[HN Gopher] Robinhood to pay $70M for 'systemic supervisory fail... ___________________________________________________________________ Robinhood to pay $70M for 'systemic supervisory failures' Author : MikeDelta Score : 222 points Date : 2021-06-30 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com) | beambot wrote: | When the "fine" is minuscule relative to profits and the bulk of | it goes to a private company / self-regulatory organization | (FINRA: [1]), it might be more accurate to label this a "bribe" | for plausible deniability... | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Industry_Regulatory_... | elliekelly wrote: | FINRA is the industry equivalent of a firm's Chief Compliance | Officer. They're supposed to identify and correct issues at the | expense of the industry rather than wasting the government's | limited resources. FINRA conducts regular exams of all members | the way a Compliance Officer will regularly examine all | department functions. Whereas the SEC conducts random periodic | exams (like an auditor), targeted exams (like an investigator) | and occasionally "sweep" exams relating to the topic du jour | (usually in preparing to issue to a new rule). | asteroidbelt wrote: | In 2020 RH revenue (not profits) was $682M, so $70M fine is | definitely not "minuscule". | beambot wrote: | Gross profits, not net. Their net profit is probably | negative, like most growth stage pre-IPO or recently-IPO tech | companies. They were looking at IPOing at a $30B valuation. | The fine is 0.2% of their anticipated market cap. | asteroidbelt wrote: | 0.2% of cap also looks significant for the first offense. | | What do you think would be an appropriate fine? | beambot wrote: | This isn't the first offense. They were fined $65M in Dec | 2020 for similar infractions [1]. Clearly that wasn't | enough to deter bad behavior. I'm a fan of exponential | backoff. Pick an exponent. 3x-10x the last infraction | seems reasonable (assuming similar levels of harm to | users). | | [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robinhood-sec- | fine-65-million/ | asteroidbelt wrote: | 3x exponential sounds right. Thank you for the context! | z3ncyberpunk wrote: | Nope, still pretty paultry. | colechristensen wrote: | "The penalty was the largest ever issued by the Financial | Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), according to the agency." | newfonewhodis wrote: | I'm glad RH got fined, but this is a reminder that FINRA hasn't | meaningfully fined the likes of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, HSBC | or any other large brokerage. | frakkingcylons wrote: | All of those are investment banks. | newfonewhodis wrote: | ...yes, and? | tptacek wrote: | And they aren't a retail brokerage with customer service | obligations to ordinary people. Their counterparties are | sophisticated, which is a regulatory way of saying | "mostly on their own here". | [deleted] | ProAm wrote: | With the number of fines this company has occurred in its short | existence Im very surprised they are still allowed to be a | brokerage of sorts and will be allowed to go public. | atatatat wrote: | This headline is the Feds mea culpa for allowing that.. | Taylor_OD wrote: | A drop in the bucket. | jackson1442 wrote: | While true, it'll definitely hurt RH more than they expected. | They only set aside about $26M for this settlement. | chews wrote: | Also important to know FINRA kept the 57 million. They are the | SRO but let's be honest they are the enforcement arm of the | SEC.... but the government does not get to keep the fines. | beefman wrote: | Original source: https://www.finra.org/media- | center/newsreleases/2021/finra-o... | | Yahoo! Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-hit- | with-record-fin... | | Archived version of Reuters story: https://archive.is/NxI0t | whoisjuan wrote: | I always find surprising that Robinhood was able to build such a | large business with such mediocre customer support. | | I switched to Charles Schwab and just the fact that there's a | 24/7 phone number compensates for the lack of simplicity. I used | to think that I wanted the simplicity of something like | Robinhood. But I have learned to appreciate the complexity of | Schwab. The reality is that behind Robinhood's simplicity there's | a lack of sophistication and process in their operation. | | I commend what they built, but Robinhoood it's too exposed to the | cross winds of retail trading and regulatory scrutiny. I feel | that by having my investments in Robinhood, I'm adding some sort | of risk multiplier that has nothing to do with the nature of my | investments. It has to do mainly with how amateur-ish their | brokerage operation feels. | ramesh31 wrote: | >I always find surprising that Robinhood was able to build such | a large business with such mediocre customer support. | | This is the standard people have become trained to expect. | Google does the same thing. The idea is basically that a | certain level of scale, you can completely ignore customer | support. There's always new users signing up, and placating any | single one is no longer worth your time. | | Anyone who does serious trading knows the value of actual 24/7 | human customer support, and uses a platform like Schwab or | Fidelity. But Robinhood is arbitraging the naivety of the | millions of people who've never invested. | bawolff wrote: | I've never used customer support (for consumer software) that | was actually worthwhile, so not missing much. | standardUser wrote: | I can't imagine anyone doing "serious trading" using | Robinhood. I also can't imagine a scenario where I would need | to talk to a customer support rep at Robinhood. What kind of | support might I need while occasionally placing limit buy and | sell orders? | andrewmutz wrote: | If consumers are not willing to pay for the product, it makes | sense that they would not get good customer service. The | users are not customers of Robinhood or Google. The users are | the product that Google sells to advertisers and Robinhood | sells (in the form of data) to hedge funds and HF traders. | | Schwab and Fidelity can deliver a good product with good | customer service because users pay money for the product and | are actually customers. | fumar wrote: | That is right Google operates under the assumption of people | as in large groups of individuals. Their primary drive is to | add billions of more people to their graph, | https://nextbillionusers.google | | If you read through the marketing material, you will notice | that they use the word people and not individuals or persons | or you. "People are at the center of everything we build." | | For what is worth, Fidelity customer service is quick and | reliable. They've always answered by questions or solved my | issues over the phone. | hef19898 wrote: | During my time at Amazon we used to joke about an, alleged, | Bezos quote: He hates CS and wished he could live without. | The narrative was, that operations weren't good enough to | make CS unnecessary. Well, it sometimes seems it was just a | question of scale, as you said. And maybe Amazon is just | figuring out whether or not they can get away with it, little | by little. | duped wrote: | > I always find surprising that Robinhood was able to build | such a large business with such mediocre customer support. | | Because the interface is much easier to use. Particularly for | options, which are dangerously easy to trade with Robinhood | compared to their competitors like Think or Swim. | sitzkrieg wrote: | it is misleading really. so many people who didnt understand | legged , or options in general got into really bad positions | which is hilarious to watch the revolving door | rajup wrote: | While I am really glad