Financial services company E-Trade has restricted purchases of GameStop and AMC stock, the company has confirmed to The Verge — and, like Robinhood, it plans to resume trading of both stocks on Friday.
The two stocks have become popular on forums like the r/WallStreetBets subreddit and seen their prices skyrocket to unprecedented highs over the past week. (GameStop hit $483 earlier on Thursday and briefly went above that during the day. Last Thursday, the stock closed at $43.)
Here’s E-Trade’s full statement:
Amid the extraordinary volumes in GME and AMC, we chose to limit client activity in these names late in the trading day in order to ensure that we could continue to serve our broader client base. We take actions like this seriously, and only initiate them in rare circumstances. We expect to resume normal trading operations tomorrow.
Bloomberg reported on the halt on purchases earlier today, citing an anonymous source, and we originally published this story after we saw users on Twitter report that they had been unable to buy the stocks as well.
E-Trade follows other stock-trading platforms in placing restrictions on the stocks. Robinhood added new limits to its app to restrict buying or trading GameStop, AMC, and other stocks that are popular on r/WallStreetBets on Thursday morning. Angry Robinhood users are now calling for a class action lawsuit as a result and have even made a subreddit focused on creating that lawsuit. Robinhood competitors Public and WeBull also restricted some transactions for a period of time on Thursday before lifting the restrictions.
Update, 6:53PM ET: Added E-Trade statement and confirmation.