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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Stock Trading Firm Robinhood Stored User Passwords in Plaintext

Robinhood, a California-based financial services company that provides a popular commission-free stock trading app, informed some users that their passwords were stored in plaintext.

"When you set a password for your Robinhood account, we use an industry-standard process that prevents anyone at our company from reading it. On Monday night, we discovered that some user credentials were stored in a readable format within our internal systems. We wanted to let you know that your Robinhood password may have been included," the company told impacted customers.

Robinhood says it has addressed the issue and claims to have found no evidence that the exposed passwords have been accessed by anyone outside its response team. However, "out of an abundance of caution," impacted users have been advised to change their passwords.

The company has not shared any technical details on the incident and it has refused to disclose the exact number of impacted users.

The financial services firm discovered the password issue on the same day it raised $323 million. The latest funding round valued the company at $7.6 billion.

Original Submission

The Complete Moron’s Guide to GameStop’s Stock Roller Coaster

Freeman writes:

The Complete Moron’s Guide to GameStop’s Stock Roller Coaster:

Last week, an epic short squeeze had driven GameStop stock up to $40 a share, a roughly 1,500 percent increase from its low point nine months ago. Little did anyone know at the time that this would only be the beginning of the story.

As I write this, GameStop's stock price is hovering around $350, up another 775 percent or so since I wrote about this situation eight days ago. By the time you read this, that number may be horribly outdated, as the stock continues to bounce up and down with extreme volatility hour by hour (it dipped down as low as $61 and peaked as high as $159 on Friday).

The current stock price now gives the company a market cap of about $26 billion.

On the surface, that means the market currently thinks GameStop is worth more than twice as much now (during a potentially existential threat to brick and mortar game sales) as it was during the height of the Wii boom in late 2007, when console game downloads were barely a thing.

Also at: Business Insider.

Melvin Capital, Hedge Fund Targeted by Reddit Board, Closes out of GameStop Short Position

takyon writes:

Melvin Capital, hedge fund targeted by Reddit board, closes out of GameStop short position:

upstart writes:

Robinhood to pay record $70M to settle range of allegations:

The financial penalty is the largest ever ordered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a nongovernmental organisation that oversees the United States brokerage industry, and one that “reflects the scope and seriousness of Robinhood’s violations”, said Jessica Hopper, head of FINRA’s department of enforcement.

Since its 2014 launch, Robinhood has shaken up the brokerage industry with zero-commission trading and an easy-to-use app that’s drawn a new generation of investors into the market.

It already has more than 31 million customers, many of whom were earlier getting left behind as the stock market rose without them. But it’s also faced criticism and penalties from a range of regulators over allegations that it encouraged novices to make trades too risky for them and hurt them in other ways.

Robinhood neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the settlement announced Wednesday. In a blog post, Robinhood detailed how it has improved support for its customers, including offering the ability to call in and talk with a service representative for some issues.