Robinhood existed back when I started | working to introduce me to investing, their amateurish ops (see | their outages in the past few years) and customer support (they | managed to bungle a position transfer costing me a few hundred | bucks) pushed me to more established players. Most of these | established players now have low to zero commissions with much | better customer support, order execution etc. I doubt any | serious investor uses (or should be using!) Robinhood. | hangonhn wrote: | I've been a long time critic of RH but you can see the value to | their business. They mainly target millenials who are largely | shut out of the investment market because of their poor | financial situations. Tiny portfolios and game-ified trading is | a good way to capture that audience. Millenials won't stay poor | forever so RH's customer base is actually quite valuable. A | more mature company can either acquire RH for those customers | or RH itself can transform into a more stable and reliable | operation with a large customer base that will acquire more | assets over time. | Grim-444 wrote: | I don't really buy this argument, since you can sign up at | most traditional brokerages for free, with no minimum | balance, and zero or almost zero trading fees on most trades. | There's absolutely no more barrier to entry than with | Robinhood. | hangonhn wrote: | Agree with you on that. I don't see any advantages to RH at | all but they were the first to really target that group and | has already acquired them as users. That group of users is | worth a lot and will be worth even more over time. | kyawzazaw wrote: | Robinhodd started that push, no? They were comission based | before | hef19898 wrote: | IMHO targeting financially less than robust people with a | gamified solution is a real problem. An not a feature. | hangonhn wrote: | 100% agree with you. Not at all condoning their business | practices. I'm just saying their business has value because | of their large customer base that they've already acquired. | Its a customer base that becomes more valuable over time as | millenials become wealthier and acquire more assets. | toastal wrote: | I love that you get on a call with real native speaker in the | US with Schwab; that part of customer support has been stellar. | I like that they cover international ATM fees too. | | I don't care for how they handle security though. I really wish | they supported WebAuthn or at least TOTP that didn't require | Symantec's proprietary TOPT solution. I wish they supported PGP | for messages as well (I know those GMail users are having their | financial data read by Google). When I asked about what | "SchwabSecure" really is and what sort of encryption they use | gave me marketing fluff, even stating "The reason you may not | find more detailed information available online which supports | this is so that we can prevent criminals from obtaining this | information, and using that to get a foothold"--as opposed to | my recent evaluation of email providers to see the competition | who could provide the MOST transparency about how they set up | their security. | websap wrote: | "I love that you get on a call with real native speaker" | | Wow! Seriously? How do you feel the same way about the people | you work with, if they aren't native speakers? | tick_tock_tick wrote: | Talking over the phone, which doesn't have great voice | quality to begin with, about a potentially stressful and | time critical situation is not something accents help with | there is nothing wrong with that statement. | websap wrote: | How do you function in a remote first world, where most | of your team joins calls over Slack or Teams? It's weird | that someone painstakingly learnt English, but you don't | can't put in the effort to listen and understand. | wpietri wrote: | A counfounder here is that a strong accent is correlated | with outsourcing customer support to low-cost providers | to companies with far-away, underpaid staff who lack | cultural context and social power within the company they | nominally work for. | | Personally, I think the much bigger problem is the shitty | outsourcing. But semi-sensical corporatese excuse-making | is definitely not improved by language and accent | barriers. | msrenee wrote: | Thanks for expressing what I was trying to figure out how | to put into words. I feel no animosity towards the folks | stuffed in a call center for crap wages. I'm irritated | with the company that outsourced their support to India | and pays them crap wages to try to navigate technology | that they don't have adequate training for and at least | have no real power to fix. | quacked wrote: | This is such a ridiculous thing to get annoyed about. I | work with a bunch of Croatians; do you _really_ think they | prefer that I speak English (US), or would they like it | more if I were fluent in Croatian? | [deleted] | l33t2328 wrote: | Yes, it is also difficult to work with people in person who | aren't native speakers, although over the phone is | especially challenging. | PascLeRasc wrote: | You can extract the Symantec TOTP secret and use normal apps | with it. This guide is from a reddit comment and I revised it | slightly: | | 1. install pre-reqs: sudo pip install python-vipaccess && | brew install qrencode | | 2. Run: vipaccess provision -p -t VSMT | | This will print out all the information needed. Note the | Symantec ID (it looks like VSMT12345678). It is what goes in | the "Credential ID" field when adding a new device on | Schwab's website. | | 3. Save the otpauth://... data into data.txt. | | 4. (Optional) Modify the issue=Symantec parameter to read | issue= Charles%20Schwab Also change | VIP%20Access:VSMT123456789 to your Schwab online banking | username. These are purely aesthetic changes and will only | make a difference in the label that shows up in the Google | Auth app. | | 5. Run: qrencode -o qr.png -s 15 < data.txt to generate the | QR image (qr.png) from your otpauth data file. | | 6. Scan qr.png with your TOTP app. | | 7. Go to Schwab -> Service -> Security Center -> Manage Two- | Step Verification -> Add another Security Token and input the | Symantec ID from step 3 (it looks like VSMT12345678) and the | current rolling TOTP code from your TOTP. | foo92691 wrote: | > I wish they supported PGP for messages as well | | Does _anyone_ support PGP for messages? | lrvick wrote: | Even Facebook does. Facebook. | gruez wrote: | some crypto exchanges do | jandrese wrote: | The only major company I know that even has the option for | PGP on email is Facebook. It works quite well and was | pretty easy to set up, so long as you don't use a webmail | client or your phone. | jambalaya wrote: | I love Schwab but agree on the security front. They tried to | push everyone to use their voice auth for phone verification. | I want more security not less lol. I remember several years | ago, they didn't support special characters in passwords. | Hopefully that has chanced. | shkkmo wrote: | The unlimited ATM fee reimbursement from Charles Schwab is | amazing, especially for international travel. My brother just | spent 3 years living in Australia and was able to withdraw | from Charles Schwab and then deposit into his Australian | account with zero fees and a better exchange rate than any | other service available to him. | | If you are concerned about security, you can just leave a | couple of hundred bucks in there for whenever you need cash | and push funds to it from your main bank to top it up. | Taylor_OD wrote: | If you make trading as easy as playing candy crush you don't | have to have good CS to get customers. | jermaustin1 wrote: | > such mediocre customer support. | | I agree 1000% with this. I "recently" switched from RH to ally | since I