I'm an outsider, but that's how this appears to me. They weren't lied to, they misjudged—and mainly because of a lack of understanding.

Traditionally, acting without understanding but still a high degree of confidence was called hubris.

And it appears the institutional traders expressed hubris when they over-leveraged, and this subset of retail investors expressed hubris when they didn't properly understand the capabilities and limitations of the app they decided to use to engage with the stock market.

I haven't seen people on other platforms complain in the same ways. I mean, for instance I haven't been restricted on my platform. I haven't heard anything about Questrade or E-Trade or anything.

To go back to my contrived motor analogies, it looks like a lot of people also expected a lawnmower to compete with a Tercel, never mind a Ferrari.

RH's decision here isn't an inherent limitation of their platform. It's an active decision they made. One they did not have to.

Also, what RH has done isn't harming just their own customers, but the entire market. People using Questrade or E-trade are finding that they have fewer buyers for their shares. If RH is going to act like a Tercel on the racetrack, they have no business entering the race in the first place. They're a danger to the other participants.

(BTW, analogies are fun. Thanks for the opportunity to torture them like this :)

If Robinhood (et al—sorry RH you're the de facto stand-in now) can't meet the standard of keeping up with the ... other cars in the race... then they shouldn't be allowed to enter. In that case, the analogy helps since most races have minimum qualifier rounds before you're allowed to enter.

I've got no arguments there. But that's the kind of thing RH [et al] were founded to confront or change, wasn't it? Or were they just circumventing previous regulation about market interfaces? This is where we get into the weeds and me out of my depth.