Robinhood Changes Trading App After 20-Year-Old's Suicide (cnbc.com) 175
CNBC reports on the odd circumstances around the suicide of 20-year-old college student options trader Alex Kearns:
It was less than 24 hours after Alex had checked his account at the wildly popular trading app, Robinhood. In his note, he said he thought he had quickly racked up a negative $730,165 cash balance. But Alex may have misunderstood the Robinhood financial statement, according to a relative. "He thought he was exposed, he thought that ending his life would protect his family from the exposure," Bill Brewster, a cousin by marriage and an analyst at Sullimar Capital, told CNBC in a phone interview...
In the note to his family seen by CNBC, Alex accused Robinhood of allowing him to pile on too much risk. He claimed the puts he bought, and the shares sold "should have cancelled out" but in hindsight, he said he had "no clue" what he was doing. "How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?" the note reads. "There was no intention to be assigned this much and take this much risk, and I only thought that I was risking the money that I actually owned."
Friday Robinhood announced it was making a $250,000 donation to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, expanding its educational content about options trading, and rolling out changes to its in-app messages about multi-leg options spreads. And of course, they also announced that they're "working on changes to our user interface, including the way buying power is displayed.
"These changes will take a bit of time to roll out, but our teams are hard at work."
In the note to his family seen by CNBC, Alex accused Robinhood of allowing him to pile on too much risk. He claimed the puts he bought, and the shares sold "should have cancelled out" but in hindsight, he said he had "no clue" what he was doing. "How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?" the note reads. "There was no intention to be assigned this much and take this much risk, and I only thought that I was risking the money that I actually owned."
Friday Robinhood announced it was making a $250,000 donation to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, expanding its educational content about options trading, and rolling out changes to its in-app messages about multi-leg options spreads. And of course, they also announced that they're "working on changes to our user interface, including the way buying power is displayed.
"These changes will take a bit of time to roll out, but our teams are hard at work."
talk to someone (Score:5, Informative)
how much to post that at each railroad crossing ? (Score:3)
how much to post that at each railroad crossing ?
Re:how much to post that at each railroad crossing (Score:4)
People who commit suicide like that don't really do it at a rail crossing. Too many people who could talk them out of it, men who are going for suicide look for the path where nobody can see them to talk them out of it with an almost certain outcome. They do it behind a building where rail crosses nearby so nobody can see them to talk them out of it, under and overpass or underpass train crossing where the chance of escape is low. But if you're curious, as to how much a sign like that costs? Here in Canada, orgs like the Rotary/Lions Club/Royal Legion/Navy Club/etc post the signs with a toll free number on private property near the crossing with the businesses blessing. They cost $85-200 and are good for 10-20 years.
Something to keep in mind as well, methods of suicide are fundamentally different between men and women. Men simply look for the best way that nobody can save them, and it will end their lives. Guns, suicide by vehicle, off a building, into freeway traffic off a bridge, asphyxiation by chemical, etc. Women almost always go for methods where there is no body disfigurement, and there's a chance they could be saved. OD OTC pills, prescription narcotics, alcohol, wrist cutting(not down the tracks), etc.
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Yes, talking to someone would have helped.
Specifically, talking to someone who can explain what an "option" is.
The negative balance showed that his options were deep underwater. But an option is a right, not an obligation, to transact. His options were worthless, but he owned nothing.
Intentional suicides are disqualified from the Darwin Award. Otherwise, this guy would be a strong candidate.
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Intentional suicides are disqualified from the Darwin Award. Otherwise, this guy would be a strong candidate.
The the third paragraph of your post is very informative, but this last part is just bad taste and totally unnecessary. Someone is dead in an act of what they perceived as desperation. The lack of empathy is disturbing.
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No, it means the options were exercised and assigned. Sounds like he was selling puts, so he would have had a nearly offsetting amount of stock which when sold would have resulted in a much smaller net loss.
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Re:talk to someone (Score:5, Informative)
This would have been an educational post until you went and called the suicide victim names. Now it just sounds like taunting the dead.