already have a decent chunk of cash there, and I am | STILL waiting on my cost-basis to transfer. It has been over 75 | days since they transferred my stock and cash, and every time I | reach out to customer service they feed me the same canned | response that due to volume of transfers it is taking longer | than expected and they have no ETA on when my cost-basis will | transfer. | jackson1442 wrote: | Same deal here, switched to Vanguard. After a few weeks I | called in to ask about it and they offered to send a letter | to RH on my behalf to get that information transferred. Sure | enough, about 2 weeks later all my information was in | Vanguard! | MiddleEndian wrote: | Baffling that the US financial market is simultaneously run | by supercomputers built as close to the physical stock | market as possible to reduce latency, and then also manual | letters and people personally mailing checks and such. | xyzelement wrote: | Is it actually baffling? The computers do the very | specific narrow set of operations (post order, match, | accept fills, cancel) while the much broader range of | "what else may come up" is less automated. | whoisjuan wrote: | This happened to me when I transferred to Schwab. | Surprisingly it was Schwab the one that eased my mind. I | called them and they put me through the cost basis department | which told me that RH basically has to prepare the cost basis | manaually and pass it to them/ They told me that it had been | taking a while but that they were indeed receiving the Cost | Basis for other customers. | | So I just had to wait. Of course this sucks because it blocks | you from selling, but it will eventually show up. | xyzelement wrote: | Does it actually block you from selling? I think you really | need to have the cost basis figured out for tax time - you | sure Schwab won't let you? Even with a manual request? | lumost wrote: | Most consumers do not want to pick up the phone these days. I | do not trust that an inbound phone number isn't just a spam | call. I get concerned that the number I get when I google | "schwab support line" will turn out to be a fake line setup on | a good looking website designed to harvest personal details. | | I strongly suspect that the SaaS/consumer trend of having fewer | human interactions will continue. The necessary caveat of this | is that many firms will have less developed procedures for | managing interesting situations. | [deleted] | Aea wrote: | Okay, why not start with https://www.schwab.com? Their phone | number is literally one-click away at the top of the site. | pbreit wrote: | Vast majority of customers prioritize cost and product over | customer service. | dillondoyle wrote: | +2 for schwab especially investor checking card. | | Though they did have hiccups in trading peak GME/AMC. | | It's refreshing being able to chat, or call a native english | speaking call center where they will bend over backwards to | help, waive fees, etc. No offense meant to ESL speakers, but I | think we've all experienced 'support' that is hard to | understand and communicate. I can't even get TCF on the phone. | foo92691 wrote: | > I always find surprising that Robinhood was able to build | such a large business with such mediocre customer support | | You must be new to the tech industry. :-) | TeMPOraL wrote: | Yup. The playbook of modern tech companies seems to be: | | 1. Solve the easy 80% of the problem. | | 2. Deploy that "solution" - which would _not_ be considered | acceptable in just about any other industry - as widely as | possible. Do not offer proper customer support. | | 3. Take the money you save on not solving the hard parts and | not having customer support, and funnel it into marketing, to | stimulate growth. | | 4. Continue until you fail, get acquired, or dominate the | market. | | 5. If anyone asks what kind of outfit you're running, make a | sad puppy face and say "scaling is hard!". | gip wrote: | While that's true, it may only be part of the story. There | is a clear tension between "democratize X" (for Robinhood X | is "finance for all") and offering a white glove service, | including stellar support for everyone. It simply won't | scale. | | Democratizing X also means commoditizing X by offering a | minimum acceptable solution that will become what people | are taught to expect. I am not sure there is a way around | this to be honest. | stouset wrote: | Schwab and Vanguard are completely free if you're not | trading individual stocks, which in complete bluntness | _virtually no retail consumers should be doing_. | | Robinhood has gotten their position by invisibly and | dramatically increasing the amount of risk assumed by | their customers' life savings. Everybody's a savvy | investor in a record-breaking bull market. | WalterBright wrote: | > virtually no retail consumers should be doing | | Yeah, well, I regularly read on HN about how retail | consumers are locked out of investing in stocks, that | only rich people can. | | Robinhood blew that argument out of the water. | | I've been a retail consumer stock investor my entire | adult life, and would be pretty unhappy if regulations | locked me out of that. | smabie wrote: | Saying no retail investor should be buying stocks is like | saying no one should ever start a company. | stouset wrote: | The level of effort and personal commitment necessary to | commit your life savings toward starting your own | business vs. putting it all into meme stocks isn't even | remotely comparable. | | One of these can be done in ten minutes from your couch | while stoned with a handful of clicks. I'll leave you to | guess which of the two it is, but suffice it to say | that's the one I think should have some additional guard | rails. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Agreed. And perhaps it's getting too philosophical, but | one could argue that a big role of a government is to | protect its citizens from everything that has a high risk | of incurring sudden and effectively unbounded losses. | Whether it's mandating installation of _actual_ guard | rails through health and safety regulations, or | regulating away business models that tend to make regular | people broke by accident. | imgabe wrote: | You can buy individual stocks without yoloing your entire | life savings into meme stocks. | | The movement to limit the most profitable investments | only to "experienced" i.e. already wealthy investors is | one thing that prevents average people from accumulating | wealth. | | If an average person is allowed to walk into Vegas and | put their whole life savings in black, or spend it on | lottery tickets why shouldn't they be able to buy a | stock? Less nanny state, please not more. | IMTDb wrote: | > Solve the easy 80% of the problem. | | The issue is that the current players are unable to solve | that part properly. | | In my country, it was impossible to book a cab with an app | before uber came. | | Yesterday, I tried knowing if my insurance covered some | dental cost, and I was unable to sign up or login on the | website, I had to call a human to book an appointment to a | brick and mortar store. This is the biggest insurance | provider in a western european country. I'll take the new | "startup" as soon as it comes, just because they make 80% | of what I need convenient enough. They can deal with the | remaining 20% later, currently my 80% needs are not served. | bobthepanda wrote: | The problem with this is that if you hive off the 80 | percent that is easy and profitable you may also end up | binning the competitors and then there is nothing for the | 20 percent if the new competitor decides to do absolutely | nothing. | | This is what happened when Craiglist and later Facebook | cannibalized classified ads in the US; many