A brilliant lawyer recently reminded me: “It will help you get to the point better if you can tell me the relief you seek.” I’d argue much of the relief we seek is relief from price fixing.

TL;DR - This is the closest thing we have to calling the police

DOJ Complaint Center - Antitrust Division

The DOJ has its own Complaint Center with an Antitrust Division for consumers, like us, to report crimes, like Citadel’s. All you have to do is send them an email to [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and provide as much of the following information as possible:

• The names of the companies, individuals, or organizations involved

You, your broker, Citadel

• How do you believe they have violated the federal antitrust laws? (For details on federal antitrust laws, see Antitrust Laws and You)

Citadel retains monopolistic control over the GME market, providing liquidity in a way that fixes prices to the detriment of consumers, ultimately nullifying consumer choice.

• Examples of, or details about, the conduct that you believe violates the antitrust laws

Suspicious bid orders, GME halts outside of LULD percents… see list below

• The product or service affected by the conduct, including where the product is manufactured or sold or where is the service is provided

GME, stock market exchange

• The major competitors that sell the product or provide the service

Citadel… competitors… 🤣🤣🤣

• Your role in the situation

Consumer/Purchaser

• Who is being affected and how they are being affected

Long term investors - demand suppressed and supply manipulated, capping the value of an underlying investment that is fundamentally growing in value. This prevents GME from being an attractive consumer choice for a long term investment.

Note: the more you can make your argument about supply and demand, the better

Phone: 1-888-647-3258 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada) or 202-307-2040

Mail:

    Complaint Center

    Antitrust Division

    950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

    Room 3337

    Washington, DC 20530

FTC Antitrust Complaint Portal

Anything you send to the DOJ you can also just send to the FTC real quick using their online portal. Just fill out the form, it’ll ask the same questions as the DOJ. The FTC and DOJ are in this cute sort of bromance right now where they’re filing joint statements in price fixing cases they’re not even a part of.

Algorithmic price fixing is extremely new to the legal landscape, which is why the DOJ is so interested in this right now. As I’ll explain below, we are in an incredibly pivotal moment where there is no legal precedent for the discreet types of collusion that algorithms and AI bring to the table.

In a nutshell: a bunch of competitors using the same pricing tool can end up using the same prices as each other without ever talking. This type of "talking without talking" is really hard to prove, which is why the DOJ and FTC are asking the public for help in reporting evidence of price fixing. DOJ even launched a new whistleblower program last week!

Here’s some examples of reportable price fixing in GME:

• Interesting bids that have no intention of executing
• Correlation with ETFs or other stocks during high volume events
• GME halting outside of LULD percents or other known volatility protections (thanks DFV)
• A known large buy-in not being settled within required Market Maker settlement periods (thanks DFV SEC filing)
• Cost basis way out of line with price of GME (Potentially shows arbitrage)
• Articles that say GME is down before GME actually goes down (The infamous “time traveling article” shows a scheme to cause bearish momentum)
• System-wide restrictions on your ability to trade GME during key times
• “Glitches” causing a change in GME’s momentum, or otherwise abnormally affecting GME
• Price correlates more with max pain than with improving company fundamentals (Shows that a pricing algorithm is only considering supply-side information, not demand-side)
• Market maker signals if you can prove them (Really anything showing some kind of scheme or tacit agreement between sellers)

Generally speaking, things that show a manipulation of supply or a disregard for demand will be helpful to your case. That’s the main reason why I made this post about the rental housing market, which is the DOJ’s main algorithmic price fixing case going on right now. The rental housing market investigation highlights some of the things the DOJ is interested in when it comes to algos, price fixing, and competition.

I think it’s very important to understand the arguments the DOJ is making to the court in the rental housing cases. If there’s enough interest in it, I may do a summary of the case law the DOJ relies on for their arguments, but for now, you can go there yourself and check out the cases in the Table of Contents.

Why Your Voice is SUPER Fucking Important

Let me put into perspective how vital your knowledge of GME’s manipulation is.

