Herrera Beutler Writes SEC Chair to Urge Probe of GameStop Case | News | chronline.com

Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Bettler

Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of R-Battle Ground joined a growing number of bipartisan congressmen, calling for an investigation into restrictions on GameStop stock trading last week.

In an open letter to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Allison Lee Lee, Herrera Betteler called the temporary prohibition of retail investors from buying GameStop shares as an example of unfair stock market manipulation.

Herrera Betteler said: "Americans deserve integrity in our financial markets, but it seems that certain brokerage platforms may violate their rights by relaxing their thumbs to protect privileged Wall Street investors rather than small individual investors. The law." "This is not only unfair to these individual investors, but also an attack on our country’s free market principles."

Last week, some applications designed to make it easier for ordinary people to trade on the stock market (including Robinhood, which has 13 million downloads), temporarily prohibited its users from buying certain stocks, such as GameStop, on the grounds of "market turmoil."

GameStop stock has been sold short by a number of hedge funds. Thanks to the Reddit Retail Trader Forum, some people lost billions of dollars when stock costs skyrocketed. Robinhood's decision to freeze the stock, as well as some other stocks targeted by the Reddit forum, such as the movie theater chain AMC, triggered widespread outrage from users of the app and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

"Should financial services institutions restrict purchases rather than sell specific stocks in response to market changes stimulated by honest and freely available information?" Herrera Beutler asked in a letter to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission . "More specifically, considering possible conflicts of interest, to prevent brokers from preventing retail investors from buying stocks such as GME, should this behavior be allowed?"

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