local and | hyperlocal newspapers disappeared because they were not | big enough to attract major advertisers, but all the | local ones left. Yet Craiglist provides no news at all | and Facebook aggregates news but certainly doesn't | produce any, and especially not at the local or | hyperlocal level. | navierstokes wrote: | You left out "after you get big, hire a senior regulator | from the Obama era to leverage personal connections in | Washington." | | It's so depressing. It's probably better to not know how | this stuff works. | mkr-hn wrote: | The government->business pipeline is older than any | living president. It's not like all the companies who | founded Silicon Valley on government contracts lucked | into it. | chickenpotpie wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C | 3%A... | | and the business->government pipeline when Eisenhower's | advisors all used to work/currently work for The United | Fruit Company | mkr-hn wrote: | It seems like any sufficiently advanced business is | indistinguishable from government. | dane-pgp wrote: | In particular, a sufficiently advanced business looks | like an undemocratic, authoritarian, central-planning | government. Basically, the problem with large | corporations is that they are communist dictatorships. | TeMPOraL wrote: | And here I thought that once you include boards and | shareholders, you get something isomorphic to democracy | :). | | If we're considering corporations to be "undemocratic, | authoritarian, central-planning (...) communist | dictatorships" inside, then so are _all democratic | governments_. The "voice of the people" part of a | democratic government is just a surface layer, the tip of | an iceberg. Or, more charitably, a rudder of a ship - the | part that sets the course, but is nevertheless | insignificant in mass compared to the rest of the ship. | | The bulk of every government is a top-down hierarchical | structure, because it can't really be any other way. You | can't hold votes on whether a particular clerk is | supposed to be in a particular building on Monday 09:00, | and whether they're supposed to approve the form you're | trying to submit. | frenchy wrote: | That would be an oligarchy, good sir. | | In a representative democracy you get a voice on who | executes the orders regardless of whether you are rich or | poor or smart or stupid or went to business school with | who-knows-who. | TeMPOraL wrote: | That's true, and IMO, it's pretty much entirely the | function of size. Modern governments are what you get | when you try to organize millions of people - so it's not | really surprising that, as a company grows, it starts to | look like a government from the inside. It couldn't be | any other way. | imbnwa wrote: | I'd put money on Amazon having sufficient power to | control a number of desperate state governments at the | least | [deleted] | navierstokes wrote: | This is different from lobbying. | | How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission | soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners | jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear? | | Even if that commissioner was an enlightened patrician of | high moral character, it would create the appearance of | corruption. And that alone is corrosive to the rule of | law. | | People with less integrity, people downstream in | industry, might interpret that as a signal that | regulators are a joke. They may go on television and say | things like "I don't respect the Nuclear Regulatory | Commission." | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >How would you feel if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission | soft-balled Mr. Burns, then one of its commissioners | jumped ship to work at Springfield Nuclear? | | If I'm from New Hampshire, Ohio, Maine, South Dakota or | somewhere else government is still kinda sorta | accountable I'm Outraged(TM). | | If I'm from Massachusetts, Louisiana, California, New | York, or somewhere else government has been unaccountable | for generations I shrug and move on with life. | bobthepanda wrote: | Part of the issue, IIRC, is that you want regulators who | are experienced with what an industry does, and | practically speaking the easiest way to get that is to | hire from within the industry. We should probably keep | that bit of the revolving door working. | | The bigger problem is the reverse; we should really have | the government do something like finance's "garden | leave", where leaving employees are paid while banned | from industry employment, so that whatever competitive | info you had is outdated by the time you can take a job | in industry again. | giantg2 wrote: | It's too bad sad puppy face doesn't work in year end | reviews | phone8675309 wrote: | Depends on how close to the C-suite you are | fumar wrote: | Exactly, sad puppy face because my personal growth is my | career growth and my career growth is my financial | growth. So please more money. | giantg2 wrote: | I'm about as far away as one can be. | MangoCoffee wrote: | use the VC money to provide free service or subsidies the | cost | quacked wrote: | You must work for my company! | | The primary issue is that these 5 steps _work_. | hef19898 wrote: | They do. Until VC money dries up. But even then it might | go on... | staticassertion wrote: | VC money is unfathomable. It's not drying up any time | soon. They may choose to shift it if there's some kind of | crash, but it's too much money to just run out. | jandrese wrote: | VC money is top 1%er money. Because they are so | overloaded with cash even really hairbrained stuff gets | funded by someone looking for something, _anything_ , | that can beat the market. | | The VC market is basically medieval patronage with a | capitalistic flair. Now the patrons are expected to bring | you in massive returns instead of just producing culture. | fleddr wrote: | I do want to add some nuance to the salty and cynical takes | here, even though I share the overall conclusion that tech | support is terrible across the board. | | You can't compare a service like Robinhood (or Coinbase, the | like) with a product like Google or Facebook: | | 1. Unlike these free services, at an exchange, you really are | a customer. The business model is that you pay fees for | transactions. That's not the same as a free "take it or leave | it" situation. As a paying customer, it is far more | reasonable and expected to get support. | | 2. The nature of the support queries are far more serious. | This isn't about your Instagram app glitching, this is about | money. People unable to access it, transactions not coming | through, withdrawal errors, fiat/banking errors. All very | serious matters where not only you expect support, you expect | urgent support and typically human support. | | Now combine the above issues (true support needed, and much | of it human support), we add the third and fatal ingredient: | user growth. These services grow by at least a few million | users per month. | | I don't know how many require support, but even a small | percentage means you're on a constant hiring spree. | | Google and Facebook scale up by just not giving any support. | How do you scale up this fast giving real support, so not | just an FAQ or chat bot? | mbesto wrote: | Honestly this is varied. | | I've seen a bunch of (usually smaller or just starting) tech | companies win out business because of how responsive their | customer support even though their product was inferior. | | Robinhood won because it saw an opening in changes in market | demands: | | - Increasingly lax SEC rules for retail traders. | | - Increases in income inequality whereby the poor side of the | spectrum has been told they can't have access to the rich's | set of