Tony, I disagree. The reason Robinhood stopped the trading is not to protect hedge funds, but to protect themselves from the thousands of individual investors throwing good money after bad in an out-of-control speculative investment. What everyone misses is that brokers have a LEGAL responsiblity to protect individual investors. Hedge funds are not protected because they are made of accredited investors, but the SEC will go after brokers that allow too much risk and speculation to occur, resulting in massive losses. Robinhood is trying to protect themselves from future lawsuits from individual traders that lose money who come back to say "They didn't protect me from myself!"

Personally I would prefer to let people suffer the consequences of their own actions, but the SEC doesn't see it that way, and the politicians who normally support the SEC rules to protect individual investors are the ones angry about the consequences of their own regulation! Imagine that!