But yes, your description is correct. For anyone not familiar with options trading:
* All options: each contract is for 1 share. Premiums and strikes are listed per-share.
* Call: buying it (e.g. the cost of the premium) gives you the right, but but not obligation, to buy 100 shares of stock at or before the expiry date, at the strike price. Only worthwhile if the stock is above the strike price (e.g. you can exercise it, buy 100 shares at the strike price, then turn around and sell them at the higher market price) - e.g. buying a call is a bullish position. Selling one gives you cash, but a potential obligation if the buyer exercises it. Selling it means you think the stock will be below the strike price, e.g. selling it is a bearish position it.
* Put: likewise, but in reverse: the right, but not obligation, to *sell* 100 shares of the stock at or before the expiry date, at the strike price. Buying it is bearish; if the stock is below the strike price you could force someone to buy 100 shares from you, then turn around and buy them back on the open market for cheaper. Selling one is bullish; it gives you cash, and as long as the security stays above the strike price, it'll virtually never be exercised.
Buying options risks the cash you put in. Selling puts has a max risk of 100 times the strike price (e.g. the stock goes to zero - you have to buy the stock at the strike price, and can't sell it for anything). Selling calls has unlimited max risk, since the stock could theoretically go to any new heights (although there are practical limits).
Options (including combined with stock) allows you to finely sculpt an investment's payoff. For example, if you thought that one year ago, the stock was going to go up to precisely $615 - and there were options available for it - you could buy $610 strike calls and sell $615 strike calls, so you only get any money at all if the stock is over $610, and you get no gains over $615.... but if it's in that narrow range you profit hand over fist. Options can increase your leverage - e.g. buying far out-of-of-the-money (distant strike) calls or puts, making cheap bets on wild, unlikely stock swings. They can also decrease your leverage - for example, a stock investor may buy "protective puts", one for every 100 shares of stock they own, so if the stock ever goes below the strike price, the increase in value of the puts makes up for the distance. You have extreme nuance and precision to control your investment.
If this Robinnhood trader was selling shares short (e.g. betting the stock will go down, so that when he cashes out by buying the shares back later, they're cheaper), he has unlimited theoretical risk, because the stock could just keep getting more and more expensive, ever-increasing the cost he has to pay to buy himself out of his position. There's a couple ways you can limit this risk, but one is the inverse of the protective put above - the protective call. The call gains intrinsic value as the stock goes above the strike price, and so one call offset your liabilities for 100 shorted shares of stock.
But this guy misunderstood this. He bought puts and shorted shares. These are both bearish positions, both short the stock. So the stock went way up. His puts became worthless, and his obligations for buying back the shorted shares kept ever growing. For example, a person who shorted 100 shares of Tesla last year at $180 ($28k) would now have to buy them back at $1000 ($100k). And meanwhile, shorted shares face interest charges, which keep accumulating.
I've never used Robinhood. Interactive Brokers, before it lets you trade options, makes you take a fairly long and detailed quiz, where you not only have to understand terms, but also calculate max gains / losses for various positions and the like. But ultimately, some people will always make stupid misunderstandings and stupid investments.
Re:talk to someone (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, I should probably introduce one more thing when it comes to options: IV (Implied Volatility). A high IV means that options traders think the stock is likely to take massive swings. Options have both intrinsic value (e.g. you could exercise it in right now for a profit if it's in the money) and time value (e.g. there's time before expiry, and people want to bet on favourable stock movement in that timeperiod). IV boosts the time value.
Take NKLA (Nikola Motors) for example - currently in the mid-$60s. Buying a long-dated $30-strike put and selling a $25-strike put in NKLA costs nearly $5x100 - e.g. there's almost no profit, because IV is incredibly high, because most options traders strongly feel that the company will be worth less than $25 then (many people consider the company a scam). If one wanted to bet on NKLA crashing in the long term but not the short term, they could buy long-term NKLA puts and sell short-term NKLA puts for the same strike... e.g. relying on the value increase in the NKLA puts as the stock falls to offset the increased obligations on the short-term NKLA puts; long-term options have higher delta (rate of value change relative to the value of the underlying security) than short-term options. But what happens if IV collapses, e.g. people stop betting on wild swings and decide that NKLA is rather locked into a given range? A short-term IV crush will benefit you - what you sold becomes cheaper to buy back. A long-term IV crush hurts you (although long-term deltas should almost never drop below short-term). Equal IV crush on both hurts you (because the long-term puts you bought fall more than the short-term that you sold).
