Young trader dies by suicide after thinking he racked up big losses on Robinhood

[boyptc]

People should understand what they are doing with money. I dont think that there are any problems with site. Main problem here is this young trader

No mate, the problem is the exchange. Read the reply of UserU.

I think it was from a miscalculated leverage Robinhood displayed. Not that he owed that amount.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/19/business/robinhood-suicide-alex-kearns/index.html

Although Brewster initially believed Robinhood had improperly granted Kearns vast amounts of leverage to trade with, he no longer believes that was the problem. Twitter users who saw Brewster's stream of tweets alerted him that options traders on Robinhood sometimes see a negative cash balance until the other half of their trades are executed.
In other words, Kearns did not actually owe $730,000. But he was apparently led to believe he did.

Perhaps you're right and Robinhood couldn't do anything about his death anyway.
But I hope they could clear their messages or whatever, because as we've witnessed - the consequences of misunderstanding could be lethal

They can't do anything but with those quotes, it seems to be that it's their fault which led to this miserable loss.

[Mauser]

This is what will happen if we don't have knowledge in cryptocurrencies, we think that we can be rich by investing bitcoin or altcoins in a short time but in reality no. Too bad that he committed suicide. 

Such a sad story. I hope other people will learn from this.

Don't gamble or invest into high risk assets with money you still need. There are so many recommendations on this forum how to deal with losses. If you find yourself too emotionally attached to your trades, you need to take a step back and evaluate your positions again. Getting into a depression because of bad luck with your investments is fairly common.

There is no shame in asking for help and everything can be fixed in the long run.

[Cratoon]

Golden rule of trading: calculate your risk and only trade what you're allowed to lose

[peter0425]

We can't have a perfect life, there will be up and downs for sure so all we need to do is accept what life gives to us and tart living a better life with it.

Young trader might used his parents money that is why he don't know how to earn them back which is the mistake of their parent for giving huge responsibility without having any experience.

actually post above you  mate explains it all,this same question i put on top but i am wrong i guess,

the only thing that matters to me(in respect to the dead boy) is how did he managed to have that Huge leverage thinking that He is just a student and has no work at all?

im sure there is something behind this thats why he needs to cut off His life in this one.

I will never Let my children invest here what they cannot afford to lose since all their allowances is coming from us until now that they are in college like the Victim.

I think it was how Robinhood portrayed the figures which were "underlying" or behind the scenes. Since I'm on mobile, I can't quote from the article I posted before, but from what I read, they were meant to be negative until the trades on the other end were processed.

So he had high leverage with his 5-figure balance and naturally that gave him some huge purchasing power. For instance, a 100:1 leverage means he gets to control $100,000 worth of stocks with only $1,000.

As I have traded before, brokers usually allow users to set the leverage up to 1000. But by default, we only see the basic readings such as tradeable margin, free margin and balance.

About investing, its not wrong to expose them so they could judge by themselves because its a very good experience (minus the losing). Like how I was curious about trading almost a decade ago and eventually treated it as some part-time activity.

And that is the reason why he has that Huge leverage.

[Nazmul012]

That's Heart broken.
He did wrong cause suicide is not a solution to solve any problem. As a twenty year old boy, he had a lots of money.so It was really painful for him, losing such amount of money but he should understand that, money is not valueable more than life

[boyptc]

That's Heart broken.
He did wrong cause suicide is not a solution to solve any problem. As a twenty year old boy, he had a lots of money.so It was really painful for him, losing such amount of money but he should understand that, money is not valueable more than life

Yeah, he doesn't have to do that but he's in the state of mind that doesn't know what to do and just to end his life.

But if you'll get back to read the whole story, it was said that it's the exchange's fault.