The House Committee on Financial Services has announced the hearing schedule for the month of May. Included in the list is the third, and perhaps final, hearing on the GameStop-Robinhood-Reddit saga.

On May 6 at 12PM ET, the full Committee will convene for a virtual hearing entitled, “Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide, Part III.”

The first Committee hearing on GameStop included representatives such as Vlad Tenev of Robinhood, Ken Griffin of Citadel, Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital, and Keith Gill aka Roaring Kitty.

The second took place in Marchand heard testimony from from “experts” and investor advocates regarding regulatory gaps revealed by these events, and “assessed possible legislative steps to protect investors.”

This final hearing, as declared by Maxine Waters, will include testimony by:

• Honorable Gary Gensler, Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• Michael Bodson, President and Chief Executive Officer, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation
• Robert Cook, President and Chief Executive Officer, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc

On Wednesday, March 17, 2021, from 10:00 a.m. (ET) full Committee Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry will host part II of a virtual hearing entitled, “Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide.” 

Recognize any of these faces? We doubt it.

As previously posted, the House Committee on Financial Services will host part two of the hearing tackling the GameStop phenomenon tomorrow. The hearing will be live-streamed on Wednesday, March 17, 2021, at 10:00 am ET.

The hearing will begin with a statement by Sal Arnuk, Partner of Themis Tradis LLC, who will mock retail investors that began investing on platforms such as Robinhood, stating:

Robinhood’s average account size is about $5,000, compared with TD Ameritrade’s $110,000. As such, they have created a unique product –small emotion-driven orders that tend to be predictable.

Read Sal Arnuk’s full statement here.

Arnuk will be followed by Michael Blaugrund, Chief Operating Officer of the NYSE, who will use his time to advocate for modernizing shareholder disclosures, providing transparency for securities lending, eliminating competitive barriers for public investors, and accelerating trade settlement to T+1.

Short selling is an essential practice for liquidity, price discovery and risk management, but the securities lending market on which it depends is opaque and inefficient…. The SEC should consider establishing an analogous Consolidated Tape for securities lending. A system that provided for publishing the quantity, fees and/or rebates, duration and other material terms for each stock loan without attribution would provide issuers, investors and regulators the necessary data to better assess the risk and return of establishing a short position, while protecting the identity and intellectual property of any individual market participant.

Read Michael Blaugrund’s full statement here.

Following Blaugrund’s statements, Dr. Vicki Bogan will speak, Associate Professor in the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University. Dr. Vicki Bogan will state that she has advocated for investing in the household for 20 years and believes that Robinhood requires changes to avoid “gamification.”

Prohibit user interface mechanisms (e.g., push notifications) that have been designed to increase more trading volume without regard to consumer priorities or risks.

Read Dr. Vicki Bogan’s full statement here.

After Dr. Vicki Bogan, we will hear from Alexis Goldstein,  Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, who is considered a “Wall Street Traitor” who joined the Occupy Wall Street movement. She will offer her support for WallStreet Bets users, and ask that regulators examine the institutional footprint during GameStop’s volatile periods.

My time on Wall Street also showed me that major institutional players guard information about their own positions, while simultaneously spending large sums of time and resources trying to glean the positions of their competitors — whether through market data, news stories, or rumors. Thousands of users of the WallStreetBets subreddit posting their positions and their future plans for those positions is a source of data that major Wall Street players will mine for information. Many will likely have created software to extract and analyze the content of the posts, and made, trading decisions based on it.

Read Alexis Goldstein’s full statement here.

Alan Grujic , CEO of All of Us Financial, a San Francisco-based online broker, will speak after Goldstein. Alan will also advocate for T+0, after endorsing his platform’s use of payment for order flow. Alan will also express his baseless concern that GameStop traders were being manipulated.

Social media can empower individuals, but also influence them. When does influence become manipulation? As a professional trader and investor, I fear traders in GameStop were being manipulated to take actions not in their best interests. Manipulation is illegal, and I expect regulators have paid close attention and will take appropriate action.

Read Alan Grujic’s full statement here.

The committee will also hear questioning of Dennis Kelleher, President and Chief Executive Officer of Better Markets, and Michael Piwowar, Executive Director of the Milken Institute, who have not prepared statements at this time. 

If you were looking forward to hearing from some more of the key players in the price volatility of January, you are out of luck. Robinhood has been made the scapegoat, and those with the deepest pockets are already at work to advocate shutting them down.

GMEdd.com will host the hearing LIVE tomorrow and host a discussion on the GMEdd.com Discord server.

Source: U.S. House Committee on Financial Services

If the first “Game Stopped?” U.S. House Committee on Financial Services hearing wasn’t enough political theatre for you then you’re in luck, as Rep. Maxine Waters states there will be two more at some point in the future. Looking at the February hearing schedule reveals they are not planned for this month, however, so we’ll just have to stay put.

The second hearing will include: “Experts on all sides of the issue.” Who could this be? Are they going to bring in experts on short interest? Does “all sides of the issue,” indicate individuals from GameStop? Ryan Cohen? Who knows.

The third hearing is what worries us: “SEC & regulatory response/solutions.” History tells us that the little guy is going to be the one bearing the burden of new regulations, in the guise of, “safer trading for all.”

Source

On Thursday, February 18, 2021, from 12:00 p.m. (ET) full Committee Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry will host a virtual hearing entitled, “Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide.” 

Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital’s testimony for the “Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide,” taking place Feb. 18 at 12 p.m. ET. has been released. 

Plotkin begins his testimony by stating that has been “humbled” by the unprecedented events, as many investors “on all sides” have experienced losses.

I am humbled by these unprecedented events. Many investors on all sides have experienced losses. I am here today to share my personal experience and to be helpful in this conversation.

Plotkin then goes on to deny the claims that Citadel bailed them out, instead insisting that their cash injection was simply a proactive investment.

Melvin Capital was not “bailed out” in the midst of these events. Citadel proactively reached out to become a new investor, similar to the investments others make in our fund.

The cherry on top here is Gabe admitting that the extent of their fundamentals on shorting GameStop is that selling video games in physical stores is being overtaken. I’m surprised he didn’t just say it’s the next Blockbuster.

In fact, we had been short GameStop since Melvin’s inception six years earlier because we believed and still believe that its business model – selling new and used video games in physical stores – is being overtaken.

If your short position was based upon physical stores being an outdated business model, why would you not close your position upon Ryan Cohen, the man who beat Amazon at e-commerce with Chewy, purchasing 9% of the company? What about when RC Ventures sent a letter to the board urging a digital transition, and hired an attorney specializing in hostile takeovers?  What about when Cohen increased his stake? When the news released that Cohen and his Chewy team had been awarded 3 seats on the board, why not close the position then Gabe?

Greed. That’s why.

Read the full testimony here on house.gov