That said, while IV affects the value of the premiums, if you hold to expiry, all that matters is the intrinsic values at expiry. As mentioned, IV works on the time value. At expiry, time value is zero; the only value is in the intrinsic value (if any).
Re: talk to someone (Score:2)
I think you need to have the underlying stock to sell a call, and it locks up the cash to cover it of you sell a put.
I'm not sure though, I'm not interested in selling options.
The quiz though was rediculous, it was clearly designed to let everybody trade options with no need to understand. I think they have a slightly higher standard for doing things on margin.
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This is all true, but I'd like to highlight an issue of terminology that confuses people all the time: the term "selling an option" has two meanings that are very different. These are referred to as "selling to open [a position]" and "selling to close". "Selling to open", also known as "writing an option", creates a new contract, and you, the seller, are on the hook for something if it expires in-the-money (and sometimes even if it's ITM before expiration). Until then, you have a negative number of those
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ED: that should read each contract is for ***100*** shares.
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I agree.
We should be pissing on the grave of the killer, not the victim!
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No one's grave got pissed on. Committing suicide doesn't suddenly make all the stupid things you did in life smart.
Talk to me and I won't even tell you not to do it (Score:2)
Indeed. You can talk to me. I won't even tell you not to do it. Just - talk to me BEFORE you do it, because you can't talk after you do it. Let's just have a conversation, then you can do whatever you think you need to do. I have something to tell you first, though.
Re:talk to someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:talk to someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Like, duh, this person was 20 years old and didn't even know about personal debts, if they attach to your family if you can't pay, what bankruptcy is, how long a debt you can't pay follows you, etc., etc.
Talking to somebody would help. Even a homeless guy on the corner could have explained at least 2 parts of that, and you only really need 1 to see a path to the future.
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Yeah.. a 20-year-old has ample time to get their life back on track. It's a different story if it's a 60-year-old.
Re:talk to someone (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have talked to a lawyer, or some kind of financial advisor - even if I was going to kill myself, to understand why I was killing myself.
My guess is that he had other serious issues, likely other undiagnosed disorder(s), and quite possibly never talked to anyone about any of it. The family wouldn't know, or maybe didn't want to know. It'll be easier for them to blame the stock trading (or gambling, drugs, or women, for other common scenarios) than say they weren't really that close to him.
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Kids are stupid.
Although I was quite aware of bankruptcy at that age and the concept of collateral it may not be true for every person.
It may also be that he never encountered failure in his life and something as innocuous as an app could ruin his life was too much to fathom.
He clearly didnt understand what he was trading and I would expect a lot of concepts were unavailable to him.
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No, people are stupid.
We all have gaps as to are awareness of things, or our ability (or willingness) to find comprehensible information, etc.
One of my grandfathers drilled into all of his kids & grandkids (that he could during his lifetime) the importance of saving, and at some point moving to a bit of investing. He was a man who lamented once to his banker when he sold a house on a Friday, that he wouldn't be able to deposit the proceeds until Monday. and so loose out on the interest o
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Kids are stupid.
Yes they are, and this practically never leads to suicide. As the GP said he almost certainly had other things going on in his life.
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My guess is that he had other serious issues, likely other undiagnosed disorder(s), and quite possibly never talked to anyone about any of it. The family wouldn't know, or maybe didn't want to know. It'll be easier for them to blame the stock trading (or gambling, drugs, or women, for other common scenarios) than say they weren't really that close to him.
