sad 
That is really sad. Not sure what else could have been done to avoid this… he just panicked without realizing what was going on. I suppose tighter restrictions on margin+options trading account, or a note saying that your account is temporarily showing negative until the trades settle. I see this all time in my account but I’ve been trading for over 15 years. An inexperienced investor would have no clue about settlement timing. Truly sad.
for optiosn those are pretty typical. not so much for just plain vanilla stocks. unless there is osme merger or spinoff. yea i remember when bitcoin lost 700k in bitcoin. he was a little suicidal after that. he good now though. but i think losing 700k on a mil. is a lot different form thinking you lost 700k from some put otm put spread where your losses should prolly just be around 5 to 10k or osmething.
Isn’t it robinhoods fault though? You have to have a lot of cash to be able to take on big trades that can lead to losses like that.
Edit: nvm I read the article. That’s tragic.
It’s hard for me to feel remotely bad about this, it’s pathetic more than anything. Tragic is kids born in rough neighborhoods or getting cancer diagnosis, this is just darwinism. The fact that people are speculating this may have even just been a settlement issue makes it ridiculous.
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The guy opened an account, filled out all the waivers to get options clearance and risked his money and later admits he didn’t know what he was doing. He’s an adult, grow up stop blaming other people for your ignorance / stupidity, very millenial.
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The guy didn’t even attempt to see how this would play out. If it was a timing issue on clearance, he obviously didn’t call customer service or trade support to figure that out. If it was not, big deal, declare bankruptcy, dump this stupidity back on Robinhood, start at zero savings at 20 years old like the rest of America and move on.
The reality is if he couldn’t weather this and didn’t at least attempt to ride it out the final outcome here was just a matter of time. I mean, it’s clearly “sad” in that it’s a bad thing that happened but that’s hardly my main takeaway.
full agreement. but i think we need some perspective. i remember when i lost 2000 dollars though when i was college and was depressed.now i look back and just laugh.
Yeah, but the point is it’s not about the amount.
Swan, everything you said in the above post were great points. However, I would urge you to have a tiny fraction of empathy for the guys family and everyone else involved.
I can’t. I agree with Swan completely.
Empathy, or sympathy?
In either case, he never said that he didn’t