadel Securities. Tenev, however, has vehemently denied any such influence.

Elon Musk promptly grilled the surprise guest: „People demand answers and they want to know the truth“. Eventually, the Tesla boss managed to let Tenev at least spill the beans a little. Then the decision to limit trading for GME and other risky stocks followed a call from the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), a clearing house subordinate to the US central securities depository Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation. The NSCC clears equity trades at Robinhood.

On Thursday morning, at 3.30am, while I was still asleep, our operations team received a message from NSCC, the National Securities Clearing Corporation,

Bild quotes the Robinhood boss as saying. The NSCC had demanded that Robinhood increase its deposits by three billion US dollars due to the extreme market volatility in GME and Co. In response, Robinhood had restricted trading in some risky stocks. Apparently, this prompted the NSCC to reduce the demand to 700 million US dollars. According to the Wall Street Journal, the action was thus a trivial margin call – and not a conspiracy by big business against the editor next door.

r/Wallstreetbets comes to the cinemas

Now „The Trivial Margin Call“ is not the name of a Hollywood blockbuster. But exactly such a one is already in the making for the stock market drama. This is reported by the online portal Deadline.com. The title for the Wallstreetbets film, „The Antisocial Network“, has already been decided. Those who feel reminded of the film „The Social Network“ are right on the money. Ben Merzrich, author of the book for the Facebook film, has already submitted a book proposal to the film production company MGM – and has been awarded the contract. It is ironic that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Mark Zuckerberg’s former arch-rivals, are involved in the production with their company Winklevoss Pictures.