In fact, it's quite possible he had other issues and had already planned to kill himself, but he didn't want his parents to feel guilty that they had done something wrong or he didn't want people guessing what those other serious issues might be. So he might have deliberately taken a risky position on Robinhood and when things went bad, he had an "excuse" to kill himself. I'm only speculating here, but it's a possibility.
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Or maybe just understand what you are doing before clicking all the shiny buttons. You can't lose more than you invested nowadays. That's what SEC rules are all about. Your investment account is wiped out when margin is called, and the broker liquidates the position. When volatility picks up, brokers even make damned sure to reduce your margin long before there's a danger of a call.
Good of them to want to make their software easier for the layman to understand, but you still can't fix stupid.
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Also, it's important to talk to people and educate them as to why they shouldn't be involved in margin trading without some other form of income that can cover losses.
Just because apps like Robinhood exist doesn't mean you have to take risks like that. Just look at what's happening with Hertz. Completely irrational.
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That is, talk to them BEFORE they get into trouble, if you notice something going on like that. If you're waiting until they go suicidal, it probably means you've ignored a lot of signs that things could go downhill very soon.
Re: talk to someone (Score:5, Interesting)
No there freakin isn't "always".
Mostly, yes. But this kind of talk comes from people who never had real problems, and the worst they can imagine is so tame, it's what some people out there call a good day!
I was one of those people.
I know death is not the worst that can happen to you. *By far*. And even now I think it would have been the better choice for me.
And no, life is not infinitely valuable. There is a limit to it. You need to be *rational*! Stop switching off your brain.
In some cases, death really is the right choice! As it really cannot ever be fixed.(Although definitely not this one. This one was a kid that also never saw anything really bad, so he was overwhelmed, and then we did not have the social safety net and society that is there for each other, which is the actual cause of his death.)
But regarding cases that can't be fixed: Even if life may turn around, the pain and trauma will *never* go away. You only get used to it. It's still added in. So even if life is great, in sum total, it will still be brutal unbearable torture each day. (Case in point: Neurotransmitters ruined by Heroin.)
And it will even ruin good opportunities in the future. As your own personality, molded by that constant triggering, will make one fuck it up.
You know why we keep saying there is a chance? Why we keep blaming the suicider?
Because WE failed! And it is mighty convenient to blame it on the dead victim.
WE. OUR society fucked this one up.
Yes he should not have died. ... maybe we should have instead. :P
But given the hearthess asshole society of dog eat dog sociopaths we built, leaders we chose, anti-sociam philosophies we chose
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He failed to understand (and it seems you don't understand) how margin works. When you trade on margin you have to realize that you are the first person who is going to lose. The broker is allowing you to borrow money as a short term loan to increase your position and so you can make greater profits than normally possible - however this also means that all losses are also magnified. The broker doesn't actually care, because the money and the losses will be taken out of your account until your account reache
How is it possible?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
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maybe you should you rich trade 5% fees.
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maybe you should you rich trade 5% fees.
Not sure what this grammatically incorrect statement means. But ALL of the major brokerages have moved to commission free trades over the past year.
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Only gamble with money you can afford to lose (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem happens when somebody that does not really know what they are doing starts to gamble. And then, when things look like they have lost big time (the normal and expected outcome), they use those defective "problem solving" skills on their new situation.
This cannot really be prevented, unless you want to outlaw gambling in any form, including any kind of "trading", or you want to put some kind of "insight"-gate before it and disallow people that do not know what they are doing in. That will not fly in the current greed-driven trading economy at all though, because "wins" have to come from somewhere and that is the big-ego-small-skill traders, most of which are small-time private ones, for obvious reasons.
Re: Only gamble with money you can afford to lose (Score:3)
Re: Only gamble with money you can afford to lose (Score:4, Informative)
I'm 100% against trading platforms providing margin and leverage to retail investors.
He was not trading on margin.
He thought he was, but he wasn't.
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I would disagree vehemently, despite having gone broke twice due to excess leverage and margin. Going broke taught me a lot, almost as much as feeling “rich” one day and “broke” the next. The second time I had a steady income, the first I had “retired” at 28.
