Robinhood, an online brokerage, continues to face widespread backlash for restricting purchases of GameStop stock. Its CEO, Vlad Tenev, still maintains that he made the correct call while denying that the company did not have enough cash on hand.
In a CNBC interview, Tenev said the decision to halt the trading of GameStop, AMC and other stocks was “difficult,” but the company decided to do it “to protect the firm and protect our customers.”
“Of course Robinhood stands for everyday investors. From the very beginning we have stood for investors opening up access. It pains us to have had to impose these restrictions and we’re going to do what we can to enable trading in these stocks as soon as we can,” Tenev said.
Tenev explained that the pause was made “preemptively.” He also said Robinhood tapped lines of credit Thursday as a “proactive” measure to ensure it can “maximize within reason the funds we have to deposit at the clearing houses.”
Tenev later announced that Robinhood will accept “limited” trading of those stocks on Friday morning.