investment tools (i.e. millennials with varying | degrees) | | - Per transaction fees that made day trading appear less | lucrative (see point before) | | - Competitors with terrible UIs for non professional traders | | Part of the reason the ETrade/Schwabs/TD's of the world | didn't do what RH did was because it meant deliberately | making creating a trading account more difficult. For example | - Vanguard almost deliberately makes their service hard to | day trader because they don't want to carry that risk | profile. | | So, this was not a market that was crying for better customer | service but one that wanted cheap, easy to use access to | investments that were seemingly unattainable previously. | | I'm actually more surprised the SEC (or a class action | lawsuit) didn't thwart RH turning into a large business when | it was much smaller...not the competition. | colordrops wrote: | It wasn't that surprising - they just went after a new market, | that being those who rarely if ever did any sort of investment | or trading. | tobinfricke wrote: | It's not really an entirely new market, but definitely a | "second wave" attempt to capture that market. | | Back in the Web 1.0 boom, seemingly dozens of online | brokerages (ETrade, Ameritrade, Scottrade, etc) sprang up | overnight to fuel easy consumer access to the "meme stocks" | of the day (Pets.com, Yahoo, etc). | | Those are the new legacy players and I guess Robinhood is the | new generation. | gruez wrote: | >I feel that by having my investments in Robinhood, I'm adding | some sort of risk multiplier that has nothing to do with the | nature of my investments. It has to do mainly with how amateur- | ish their brokerage operation feels. | | In the sense that they'll collapse and you'll lose your | portfolio, or that they'll be down at a critical time you want | to make a trade? For a buy and hold type of investor, the | latter isn't really a concern. | hangonhn wrote: | Even if they collapse you shouldn't lose your portfolio. | These people | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_Company keeps | track of what you own. | vageli wrote: | Aren't there limits to the amount covered? Even the FDIC | limits recovery amounts. | gruez wrote: | AFAIK DTCC provides zero coverage, that's handled by SIPC | and is limited to 500k | tedunangst wrote: | Even if RH fails in some spectacular way, it'd be hard | for all the customer assets to actually vanish. If you | have 10000 shares of AAPL, but only 9000 shares are | there, should still be good. | | For funsies, the open SIPC cases: | https://www.sipc.org/cases-and-claims/open-cases/ | AznHisoka wrote: | Beware that Robinhood also miscalculates wash sales, which | they've admitted to me. I typically don't care about customer | support, as I don't do a lot of trades, but messing up tax | forms is a huge no-no for me. | thebean11 wrote: | Hmm, mess them up in whose favor? Robinhood messing it up | seems like plenty of plausible deniability to not pay a | penalty if you get audited.. | AznHisoka wrote: | Mess them up in the IRS' favor, and it was clearly a | mistake, and something they've had to fix for me. | dataflow wrote: | Could you elaborate on what scenarios it would get messed up | in? I expect it would happen if you're working across | multiple brokerages, but is there any other scenario? It'd be | helpful for us to know and watch out for it. | zzt123 wrote: | Maybe I'm wrong and there's a better company that offers this, | but the reason I use RH is so that I can trade both cryptos and | regular securities out of the same account, with 0-day | settlement on trades (without opening a margin account) since | every RH account is an implicit margin account. | | I also like the instant deposits that scale with account size. | | RH's trading hours for securities is more limited than anyone | else, but I don't find myself trading outside of those hours | anyways. | | I also don't like their naive tax accounting and don't expect | them to handle wash sales properly, which are two very big | negatives, but I haven't found a better broker for my main use | case. | giantg2 wrote: | A pittance | underseacables wrote: | Such a small amount, sure hope it doesn't cause the CEO to lose | sleep. | Marciplan wrote: | This sounds like a lot but isn't this just a tiny hiccup | Robinhood had to get out of the way for their IPO? | cwkoss wrote: | With the number of people still mad at RH at how they handled | gamestop, I'm excited to see what sort of market shenanigans | wallstreetsbets folks engage in once they IPO. I predict | massive put volume. | rdiddly wrote: | They screwed up, but did they deserve the "largest penalty ever?" | Established brokerage houses have gotten away with worse and paid | less. Sounds an awful lot like another true real-life example of | the very same r/WSB David/Goliath narrative the "established" | part of the industry wishes it could discredit. | cwkoss wrote: | This is a better argument for more fees on established | brokerages rather than reducing this fee. | mym1990 wrote: | Its so difficult to say what is going on behind closed doors | when established brokerage houses get caught(or any brokerage). | In many ways it makes perfect sense that an established firm is | able to negotiate for more lenient penalties, much like an | established lawyer might be able to negotiate for more lenient | sentences. | Vaslo wrote: | I have to say that I agree. I think a punishment and/or fine | should have been implemented. But $70M? Where does that money | go anyway? | elliekelly wrote: | Egregious conduct is (and has been) punished by license | revocation or revocation of FINRA membership. It may be the | largest monetary fine ever levied but it certainly isn't the | harshest punishment. | smeyer wrote: | >Where does that money go anyway? | | I believe that FINRA keeps its fines and uses it for | operating expenses, which are also partially funded by annual | fees paid by its members and maybe other funding sources. | elihu wrote: | 12.6 million goes to customers, according to the article. | | > Robinhood's resolution with FINRA includes $12.6 million in | restitution to thousands of customers and a $57 million | penalty, the largest in the regulator's history, and covers a | range of issues dating back to September 2016, FINRA said in | a statement. | kevmo wrote: | lol, 70M. All of these companies always get fines that don't even | surpass the amount of money they made off faulty practices. | | People need to start going to jail for gross consumer failures. | vptr wrote: | If you send everyone to jail, how are you gonna collect the | fines next time lol :D | ZoomerCretin wrote: | I was surprised to see that it was not related to their | activities relating to the GameStop/short squeeze fiasco. | edgyquant wrote: | They didn't do anything illegal during that time. There is | nothing illegal about restricting highly volatile equities | pretty much every brokerage does this. Don't know how many | times this has to be said here before people stop making this | accusation | duxup wrote: | Assuming Robinhood's story was accurate that everyone was | trading on margin (at least by default and thus a lot of | traders) and that they were approaching some serious questions | about if they had enough cash on had to cover the trades / | possible losses ... I'm not sure what the right thing to do in | that case would be. | | Keep everyone trading and possibly run out of cash to cover | everything? Or stop trading and possibly hose the folks trying | to make trades? | jw1224 wrote: | > Assuming Robinhood's story was accurate | | There have been several Congressional Hearings since | January's drama, and something definitely doesn't add up. | | Robinhood's CEO stated, under