While I generally try to de-risk as I get older, I find that margin (as well as uncovered puts... how I went broke the second time) is still useful. I’ve been fortunate with the stock market, and it has let me
at least you have chapter 11 and 7 unlike student (Score:2)
at least you have chapter 11 and 7 unlike student loans
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But it seems like part of the problem is leverage. It's not simply like Tony Soprano at a poker game: "$10k to sit down, but I'll give you a $90k marker on top". Leverage and downside risk of certain securities are often poorly understood.
Re:Only gamble with money you can afford to lose (Score:4, Interesting)
That SHOULD not fly in any society that calls itself free.
Why should that specific kind of freedom be the highest and mostly valued among all the values a society may be ordered around? Why not life, or happiness, or truth, or harmony, or any of the other positive values humans go for, with that specific kind of freedom relegated to a secondary position, to be exercised as much as possible iif it doesn't conflict with the main value?
For the record: any society that forbids one from selling oneself into slavery already isn't "a free society" in that specific meaning, as it values self-ownership so much above perfect freedom of exchange that it chose to legislate against the very traditional behavior of selling oneself to close debts.
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For the record: any society that forbids one from selling oneself into slavery already isn't "a free society" in that specific meaning, as it values self-ownership so much above perfect freedom of exchange that it chose to legislate against the very traditional behavior of selling oneself to close debts.
And that is an excellent point. Selling of one's own children into slavery or slavery-like conditions is also a traditional solution.
Sure, each limit on freedoms needs a very good reason and needs to be verified periodically whether it is effective or needs to continue being implemented, at least as long as economic pressures are present. Because a society already stops being really free when economic pressure can force certain behaviors that the individual would not have chosen otherwise. Unless that probl
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basically needs a "Star Trek" society with replicators available to everybody
Actually that isn't truly needed. It'd surely make it much easier, provided the powerful didn't keep extending patents, copyrights and DRM into infinity and beyond, which they totally will. So even with that one wouldn't have full autonomy.
Rather, the actual solution is simpler, and also addresses the above trap. As argued by the Distributist school of economics, freedom of exchange need to be limited in one single aspect: preventing any citizen from being reduced to proletarian.
At its core, proletarians ar
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Indeed. Hence I put in "basically", in the sense of "other options may exist but are not really realistic".
In fact, I think this problem is solvable right now except for the aspect of overcoming the resistance to it getting solved. Kind of like global warming, where the really simple and easy solution would be to shrink global population. If people limited themselves to one child per woman (or man, but not both) from now on, the problem would be solved and with ample time to spare. But that is not going to
They should change their name (Score:2)
Sorry (Score:2)
Re:Sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
what casino gives someone with no real income an $750K marker?
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The 'Wallstreet' market is inherently broken. (Score:5, Interesting)
Want a true investment market? Make all owners of stock hold their damn 'investment' for 30 days before being allowed to sell it. Options are stupid. So is selling something you don't have (shorts). What we have now is not an investment market, it is a gambling establishment. Things like robinhood are finally shining a light on the warts of the game.
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Derivative trading has its purposes. Options, for example, are all about hedging if you aren't the "gambler" type:
https://www.investopedia.com/o... [investopedia.com]
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That would help some, but at least in the case of stock derivatives, they can still be mis-used even by those who have "skin in the game".
Eventually people will find ways to misuse advanced trading instruments as a form of speculation.
What about Fidelity? (Score:5, Informative)
Fidelity's interface is seriously messed up in a similar way.
Say a stock is $100. The it tanks the next day to $1 and you buy 1000 of them hoping to catch a bounce. Then look at the profit/loss column in the trade and it says you have lost $99,000, by calculating the difference in price between yesterday and today, instead of your buy price and the current price.
It's been like that for years and they have never fixed it.
Re: (Score:2)
in the portfolio listing it uses the price paid for the calculation, though. I'm not sure it even makes sense to attach a profit/loss column to a buy.
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I find Fidelity's interface quite easy to understand. It shows last price, today's gain/loss, total gain/loss, current value, quantity, cost basis, and 52 week high/lows displayed on a single line for each position held. Clicking on a position reveals up to date quote including bid/ask and volume. Another tab shows purchase history.
