Sen. Elizabeth Warren lambasted the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday for the regulator’s failure to take action after a dayslong blitz of market speculation.
„We need an SEC that has clear rules about market manipulation and then has the backbone to get in and enforce those rules,“ Warren said. „To have a healthy stock market, you’ve got to have a cop on the beat.“
„That should be the SEC,“ she added. „They need to step up and do their job.“
The SEC did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The Massachusetts Democrat joined CNBC after wild stock moves prompted popular trading app Robinhood to restrict access to the high-flying names at the center of the controversy.
Warren, a longtime critic of Wall Street, spoke to CNBC’s „Closing Bell“ as individual traders took to Reddit, Twitter and other social media platforms to protest Robinhood’s move to curb trading in stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.
But Warren made clear that she isn’t a big fan of Robinhood, either.
Robinhood and similar firms, which offer incentives to join while forcing customers to sign arbitration clauses, don’t help create healthy market conditions, she said.
Those arbitration clauses, she said, protect Robinhood „if it turns out that [it] really did cheat you. It’ll never be made public, there will be very little that you can do about.“
The public outrage toward Robinhood came after the California-based brokerage announced earlier on Thursday that it would bar customers from buying additional shares of companies including GameStop and move theater operator AMC Entertainment. It still allows customers to sell those stocks from their current portfolio.
Robinhood announced soon after Warren’s interview that it will allow a limited amount of trading in those volatile stocks on Friday.
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