Topic: 20-Year-Old Robinhood Customer Dies By Suicide After Seeing A $730,000 Negative (Read 1069 times)

You  should really be aware into those possibilities or scenarios but people are just way too emotional and do directly make out actions without even thinking
that there might be some sort of problem or whatsoever. When you do saw that theres something isnt right then you should always have the verifying kind of
attitude.Robinhood does really have a fault in this one yet it do talks about UI or some technical errors which cause for the boy to suicide but we cant say that
they would took all the blame on that thing since that boy is rushing up on ending up his own life.

I'm fairly sure it won't happen again. Once you're dead, there's no doing it twice.

I don't have any sympathy for cases like this. I mean, why kill yourself over a $730,000 debt? Most US college students are in over $100k debt, and plenty of people pay it off.

He could simply emigrate to a country with no extradition laws and start a new life, and yet he kills himself over this? Insanity.

He must have had a lot of other shit going on in his life at the same time or suffered from clinical issues, as this isn't normal behavior. Throw your life away over money? WTF.

That’s a really heart breaking news. Indeed, everyone should learn something for it. Trading is a game of ups and downs, so you need to be smart enough and pull the plug when everything is going south. Life cannot always be full of ups and no downs. If you can earn huge profits in crypto, you could also lose big so be ready for any situation.

I hope every trader reading this post takes a note of this very basic rule which most of the people in the crypto space follow “Do not invest or trade money which you cannot afford to lose”.

This was really shocking how an interface error can kill a 20 year old teenager for mistakenly interpreted on how the data about his trades have been shown on the site of the Robinhood. It is somehow a clear incident of how you must properly know the trading site you were using to avoid misinterpretations and misunderstanding of the data presented on the screen of your device. Before doing trading, you must better know first the site you would be using just to make your safe familiar about the whole thing so that if ever there is something that you have changed is that you can turn it back to avoid confusion.

Maybe what happened is that because of mix up emotion of excitement and nervousness of expecting a high income on the trade he have done that turns out to be presented on a different manner he got so confused and have been frightened on what to do with the negative value he was seeing on his screen. It might be a clear thing on how emotion of a person can affect his behavior and decision making. May this tragic incident won't happen again to other newbies out there and to be a reminder to better know your trading site first, and avoid getting caught up on doing decision making driven by emotions.

It is not really something that you could learn from their features as what I have read it was the UI's fault that the RH didn't actually put some disclaimer/warning that there might be a little problem if there's a delay on their system. As myself maybe I will felt the pressure if that's going to happen to me but taking my own life is just too much. That's why we really need to know everything in trading to fully understand if there might be some kind of a problem like in RH UI.

I agree the situation was extreme, but I would just like to say one thing that suicide is not the solution to anything. You cannot weigh life with money its priceless. This isn’t the case with just the crypto market, previously many people have committed suicide even due to losses occurring in shares/stock market. It doesn’t affect the market or makes people scared to be honest it just gives them an alarm on what could happen if you aren’t careful.

I still hope we don’t hear such heart breaking news again. Trade with caution, choose healthy coping mechanism even if you lose and don’t be greedy. When you are having confident about getting more opportunities in coming days then you will never need to be frustrated when you're facing losses. So, we must need to understand that this world is too big and the opportunities are really unlimited for everyone.

Hopefully the suicide incident as happened to the 20 year old Robinhood customer will not happen again. Hopefully this tragedy can become
a lesson for all of us, especially newbies to first learn all the features on the websites where we trade. So there is no misunderstanding.
My advice for newbies is always to use money that we can afford to lose, not greed over us when trading. So even if we lose money, it won't
be stressful. And we are more ready to accept if we suffer losses.

This was really indeed a very sad and tragic scenario of a teenager getting himself killed because he suspected himself having a very large debt flashed on the screen of his mobile phone because of the interface problem. It maybe have gotten into his mind the fear of not being able to claim the earnings he supposedly be expecting to have that day after a long run of trading but instead of seeing good results it turns out that the interface of the site was mistakenly being interpreted by the victim which might due to depression and fear have decided to kill himself.