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As do I. I've used it for a long time. However that one gain/loss column has been wrong on the day of trade for many years.
Re:That stock (Score:5, Informative)
It's an extreme example to demonstrate the flaw in the way their system displays profits and losses. A more realistic one would have been 'a stock that trades at 100 and tanks to 98, and you buy 1000 and it says you have lost $2000', but that would be a lot harder to follow.
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Yep.
The practical effect for me, since I often trade bounces, is that whenever I buy a recently tanked stock (I.E. a > 2 sigma drop, preferably > 3) the immediate view in the portfolio is telling me that I'm losing a bunch of money, when in reality I am not. I know this so I don't get confused by it, but it sucks that it can't just get it right.
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> k (I.E. a > 2 sigma drop, preferably > 3)
I'm not sure you know what "sigma" means in terms of mathematics. Could you explain what you are trying to say.
I know what sigma means in the finance and statistical sense. Just read my book referenced in the sig. It goes into that stuff in some detail.
In the context of my post I was referring to a change in price that is greater than twice the standard deviation of the distribution of daily price changes, as you would expect.
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Bankruptcy education (Score:4, Interesting)
I am fine admitting that the RH interface can be a bit confusing.
But bankruptcy is not. Why don't people understand bankruptcy better? Even if he had lost $750k, it's dischargeable debt.
Bankruptcy rules should be part of high school economics education. When you learn about Bretton Woods, you should also learn how the system is setup for inevitable defaults, and that this issue is mitigated with bankruptcy protection.
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Even if he had lost $750k,
Which is not possible. No broker would allow this, since they would be left holding the debt. You would owe the broker - but the broker would owe the market. Not gonna happen. That's why margin calls exist, and they're all automated nowadays. You can't lose more than you put in originally.
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Which is not possible. No broker would allow this, since they would be left holding the debt. You would owe the broker - but the broker would owe the market. Not gonna happen. That's why margin calls exist, and they're all automated nowadays. You can't lose more than you put in originally.
You can absolutely lose more than you put in if you engage in trading that relies on margin -- short selling, naked options strategies, and futures trading -- and brokers can be left holding the bag. Every now and then a futures trading firm implodes [reuters.com] and the clearing firm goes after them to recover what they can since they are on the hook for customer losses [nasdaq.com]. By law, every U.S. futures retail customer must be furnished with a risk disclosure statement [cornell.edu] that clearly states in the first paragraph that you can
Re: That's the problem. (Score:2)
Rewrite
Reinvent
Retarded
That is the modern approach to education.
Re: That's the problem. (Score:2)
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Dang (Score:2)
He didn't understand how Robinhood works. That's really sad. So far I have lost $11 on robinhood and I'.m ok. What the hell was he doing gambling 750K and not knowing how things work.
What a silly name... (Score:3, Insightful)
for a service whose actual results will be taking money from lots of small and gullible traders who can't afford the losses, and giving it to experienced, well financed trading companies who don't need an more money.
Forbes gives a good explanation... (Score:2)
I think this Forbes article [forbes.com] gives a good explanation of how his account could display that balance.
Aside from trading options without fully understanding them and being an emotionally fragile just out of teen years, the other real problem here is holding that position through expiration. Any stock can gap down over the weekend, although in the Forbes example they use AMZN so it's not likely to crush you quite so badly. Still though, without having rolled his position over, he was exposed to the full downs
or... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe we'll finally agree as a society that the whole stock exchange thing has become a casino much more than a market place. A casino with hidden, complex odds heavily balanced against the casual gamer and towards the regulars and big spenders.
Ever since the financial crisis, it should've been clear that something needs to be done about it. Many good ideas have come forward, none have been implemented.
Disclaimer: Risk is my job. Maybe 1% of the professionals I deal with on a daily basis have a real, deep and complete understanding of complex risk. I could write a book about it. Wait, I have.