oath, that they switched off | buys of GME following discussions with the DTCC. | | In a later hearing, the head of the DTCC stated -- again, | under oath and on the record -- that Robinhood's decision was | entirely their own, and they had never spoken with Robinhood | about it. | | Someone is lying. | | I would urge anyone interested in this (ongoing) saga to read | this excellent investigative journalism piece here: | | https://prospect.org/power/how-the-gamestop-hustle-worked/ | nrmitchi wrote: | > Someone is lying. | | Or, both people are stating the story from their side, and | there is context missing. | | Robinhood: "We switch off after discussions with the DTCC | [about increased reserve requirements which we could not | meet]" | | DTCC: "It was entirely their decision, we never spoke to | them about [the explicit actions they would have to take. | It's definitely a coincidence that most other brokers did | the exact same thing]" | duxup wrote: | I agree. I don't think the description necessarily means | someone is lying. | jw1224 wrote: | It's clearly ambiguous. Retail investors were screwed | over by _someone_ , and there are thousands of people | still following the situation, demanding answers. | | Take a read of that article I linked, it gives an | excellent and impartial summary of many of the conflicts | of interests affecting all parties involved. It also | brings up numerous issues I never see discussed here, | given most people are only aware of the "mainstream | narrative" -- there is much more evidence being uncovered | than most people are aware of. | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | > Retail investors were screwed over by someone | | That doesn't seem clear. Possible, but not for sure. Too | much of this reads like hardcore conspiracy theorists, | but maybe that's just biasing me against the legit bits. | nrmitchi wrote: | My suspicion, which I don't have data to support, is that | retail investors where largely screwed over by other | retail investors. | JustinAiken wrote: | Other retail investors weren't the ones that disabled the | buy button. | | Of course artificially removing all demand is going to | tank the price. | | Retail got screwed, and it wasn't by retail. | tedunangst wrote: | They disabled the buy button when GME was over 400. But | now the buy button is back and you can get twice as many | shares for the same money. Sounds like a bargain! | atatatat wrote: | On and off record discussions are two totally different | things! | | And that's exactly why ALL financial instruments & systems | should operate publicly, transparently. | sushid wrote: | They could have also said that they'll stop giving everyone | secret margin trading accounts and tell users that any trade | (due to market volatility) will take 2-3 days to close. | gruez wrote: | The secret margin accounts is a red herring. They need to | put up deposit with the DTCC even for stocks that's | "paid"[1] with settled funds, and they can't use customer | funds for it. So if you bought 1 share worth $100 and the | deposit requirement was 100%, then robinhood has to come up | with $100 of their own cash (or borrow it from someone) to | fulfill the trade. | | [1] quotes used because settlement actually happens 2 days | after the trade is made. | greenshackle2 wrote: | The issue is not just trading on margin, it's trading with | unsettled funds, which you can do in a non-margin account, | because it's a non issue 99.999% of the time. | | Because of T+2 settlement when you buy/sell stock the actual | exchange of shares and money only happens 2 business days | later. If you sell a stock and then buy a different stock the | same day you're trading with money that technically is not in | your account yet, even in a cash account. | | It's fine because you wrote promissory note to pay $X in 2 | days, but you're also holding a promissory note saying you | are owed >=$X in 2 days. (And promissory notes to | receive/deliver the respective shares). And there's a central | clearinghouse enforcing this. | | But part of the reason why it's low risk is that the | clearinghouse requires brokers to put up large amounts of | cash as collateral to ensure they can pay all their | promissory notes even if they go bust. They are fairly | conservative in their collateral requirements. | | So when all your customers are trading a highly volatile | stock with a notoriously high rate of failure to deliver | (this is a whole other discussion), the clearinghouse gets | antsy and may ask you to put up ridiculously large amounts of | cash as collateral. | gruez wrote: | >Because of T+2 settlement when you buy/sell stock the | actual exchange of shares and money only happens 2 business | days later. If you sell a stock and then buy a different | stock the same day you're trading with money that | technically is not in your account yet, even in a cash | account. | | It's to do with T+2 settlement, but not with unsettled | funds (funds you got from selling a stock, but hasn't | settled yet). Basically, even if the funds were settled | (eg. it's been sitting in your account for years), your | broker has to put up the deposit on the day of trade, but | can't use your money to do it. So if you bought $100 worth | of shares and the deposit requirement was 100%, then your | broker has to come up with $100 of their own cash (or | borrow it from someone) to fulfill the trade. | | https://finance.yahoo.com/video/heres-why-robinhood- | restrict... | | >but our clearing firm simply cannot afford the cost to | settle those trades. We cannot use customer funds to front | that cost due to regulation. So the brokerages or the | clearing firms have to go into their own pockets to do it. | And they simply can't afford the cost of that trade | clearance. | SilasX wrote: | Say what? Why would brokers need to put up their own | collateral to back customers' long-settled cash? Because | if the risk (to the rest of the market) that the broker | doesn't actually have that cash? That seems seriously | messed up. | greenshackle2 wrote: | Oh, I didn't know that, that's even worse for them, it | means all customer Buys are done on 2-day credit, | basically. | ZoomerCretin wrote: | Other brokers without liquidity issues enacted similar | policies. But you're right, the fault doesn't lie with them. | | The blame should go toward the DTCC who increased their | margin requirements on buyers for seemingly no reason other | than to coerce everyone into stopping retail investors from | squeezing the rich shorts. | gruez wrote: | >DTCC who increased their margin requirements on buyers for | seemingly no reason other than [...] | | ...except credit risk | | https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddi | t... | | >[T+2 settlement] means that the seller takes two days of | credit risk to the buyer. I see a stock trading at $400 on | Monday, I push the button to buy it, I buy it from you at | $400. On Tuesday the stock drops to $20. On Wednesday you | show up with the stock that I bought on Monday, and you ask | me for my $400. I am no longer super jazzed to give it to | you. I might find a reason not to pay you. The reason might | be that I'm bankrupt, from buying all that stock for $400 | on Monday. | ZoomerCretin wrote: | The future price of the stock has nothing to do with | anything. If I want a $400 stock, and you agree to sell | it to me for $400, it is a done deal, is it not? The | order is filled, regardless of settlement time or future | price changes. | gruez wrote: | >The future price of the stock has nothing to do with | anything | | The quote in my previous comment covers that, | specifically: | | >I am no longer super jazzed to give it to you. I might | find a reason not to pay you. The