following a slew of backlash from everyone including government officials and billionaires popular online brokerage robinhood which along with other trading platforms facilitated much of the redditfueled trading mayhem has backtracked from its decision to bar buying of the meme stocks that sparked the mindblowing reddit rally in shares heavily shorted by wall street’s elite in a tweet thread thursday afternoon robinhood ceo vlad tenev one of the firm’s two billionaire cofounders announced that starting friday the platform would once again allow limited buys of the eight securities for which it previously stalled trading “in light of recent volatility” robinhood said earlier thursday it was restricting trading of meme stocks including gamestop amc entertainment blackberry and bed bath  beyond—all among those seeing eyepopping gains this week as reddit traders pump up prices with massive buying other stocks temporarily barred on the platform include koss corp express nokia and naked brand robinhood said it was only allowing such positions to be closed tenev said the move was a “riskmanagement decision” due to financial requirements from the securities and exchange commission that fluctuate based on volatility in the markets implying that a surge in margin trading may have strained the firm’s cash on hand interactive brokers has also barred options trading for many of the same stocks–amc entertainment blackberry express gamestop and koss–allowing only liquidation for such positions the firm is also requiring long positions to be fully covered and a 300 margin for short positions “until further notice” shares of gamestop and amc tanked 44 and 57 respectively thursday “we continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary” robinhood said in a statement thursday “in light of recent volatility we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only    amid significant market volatility it’s important as ever that we help customers stay informed” robinhood faced bipartisan fury from elected officials over its decision to halt meme stock purchases rep alexandria ocasiocortez dny tweeted that robinhood should be investigated for halting gamestop and other trades “while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit” and republicans like sen ted cruz rtex came out in agreement meanwhile speculation on social media began circulating nearly immediately after the announcement that robinhood’s decision to stop trading meme stocks was motivated by its relationship with hedge funds and other wall street shops “to be clear this decision was not made on the direction of any market maker we route to or other market participants” tenev said in the thursday tweet thread what to watch for “we do not believe this situation will subside until the exchanges and regulators halt or put certain symbols into liquidation only” interactive brokers said in a statement thursday adding that it will “continue to monitor market conditions and may add or remove symbols” as it deems warranted the sec says it is “monitoring” the situation but hasn’t provided additional guidance once again crippled by the retailtrading frenzy major brokerages dominated the list of outages tracked by downdetector thursday morning with robinhood etrade charles schwab and fidelity all among those experiencing issues around the start of trading according to a new report by the harvard college consulting group 31 of investors under the age of 24 are looking to “make quick cash” while roughly the same percentage use reddit to inform trading only about 58 of those are making revenue and a large majority 65 of those looking to “make quick cash” fail to generate anything at all not just gamestop here are the meme stocks wallstreetbets traders are pumping up during this extremely erratic reddit rally forbes