The stock exchange with all its options, multi-leg leverage, packaged financial "products" and all the other bullshit is one big game of hiding risks so you can sell shit to people who don't know what you've hidden. Used car dealers are orders of magnitude more trustworthy than brokers.
That shit needs to be ended, or within our lifetimes we will have another meltdown that will again hurt the actual economy and real people.
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Agreed. The Atlantic recently ran a story about collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) that you may find interesting:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ma... [theatlantic.com]
P.S. Glad to see another 3-digit UID person still around on here. The few of us remaining should have a graybeard meetup sometime. :^)
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Agreed. The Atlantic recently ran a story about collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) that you may find interesting:
Long article, I could only skim it so far, but I agree with everything I read. There will be another banking crisis and soon, and it will bring us the changes necessary to the economic system - the changes that politicians should have brought calmly, systematically and slowly to less the shock, now those changes will happens rapidly and catastrophically (in the mathematical sense).
An entire generation will find its future fucked up because some assholes who knew what was coming needed to fill their pockets
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Damn. 3 digit UID. I considered modding you up for that alone, but as you’re already at 5... ;)
Good post though.
Ridiculous. A grown man expecting toddler treatmen (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the core problem right there.
When you travel, you start noticing how grown-up "children" in other parts of the world are. I met eleven year olds who knew everything about the politics of their country and talked to you like a grown man.
And I don't mean in a "lost childhood" way. I mean in a "proud to be that respected and accepted among elders" way. Like one kid in rural Turkey. He clearly had a very healthy self-cofidence. No way you could have triggered or insulted him to result in a trembling mess. You could have let him manage a bank or be mayor or a town right there.
Same with an eight year old girl in Nigeria. She was fixing laptops. Herself. Because she once needed hers to work, did it herself, and then had others asking her. She basically had a business, but without it feeling like a job. As she was the boss that said if she wanted to do it. With a four year old cousin assisting her, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
And what have /we/ got, here in the west? ... But those who can, *do*. Those who *can't*, play [until they can]. ... You're 31! There is a real world out there to explore and win at!)
People called "children" until they are 21. Saying they should not have given any responsibility at 20! And still playing childrens' games at 31. (Not that they aren't fun; I get it;
Very frankly, I think we all fail at educating our kids. No they should not have to work a job at 8 or be married at 12. But they should be *allowed* to acquire being treated like an adult as early as possible! Rites of passage and all. They should have the opportunities to *pride* themselves in managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a responsible manner at an early age! And with early I mean around puberty! Not at freakin 20, we losers of epic proportions!
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That was a very insightful post, especially on a site that used to be for makers and explorers, but now is increasingly populated by “gamers” and other people who think consuming certain kinds of ready-made entertainment makes them “geeks”.
As you point out, we should balance things so that kids don't have to start full-time work too early. Education should involve a mix of practice and theory. Young people should be allowed to try things in practice early, for at least the followi
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Play Grown Up Games, Take Grown Up Risks (Score:2)
If he had been right... (Score:2)
However, it is absolutely no rational reason for suicide. You don't protect your relatives, they don't have to pay your debt. You will have to declare yourself bankrupt, and then live goes on. Maybe a little less comfortable then it could have done, but it goes on.
So we were told he didn't actually understand the situation he was in correctly, but he definitely didn't understand the consequences. $700,000 debt is no good reason to k
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$700,000 debt at 20 is awful.
In the USA, that's the first step on the way to the presidency.
To trade options you have to verify your status (Score:2)
It's definitely a game (Score:2)
So some dude finds a way to leverage $4k to $800k, then promptly loses it and he complains it's the platform's fault?
I can just see this in Vegas "Excuse me dealer, you caused me to lose all my money, you need to give it back cause it's your fault!"
Also, the seemingly incorrect profit/loss returned by some trading apps corrects itself after a day. You should know exactly how much your trades are and what the profit is. Just look at the total balance, this is always correct.
