He's not offering any investment advice especially when he's not being paid for it. Whenever he is not getting any compensation for it, anything he's "offering" is gratuitous i.e. not something that you can hold him to so whether he's an "investment advisor" or not is irrelevant. Like I said before, I can have the choice of ignoring WSB if I want to but I do not have a choice but to obey RH when RH forces me to buy only 1 share of GME. And RH's action of trading restriction is from undue influence of related companies that it sold order flow i.e. client trading information to. Who do you think is the market manipulator here? And also in conflict of interest against their clients? In client fiduciary duties, one of the number 1 duty is guarding private client information and RH has sold them to 3rd-party companies WITHOUT disclosure. RH is going to be investigated by SEC for sure.
but he is offering "investment advice", maybe not per your personal definition or his own definition, but for state regulators and the SEC he is, and that's what matters. They have enough experience in this domain to know what "investment advice" is. Compensation is not the issue. I understand it's hard to get the concept, but the SEC and state regulators see otherwise. Anyway he is going to be prosecuted in some capacity or another. How much damages, that's the only unknown. Check the SEC website for more info,
Anything you post in a public domain is considered free information and is not considered specific advice otherwise any time when we discuss about a company and/or its stock on ET here it would be "investment advice"? LOL That is ridiculous. And compensation plays a big part. You obviously don't understand contract law. Yeah he will be prosecuted of course. They can't afford to let somebody who took money from the rich get away with it. They have to make an example of him to keep us all in tow.
You are obviously not familiar with the compliance and regulations in the financial industry. The exception about public information is for news organization and journalists. Unless you can prove you are part of a media organization, this is not going to fly as a defense, even with the right disclosure. Compensation is not the issue for the definition of an "investment advisor". Again you need to understand that the definition for a regulatory body is very different from our "everyday" definition. There is a series of tests they use to "mark" the definition, and if you check all those tests, then you are a financial advisor, even if you didn't know it
Respectfully, how can u/deepfu*ckingvalue's actions be considered "market manipulation" while the behaviors of Pompliano, Musk, Chamath, Gerber Kawasaki, et al (all who have much bigger social media influence) are not?