Lawmakers to face off with GameStop saga's key players

WASHINGTON (AP) — The GameStop saga has been portrayed as a victory of the little guy over Wall Street giants but not everyone agrees, including some lawmakers in Washington.

GameStop shares soared 1,600% in January before falling back to earth. Entangled in the mess are massive short-selling hedge funds, a social media message board and ordinary investors wanting in on the hottest new trade among others. The House Financial Services Committee is ready to dig into the confounding episode at a hearing on Thursday.

The players include a swaggering 34-year-old YouTube personality and GameStop evangelist; one of the richest and most prominent investment tycoons; and the CEO of the online platform Robinhood that hosted a tsunami of speculative GameStock trading but faced intense criticism for restricting trading at the height of the frenzy.

Several lawmakers have denounced Robinhood’s move on Jan. 28 temporarily blocking its users from buying shares of GameStop and a dozen other companies. The restrictions lasted in some form for days. Robinhood said it acted to meet capital requirements set by regulators. But lawmakers and investor advocates accused Robinhood of changing the rules of the road midway through, to favor its big Wall Street clients that stood to lose money if GameStop shares kept rising.

Lawmakers and regulators want to know what the GameStop trading frenzy says about the fault lines and potential conflicts in the structure of the market that can hurt unsophisticated investors.

Expected to testify remotely at Thursday's hearing are:

—Vlad Tenev, Robinhood Markets CEO and co-founder. The early-thirties entrepreneur started Robinhood in 2013 with a fellow Stanford University math student. Claiming 13 million users, the mobile app’s popularity has grown, fueled by a simplified trading format and...