According to the Complaint, Robinhood Financial, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets. Robinhood Financial is registered as a broker-dealer with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. Robinhood offers people the ability to invest in stocks, ETFs, and options through an electronic trading platform, both online and through an app. Robinhood competes with other online and traditional brokerages by not charging trading fees. At the time of its founding, most brokerage firms charged about $10 or more to make a trade. Robinhood also competes with traditional financial institutions by offering more user friendly digital services, which has made Robinhood very popular, especially with younger traders.
The Complaint alleges that on January 28, 2021, Robinhood halted the purchase of stocks for 13 publicly traded companies including GameStop, Blackberry, Nokia, AMC, and others, in a concerted effort to de-platform and deprive individual investors of the ability to control their own investments for the benefit of itself and others, and that Robinhood’s users lost hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of Robinhood’s stock market manipulation.
This case was transferred to the Southern District of Florida on April 2, 2021. On April 6, the case was consolidated into the Multi-District Litigation under Docket 21-MD-02989.
On October 15, 2021, the Court issued an Order appointing Lead Plaintiff and Counsel. Lead Plaintiff filed a consolidated Complaint on November 30. Defendants filed a Motion to Dismiss the consolidated Complaint on January 7, 2022. On August 10, the Court issued an Order granting in part and denying in part Defendants' Motion to Dismiss.
Lead Plaintiff filed an amended consolidated Complaint on January 17, 2023. On September 7, the Court issued an Order consolidating cases. All future docketing was ordered to be done in the lead case 21-MD-02989.
Lead Plaintiff filed a Motion for Class Certification on April 28, 2023. On November 13, the Court issued an Order denying the Class Certification Motion.