Reminder (Score:2)
Just critiquing the platform itself? (Score:2)
As a RobinHood user myself who is definitely not well versed in stock trading? I found it an excellent tool for making it easy to dabble in buying a few of the tech stocks I always wanted, and easily automating processes to sell if they reached certain prices. That, and ability to buy fractional shares are the main things I wanted from it. The fact it lets you invest in crypto isn't bad either, though I haven't done that yet.
Oddly though (at least to me)? The fractional share purchasing isn't even somethi
Dangers of an app life in an app world (Score:2)
Everybody from developers to users needs to wake up to some of the hazards of the world Steve Jobs created when he lunched his iShinyObject world with its "apps"
Developers, too many of whom are sadly less serious than they ought to be about how actual users use their apps, need to become fare more awake to the implications of their work and how real people in the real world with real stresses and real distractions will be using them and the fact that what seems just a float or an int or a double to them mig
Re:I do not sympathise (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think he blamed the app. He had no clue what he was doing, and had no clue that he wasn't $700K in the hole.
But he had no business using the app without understanding what he was doing. It's unfortunate that his way of dealing with a difficult situation was to take he easy road out and leave everyone else to clean up his mess, especially including the hurt he caused them for the loss of his life.
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Suicide is a very complicated business to execute properly.
The majority of "suicide attempts" are just that, suicide attempts with no rational hope of successfully achieving the objective (theoretically) sought -- that of ending ones own life.
It takes a considerable amount of fortitude and planning to be able to execute suicide with confidence.
It's really not hard at all to sympathize (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't wish anyone commits suicide, but it is hard to sympathize with dumbassery.
Who were you when you were 20? You did nothing stupid? If you really cannot sympathize when someone feel so hopeless to take their life, you're a horrible monster. Seriously, get some help. There's something wrong with you. He's clearly wasn't well and didn't have the support structure to let him know it's not the end of the world.
I was an idiot in many ways when I was 20 as well. If you weren't, I just feel sorry for you. The only way to do nothing stupid ever is to never live or take chances or
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>Who were you when you were 20?
I was getting an education and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I was not indulging in fields I didn't know about, with money I didn't have. Like most people who have 2 neurons with common sense.
Having common sense, and calling stupid stupid does not make you a monster. I don't know what your life experience is - but I grew up in a third-world country in a middle-class family where it was clear that there was no property, no inheritance. And even at 20 , it wa
Macho AF (Score:2)
> Who were you when you were 20?
I was a Sergeant in the Army. I had a wife and a child on the way. I worked around 70 hours a week generally and took care of my family. I even sent home money to my Mom and sister regularly. I left home at 18, the day after graduating from high school to be in the Army. I signed up for the Army a year in advance, when I was 17, because I "knew" I had no way to pay for college and the neighborhood I lived in had zero opportunities.
OK...so if any of that is actually true, you're the top .01%, not the norm. Congratulations Sgt, you're exceptional. You understand that the only reason you had that opportunity is that the rest of the American taxpaying base you were defending were paying to build up and maintain the institution that gave you the opportunity to excel, right? Many, if not, most, of the people you were hired to defend who were paying your salary are dumbasses by your standards. You're aware of that, right?
It's macho
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I agree. Suicide is complicated and rarely due to a single factor. In all of the cases of suicide I've had personal knowledge of it turned out that there was more going on than the specific reason the person gave. Often it was a history of mental issues, chronic medical or financial issues, drug use, or some kind of abuse or a combination of all of the above. My suspicion is that there were other factors involved that left him in a vulnerable state and it was just the sudden perceived Robinhood loss that pu
Re: A life is priceless (Score:2)
Yes, because no one who believes in a creator has ever killed themselves. Clearly, you've never suffered from suidical ideation and crippling depression. I have, and I've lost friends to it. At that point, your beliefs are worthless, because you become consumed by internalized anger and fear. What you need then is not God, but someone understanding to talk to, preferably a therapist, if not outright psychiatric intervention.
It really bothers me when people trivialize depression and suicide. In my experience
Re: A life is priceless (Score:2)
I should add, it's not just anger and fear you internalize, it's a pervasive sense of worthlessness, hopelessness, and the utter conviction that no one you know cares if you die.
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