How ia a market maker robbing retail investors? Is that even possible?

Wouldn't it be wild if a market maker also controlled a hedge fund, and also had members installed on regulating bodies, but then like, PINKY PROMISED they wouldn't abuse their positions? And then imagine if the SEC were complicit because it's run by an ex-Goldman henchman?

Nothing bad would happen, right?

You need to explain how a hedgefund or market maker makes money off retail investors?

I really hate to do this because it sounds lazy, but I strongly encourage you to watch The Problem with Jon Stewart's episode on this. He explains it very well, and it's a lot of information, so if you are genuinely curious, I would highly recommend it. It will open your eyes to a level of criminal activity at the highest levels of our markets that will hopefully surprise you. It explains this, and more.

https://www.theproblem.com/episode-5-the-problem-with-the-st...

You've just watched a pretty good quibi of "The Problem with Jon Stewart's viewers".

I also would ever use Robinhood instead of a reputable broker like TD Fidelity Vanguard IB etc. But not for the reasons you stipulated. Back office systems aren't put in place to "fleece" anyone.

Back office systems are exactly where Citadel, the market maker, could put a tiny little window to peep at data they shouldn't, so they can frontrun every trade retail investors make!!

The secret ingredient is crime ;)

Sounds like they found a way to make the plot of Office Space work in real life.

Making that scheme work wouldn't be the hard part. The hard part is staying out of prison.

I am not convinced this is true, but I see that the possibility is there, and it wouldn't even be the largest stock market scam that came to light.

Doesn't every single large broker frontrun this way? That's what I was told by former wall street programmers.

This is straight out of /r/superstonk or /r/wallstreetbets. The conspiracy theories about Citadel, Ken Griffin and Robinhood rival QAnon levels of culting. I've heard it said that these theories, including GME, are like QAnon for people interested in personal finance rather than politics.

Lol, right, because things like this have never happened before. In particular, the years 1998 - 2008 were devoid of financial crime, and are a decade of restrained, ethical capitalism that we should all aspire to. Gentlemen of Wall Street today are just trying to return us to that gilded age, and any suggestion to the contrary is conspiratorial madness I do say, good chap!

Thank you for pointing out my severe mental illness and inability to think clearly about such lofty matters. I'll go take my meds now.

Well, I suppose there is no rehabilitating cult members. Your reasoning also doesn't make much sense, we can agree that there is financial crime in that time period while also acknowledging that superstonk-esque manipulation isn't happening. You're basically trying to equivocate that just because something in the category of financial crime happened before that it must also be the case that your Ken Griffin conspiracy theory is also true. It's a more general fallacy that is often seen online, not just in this instance.

It's the exact opposite, bud.

You very strongly compared my theories with QAnon, which is actual Alice-in-Wonderland level crazy. To compare financial crime theories that (given the precedent) could very well be true , to fucking QAnon is ridiculous, and I found it extremely condescending.

You can disagree, and you can bring up valid arguments, but your posture was offensive and has no place here.

Crime had very little relevance to 2008. I'm sure there was a certain amount of fraud going on, just as at every store there's a certain amount of "shrinkage", but the crisis was a good old-fashioned boom-and-bust cycle.

I honestly cannot tell if you are joking/trolling or are just completely ignorant to the reality of what happened.

Right back at you. You're making a whole bunch of assertions which are, to say the least, not widely accepted, and unsupported by any evidence or logic.

Here: https://truthout.org/articles/the-indisputable-role-of-credi...

If you think this is not really happening, you are naive at best, complicit at worst.

That falls under "a certain amount of fraud going on". Yes, there were a lot of bogus AAA ratings going around. But everyone knew they were bogus - you don't get AAA paper that pays a 10% return. Any investment banker from the GFC era who tries to tell you they're a poor innocent rube who was taken advantage of by a dastardly ratings agency is having you on. The people buying the CDOs were sophisticated professionals who did their own analysis and bragged about how smart they were.