Our civilization is at a crossroads right now trying to regulate algos & AI while it’s already being put to nefarious uses. This technology is allowing competitors to agree and collude in more sophisticated ways now than ever before.

Today, algos and AI allow competitors to sort of independently act in concert without ever having to communicate. This style of using technology to “collude without talking” wasn’t really anticipated by the law, so the DOJ has to define this as a crime by looking to recent case law. We… don’t have much case law right now. This suit against the rental housing market is sort of our first foray into shaping legal precedent around this new form of price fixing.

Our next foray, I believe, is the DOJ’s investigation into Citadel, those other 30 hedge funds and short sellers, and those “magnificently pumped” AI companies. The DOJ needs to fill in the stock market part of the puzzle, and GME just so happens to perfectly demonstrate the movements of an algorithmically price fixed stock…

… That’s where you come in.

I believe this community is well qualified to shape legal precedent on algorithmic price fixing in the stock market. You recognized every single thing I listed above as Potential Evidence of price fixing. You’ve done enough DD to recognize the signs of Citadel’s price fixing scheme on a fundamental level. You have the power to show the DOJ where to look, and what to argue for in court. As the DOJ proudly notes, many of their prosecutions resulted from information uncovered by members of the general public who reported the information to the Antitrust Division.

Our community is in an incredibly privileged position.

We have brothers and sisters fighting the same fight, just in different markets. People living in apartments have seen rents go higher and higher thanks to a certain pricing software used by all the giants in the rental housing market. Concert goers have seen ticket prices go up thanks to the “dynamic pricing” software used by a certain Ticket monopoly. Shoppers at certain Grocery stores have paid higher prices thanks in part to dynamic pricing softwares (see the Congressional Probe that just dropped on that). Community outrage is what lead to these investigations, and these communities did not have the DD that we do. We are an incredibly well informed community. We are aware of what’s going on around us in a way that most people aren’t. Our court of public opinion is fucking dangerous.

DON’T BE FRIVOLOUS

I want it to be clear: I am NOT encouraging you to spam the DOJ with just any ol’ instance of weird price movement. HOWEVER, the bar for “relevant” evidence is super fucking low. Use your best judgment. If you’re genuinely trying to help the DOJ see the manipulation in the way that you see it, you’ll make the right call 9 times out of 10. Here’s the legal rule for relevance— (Federal Rules of Evidence - 401)

Evidence is relevant if:

(a) it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and

(b) the fact is of consequence in determining the action.

Bonus: LIBOR

Speaking of DD, I think it’s extremely important to tie this all back in thematically with a brief mention of our old friend LIBOR. This was the benchmark rate that banks used to charge interest on loans they made to other banks. The LIBOR benchmark was calculated using data submitted by the very banks that used that benchmark to charge interest. As you could imagine, those banks sent manipulated data that had the effect of raising the LIBOR benchmark, and thus, the interest rates they were able to charge.

This is textbook price fixing. This is why LIBOR was phased out last year. This was brought as a price fixing case against the banks who were involved in manipulating the benchmark price. The fact pattern in LIBOR gives us the exact same troubling parallels we see in the rental housing market, and it’s the same way Citadel controls GME.

• Monopolies control the supply of product
• Monopolies manipulate supply-based data
• Pricing calculation heavily weighs that manipulated supply data
• Monopolies charge price based on that manipulated calculation
• Price trends to the benefit of monopoly, detriment of consumer

DYOR References

• How to submit a concern to the DOJ’s Antitrust Complaint Center
• DOJ article - Price Fixing, Bid Rigging, and Market Allocation Schemes: What They are and What to Look For
• PWN's DD on GME’s algorithmic patterns
• DOJ and FTC's joint statement on algorithmic price fixing
• Article on algos in the rental housing market
• DOJ filed suit in rental housing market
• Timeline of events between TD Ameritrade Warehouse fire and Citadel being named in DOJ investigation (1 week). GME cooperating with SEC investigation confirmed during this time period.