reason might be that | I'm bankrupt, from buying all that stock for $400 on | Monday. | ZoomerCretin wrote: | Yes, I read it. You can't cancel an order in settlement | because you're "no longer super jazzed", else every order | where the stock price increased would be cancelled by the | seller so they could sell again at the higher price. Do | you have any evidence that orders can be cancelled in | settlement? | gruez wrote: | >Do you have any evidence that orders can be cancelled in | settlement | | It's not that they'll show up and say "on second thought | I don't want that stock anymore, please cancel my order". | It's that they'll go bankrupt in the meantime. This was | already mentioned in the original comment. | | >The reason might be that I'm bankrupt | SilasX wrote: | The broker doesn't have some way to credibly lock up the | money so the buyer can't back out, regardless of | jazzedness or bankruptcy status? | gruez wrote: | >The broker doesn't have some way to credibly lock up the | money | | They do, that's what the collateral is for. From the | linked article: | | >The way that stock markets mostly deal with this risk is | a system of clearinghouses. The stock trades are | processed through a clearinghouse. The members of the | clearinghouse are big brokerage firms--"clearing brokers" | --who send trades to the clearinghouses and guarantee | them. The clearing brokers post collateral with the | clearinghouses: They put up some money to guarantee that | they'll show up to pay off all their settlement | obligations. The clearing brokers have customers-- | institutional investors, smaller brokers--who post | collateral with the clearing brokers to guarantee their | obligations. The smaller brokers, in turn, have customers | of their own--retail traders, etc.--and also have to make | sure that, if a customer buys stock on a Monday, she'll | have the cash to pay for it on Wednesday. | | The catch here seems to be that the broker can't use | customer funds for collateral (see my other comments in | this thread), so the broker has to come up with the money | themselves by drawing on lines of credit. If those lines | of credit run dry, then they can't take any more orders. | tedunangst wrote: | It's a done deal until your $400 doesn't show up two days | later, and then what? | nrmitchi wrote: | Robinhood is and has been manipulative and predatory for | _years_. | | Arguing that Robinhood did illegal things "for the benefit of | their banking partners" or whatever other conspiracy theory | you're suggesting is just that, a conspiracy theory. | | Let Robinhood be punished for the terrible things they have | actually done instead of pointing at provably-false boogeymen. | MikeDelta wrote: | He didn't say anything about a conspiracy. | | Brokers have a duty of care and I can imagine Finra | investigating if they took good care of their clients during | this period, no matter the reason behind it. | nrmitchi wrote: | Suggesting that a group should be investigated for "their | actions" without providing any specifics is straight out of | the conspiracy-theory playbook. | | Any rebuttal is easily countered with "that's not the | action I was talking about. I was referring to their other | illegal actions." | | You're setting up a non-falsifiable argument, which is the | basis of a conspiracy theory. You're throwing out non- | specified accusations and expecting your non-specified | accusations to be disproven. | throwawaysea wrote: | I'm out of the loop on what Robinhood did, and the news | articles on this fine seem to be a bit vague. What did they | do that is manipulative and predatory? | nrmitchi wrote: | I'm just going to go off the top of my head here. | | 1. They released a "checking account" that they claimed was | FDIC and/or SPIC insured when it was not. (yes, they backed | off of this one when they got caught). | | 2. They've gamified buying/selling stocks using addictive | dark patterns (like confetti explosions). FOMO-inspiring | push notifications are another example here. | | 3. They have such a terrible level of support for a product | which involves people's real money. | | 4. They let people start trading options without any of the | due-diligence typically performed. | | 5. They released an initial options product which was quite | literally "Do you think this stock is going to go UP or | DOWN?" | | 6. Their entire product is based on people having margin | accounts that do not know that they have margin accounts. | | 7. Their Payment for Order Flow is (or at least was) | _significantly_ higher than industry standard. | | Overall, their business model is taking a variety of | complex financial instruments and wrapping them up in | lipstick to sell to people who overwhelmingly do not | understand the thing they are actually buying (or selling). | | I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple but I'm also multi-tasking | at the moment. | | _Edit_ : | | I forgot about the "infinite money" "glitch", which was a | situation explicitly called out in regulation as prohibited | (regarding counting outstanding margin credit as assets | when calculating margin credit) | dntrkv wrote: | Many of your points were being lauded as good things just | a year ago. "Robinhood made advanced financial | instruments accessible to the average Joe" now that the | average joe has continuously shot himself in the foot, | people are realizing it might not have been the best | idea. | nrmitchi wrote: | > Many of your points were being lauded as good things | just a year ago | | I'm sure some people did. | | I personally have _never_ said these were a good thing, | and am still not saying they were ever a good thing. | | > Robinhood made advanced financial instruments | accessible to the average Joe | | This is definitely a very charitable interpretation of | what I said. | dane-pgp wrote: | How's this for some proposed legislation/regulation: | Anyone who wants to use a share trading service has to | first complete a one month "training period" where they | use the service with virtual money only. The UI would be | exactly the same, but you couldn't top-up or cash-out | your balance. | | The catch, though, is that you "fail" this training | period if you don't make a profit (or enough trades) | during that month. You are also prevented from attempting | another training period with that service (or any other | service) for another 11 months. | | This would have the dual effect of locking out the large | proportion of users who don't know what they are doing, | and also preventing a sudden influx of users from taking | advantage of (or falling victim to) some meme scheme that | generates a lot of short-term media attention. | greenshackle2 wrote: | > 7. Their Payment for Order Flow is (or at least was) | significantly higher than industry standard. | | Just to elaborate a bit, with payment for order flow the | broker essentially gets a kickback for executing a trade | with a particular firm. They pass on part of the kickback | to the customer as a rebate, and keep some of it for | themselves. | | Robinhood was (is?) keeping a bigger cut for themselves | than other brokers who do payment for order flow | (practically all retail brokers at this point, I guess), | _while advertising that they have the best execution_. | | If I remember right, they didn't get dinged for keeping a | bigger cut because that's not necessarily illegal, they | got dinged for lying about it - you can't say you have | _the best execution in the industry_ if you 're taking | more hidden fees than everyone else. | alexander-litty wrote: | The FDIC-insured nonsense alone perplexes me. There is no | web to spin here that favors them. | | Did they really think they could get away with