Steve Cohen defends himself after shady hedge fund bailout

Steve Cohen has once again found his name involved in a Wall Street scandal, and the New York Mets owner is defending himself against criticism from retail investors.

Cohen’s investment group, Point72 Asset Management, is one of two firms that pumped a combined $2.7 billion into a hedge fund called Melvin Capital Management this week. The fund, which is run by Cohen’s former associate Gabe Plotkin, lost an enormous sum of money this week after a group of retail investors banded together on Reddit and other social media sites to buy stock in GameStop. Melvin Capital had a massive short position against GameStop, meaning they were betting on the price of the stock going down. By purchasing stock in GameStop, millions of inexperienced investors sent the price of the stock skyrocketing, forcing short investors to scramble to cover their positions and cut their losses.

Things came to a boil on Thursday when Robinhood and other investment platforms restricted trades of GameStop stock and other stocks that had become Reddit favorites. There are theories floating around that Cohen’s investment group and others like his are behind the restrictions as a means of protecting their short positions and preventing mammoth losses.

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called Cohen out over that, and the Mets owner responded. The two went back and forth on Twitter, with Cohen offering a theory for why Robinhood may have restricted trading.

“You bailed out Melvin cause he’s you’re boy along with Citadel. I think you had strong hand in todays criminal events to save hedge funds at the cost of ordinary people. Do you unequivocally deny that?” Portnoy asked Cohen.

Portnoy then pointed out that Robinhood says they are trying to protect their users by restricting certain trades, but everything they were doing favored the hedge funds that were losing billions. Cohen agreed that those moves should be investigated.