Robinhood today issued a statement regarding the latest increase in market volatility.

In light of recent volatility, the company is restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK. Robinhood also raised margin requirements for certain securities.

“We’re humbled to have helped many people invest in the markets for the first time. And we’re determined to provide new and experienced investors with the tools and resources to help them invest responsibly for their long-term financial futures”, the Robinhood team said.

Robinhood has recently been a target of legal actions brought by its customers. One of these complaints alleges that, as a broker-dealer that routed customer orders for execution, Robinhood had a duty of best execution to its clients, a duty to seek and obtain the best reasonably available terms for customers’ orders. Robinhood allegedly violated its duty of best execution by charging unusually high payment for order flow rates to its vendors and failing to conduct adequate regular and rigorous reviews of the execution quality it was providing on customer orders.

The regulators have also taken action against Robinhood. The complaints stress the lack of stability of Robinhood’s platform during periods of high market volatility. Let’s note that the Massachusetts Securities Division of the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth has estimated that from January 1, 2020, through November 30, 2020, Robinhood experienced as many as 70 outages or disruptions on its platform. There was at least one big outage in March, followed by six in April, fifteen in June, and seven in August 2020.