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- Traders are using a glitch in Robinhood’s app to trade with an infinite supply of borrowed cash, and one user said they turned a $3,000 deposit into a $1.7 million stake.
- Call_Warrior, a member of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, posted screenshots on Tuesday night showing how the glitch was used to buy 47,600 shares of Advanced Micro Devices. The post has since been deleted.
- The trade involved a glitch that adds the value of sold call options to users’ buying power. There seems to be no limit to how many times the trade can be executed.
- A Robinhood representative, Lavinia Chirico, said in an email on Tuesday that it was “aware of the isolated situations and communicating directly with customers.”
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Traders are one-upping one another with a glitch in Robinhood’s trading app, and one user holds the crown after turning a $3,000 deposit into a $1.7 million position.
A member of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit who goes by Call_Warrior posted on Tuesday about using the trading glitch to leverage a deposit to hold more than $1.7 million worth of Advanced Micro Devices stock. The post has since been deleted, but screenshots showed the app being used to amass 47,600 shares of AMD.
“After realizing I only had a few thousand dollars to gamble, I decided why not try this new ‘glitch,'” Call_Warrior wrote. “After seeing people on the almighty wallstreetbets wager a timid 50k or so on average with this new feature available, I thought it was only a clear choice to raise the average for the good of all.”
The trade involves Robinhood Gold users selling call options with money borrowed through the app. Robinhood then incorrectly adds the value of the options sold to the user’s cash pile, giving them more buying power. Traders can repeat this cycle, and it seems there’s no limit to how much a user can exploit the trick. One person on r/WallStreetBets described the glitch as an “infinite money cheat code.”
A Robinhood representative, Lavinia Chirico, said in an email on Tuesday that it was “aware of the isolated situations and communicating directly with customers.” The company didn’t comment on when the bug would be patched, but the app received an update on Tuesday.
Call_Warrior apparently saw the glitch’s limitless potential as a challenge, commenting on Wednesday morning about plans to “buy as much AMD as possible” and saying the motivation to post the trades came from seeing other traders’ disappointing positions.
The app’s bug was discovered by an r/WallStreetBets member who goes by ControlTheNarrative, who said they used the glitch to turn a $2,000 deposit into $50,000 worth of Apple put options. When the iPhone maker traded higher the day the options expired, the Reddit user lost the borrowed money and later posted a reaction video on YouTube.
Days later, someone with the username MoonYachts said they exploited the bug to turn a $4,000 deposit into a $1 million position. MoonYachts explained how they pulled off the trades and told other users “DON’T DO THIS.”
It’s not immediately clear what the legal repercussions of the trade are, but one Georgetown University law professor warned that the Robinhood traders could face a range of consequences.
“If there’s an element of deceit, that you got this by exploiting a loophole in a system, I can see how that could become a securities fraud case,” Donald Langevoort told Bloomberg, adding that the traders may also need to pay restitution on the borrowed cash.
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