this? Or | did they have a severe cascade of miscommunication? It is | incredibly irresponsible and careless behavior either | way. | [deleted] | ZoomerCretin wrote: | They are paid to route their order flow through the same | firm that is heavily invested in shorting GameStop. The | specific action I'm referring to is the banning of buying | any more shares of $GME. Assuming everyone was playing by | the rules, there should be no reason why margin | requirements would increase for buyers of a stock but not | for the shorts whose collective positions had recently | become net-negative in the $10,000,000,000+ range. | | Robinhood may have simply been coerced to do this, but | regardless, it eroded my trust in their ability to provide | me with any share I want in any quantity I can afford. I | and many other retail investors switched to bigger firms | that won't have liquidity issues, or enact arbitrary | restrictions on stock purchases because of those issues or | their close relationships with the billionaires on the | other side of the trade. | gruez wrote: | >there should be no reason why margin requirements would | increase for buyers of a stock but not for the shorts | | source for margin requirement only increasing for longs | but not shorts? | | Some non-nefarious explanations I can think off the top | of my head: | | * hedge funds and their prime brokers has much easier | access to credit than retail brokerages, which allow them | fulfill their deposit obligations than a discount | brokerage | | * since the hedge funds shorted GME a long time ago, the | trades were already settled, so they're not subject to | any deposit obligations (since deposit obligations only | exist for unsettled trades) | nrmitchi wrote: | > which allow them fulfill their deposit obligations than | a discount brokerage | | Not even just easier access to new capital, but you can | be sure they are able to move money faster than someone | doing an ACH transaction to Robinhood that would take | multiple days to actually settle. | nrmitchi wrote: | > no reason why margin requirements would increase for | buyers of a stock but not for the shorts | | There are tons of reasons why (counter-party risk, | correlated risk of brokerages with high exposure, T+2 | settlement, etc). You seem particularly keen on ignoring | them though. | | > Robinhood may have simply been coerced to do this, but | regardless | | Please stop ignoring known facts in favor of your | conspiracy theory. | | > I and many other retail investors switched to bigger | firms that won't have liquidity issues | | It is completely logical that larger brokerages will be | able to weather liquidity issues more easily. If this was | super important to you, going with the discount brokerage | was a poor decision in the first place. | MangoCoffee wrote: | Robinhood probably gonna be a meme stock on /r/wallstreetbets | when it ipo | atlgator wrote: | WSB wants revenge by shorting it. They really got burned in the | whole GME/AMC fiasco when RH halted trading. | meepmorp wrote: | This is in addition to $65 in October, for misleading customers: | | https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/robinhood-pay-65-ml... | hogFeast wrote: | That hiring process, all that LeetCode, and they still couldn't | work how to create a system that worked. Tragic. | oxymoran wrote: | "...and exposed them to excessively risky trading tools such as | options" | | Oh FFS. That was actually one of positive things that Robinhood | did. They could have had some better safeguards for the unlimited | loss scenarios to be sure but to lament access to all options is | disingenuous at best. | wcchandler wrote: | Agreed. I signed up for Robinhood and Webull after Fidelity | denied me level 2 access, twice. | sitzkrieg wrote: | how many people do you know that signed up at RH to write | covered calls? lol | | buncha clueless reddit people yoloing | chunky1994 wrote: | Note: This is not related to any activity relating to the | gamestop/meme stock trading restrictions earlier this year, and | was predominantly for their violations regarding proper trading | controls and communications during 2018 to late 2020. This is a | rather substantial fine in terms of those violations. | FridayoLeary wrote: | I wonder if the gamestock saga isn't the reason this news has | received the attention it did. | rychco wrote: | That's it? | jb775 wrote: | The SEC is useless. | | $70M is 0.625% of the conservative value of Robinhood[1] as of a | year ago. That means they have over 99.375% of value remaining to | work with. How is this not simply treated as "cost of doing | business" in the finance world? They should be putting execs in | prison when the law is blatantly broken. | | Then they expect younger generations to blindly trust the finance | system. Time is ripe for millennials to cash in their 401ks and | find a new place to put it....where sticky hands can't touch it. | | [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/17/investing/robinhood- | tradi... | chunky1994 wrote: | Firstly, this fine was issued by FINRA, not the SEC. Secondly, | which laws did they break exactly? | | This is a substantial fine for the scope of violations that | were being investigated, as this has nothing to do with any of | the gamestop restrictions earlier this year but their | messaging, outages and vetting of customer expertise during | 2018-2020. | | It boils down to a $70M fine for not having a high avilability | system, being bad at explaining trading concepts and allowing | people to take risks that other banks would not. That's quite a | reasonable amount. | themodelplumber wrote: | Prison? Really? A lot of otherwise disadvantaged people have | made life-changing money with RH. It offers education, research | tools, and generally does a good job of being useful in | supporting a proactive investing and trading habit. | | I would guess that the real cost here is the publicity and | reputation hit, not the fine. | therealdrag0 wrote: | Placing orders is not rocket science. I bought my first stock | on etrade decades ago as a teenager from a lower class | family. RH didn't add much except a pretty UI and lubrication | to make it more gamboling than it already was. | themodelplumber wrote: | E-Trade, you mean the company that depicted a baby earning | a stack of cash in a Superbowl ad? | | Good anecdote and I'm glad you were able to figure out how | to buy your first stock, but even the gambling community | cried foul on E-Trade when it was brand new. | | Robinhood's mobile app is known for its simple UI and | improved charts over ET; it's much less cluttered in | addition to being a good deal for taxable accounts + | offering crypto derivatives. | cryptica wrote: | It's so arbitrary. Now I know what it felt like to live during | the dark ages. | | We have: | | - Presidents and CEOs instead of kings and queens. | | - Corporate shareholders instead of knights. | | - Scientists, economists, lobbyists and regulators instead of | priests. | | - Employees instead of peasants. | | Massive hypocrisy all around. | | The difference now is that many peasants can see everything and | understand everything that's going on even better than the king | can. | FridayoLeary wrote: | There always has to be a ruling class according to Orwell. But | that isn't a bad thing necessarily, and i'm sure that any | peasant from any period would happily sell his left arm to | enjoy the privileges we all enjoy. | | >Now I know what it felt like to live during the dark ages. | | really? | | >Massive hypocrisy all around. | | Hmm. (i'm not attacking you personally, i'm also a terrible | hypocrite, but trying to put things into perspective) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-30 23:00 UTC)