• System error in the Robinhood app enabled short selling for a short period of time
• Short-term jump in the price of meme stock Cosmos Health
• Robinhood misses expectations in the fourth quarter of 2022
The US online broker Robinhood, which is particularly popular with younger investors but is also controversial because of its business model, does not actually allow short sales on its trading app. However, as Robinhood acknowledged when it released its fourth-quarter results, the platform experienced a catastrophic disruption on Friday, December 16, allowing users to short-sell meme stock Cosmos Health.
Cosmo Health reverse stock split
On Dec. 16, little-known pharmaceutical company Cosmo Health reversed its shares at a 25-for-1 split, just hours after announcing plans to do so. This caused technical problems for Robinhood, allowing users to sell more Cosmos shares than they owned for a short period of time, causing them to temporarily go short.
Robinhood covered the short with its cash reserves. However, as Cosmos stock hit record trading volume that day, and at times even tripled in price, Robinhood suffered a $57 million loss in a single day. For comparison, the total market cap of Cosmos Health as of 2/21/2023 is just $46.66 million. The rash of the Cosmos share was short-lived, however, because the price gains were already given up again in after-hours trading.
This is how Robinhood reacts
“Due to a processing error, we sold short shares in the market and while we realized this quickly, it resulted in a loss of $57 million when we repurchased these shares during a rally,” CFO Jason Warnick said on the conference call on the occasion of the latest annual report. This was a special case and Robinhood has now done everything possible to ensure that something like this does not happen again, he assured.
Nevertheless, the error is very annoying for the neo-broker, because this charge of 57 million US dollars resulted in the earnings expectations for the final quarter of 2022 being missed. Without this incident, however, the expectations would have been met. According to Fortune, CEO Vlad Tenev has stated that he wants to cut the board team’s bonus for 2022 in order to create a culture of “accountability”.
Robinhood is controversial
In addition, this incident should be grist to the mills of Robinhood’s critics. Because the app is easy to use and is considered a pioneer for a younger generation of US investors. However, critics of the company accuse that its business model entices users to risky bets. The neo-broker behaves more like a gambling provider than a reputable financial service provider. Robinhood has always denied these allegations.
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