This is really an important issue to take a clarified conversation most specially for people who wanted to enter trading that you must get yourself familiarize first on the site you were using to avoid the same thing of mistakenly interpreted information flashed on the screen. Also with the site, may they make it just simple to see what even the newbies can easily understand for they might get into the same situation like the death of the victim.

It might be a problem on the interface of the site indeed but before doing trading or even investing you must always remember not to get along with your emotions and do not let such thing drive things that you do to avoid emotional breakdown that can lead to a tragic end of one's life. May this serve as a lesson specially for newbies to let yourself have full education of what you were doing and do not let yourself be drowned because of some failure coz it teaches you a lesson to do better the next time around.

I am not going to say that the full responsibility is based on robinhood about this issue but maybe there should be a little bit responsibility given to them as well? I mean they allowed a guy who didn't had any money at all to rack up 700k in debt and maybe they shouldn't have allowed something like that? If they could just allow people to never really take out a loan or give them a chance to make movements more than they can afford, this wouldn't have happened.

Everyone talks about the suicide point of view but this just showed us there must be a lot of people out there who got into robinhood and racked up debt that they couldn't pay and robinhood allows people to trade with money they do not own. If we could pressure them to not allow that at all, maybe we could save people from going into debt as well.

He was young and his perspectives might not be so mature when it comes to financial aspect. If you are not really strong, you can be easily damaged with life's troubles. But as you grow older, you gain wisdom and that's when you start realizing about the realities of life and so you can face life in a different approach.

He took what was been displayed wrong. Yeah, this might be the most unfortunate incident. Because he took his own life out of dismay of what was being showed, in which, apparently he had not in the first place.

And yeah, he might have some problem prior to the incident, I couldn't believe that money (in his perspective) weighs more than his own existence  . And to add, he's not the type of guy that fits in such industry, neither to spineless people. They easily get bothered with those circumstances, and would dare to commit morally wrong behavior  .

Many traders think that trading is just using technical and fundamental analysis, they are not aware that trading psychology is also important when it comes to trading. I met a lot of trader before who actually think to take their own lives just because they lose in trading, yes it is true but they managed to overcome it by visiting psychiatrist and psychology. When we do trading, we should be aware on what is our emotion. Actually most of the professionals are recording it because trading psychology is really important. Mental health is a factor in order to become successful in trading.

The young guy decided to take his own life as he can't handled this kind of loses,
taking the risk while you are not mentally ready.
The kind of situations where you should taking to the account, preparing yourself
facing this kind of risk.
If only Robinhood manage to explained everything properly to this young men
the chance that he won't take his own life.

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His awareness and full understanding to what is happening to his investment
might saves his life.
If only all detailed information was provided, this kind of act might be avoided.

It is always sad when someone's dies, it is even more sad when someone dies way too young, and it is even sadder when someone so young takes their own life. Dude probably had some sort of personal problems as well with his emotions, after all not everyone who loses money goes out and commits suicide, most of them just continue to live and somehow find a way to pay it back or if not even go to jail or get their things possessed or whatever happens but usually doesn't commit suicide as the first thing in their mind.

This dude probably had some psychological problems way before any of this happened, and when he reached to this much debt he couldn't saw a way out and a way for a good life and instead of living a life where he pays debt until he dies and has a horrible life because of it, he decided to end it instead.

Do some actual reading, people. The sad irony is that he wasn't at any point in the actual red. He misinterpreted what was shown to him and freaked out accordingly. Robinhood did not design or inform correctly.

I don't get why people trade on such high leverage, they're just asking to be rekt. I also don't think that platforms like Robinhood shoud allow positions to fall into negative balance... They should much more stringent margin call requirements when trading on such high leverage, and only allow the least volatile assets to be traded on leverage at all.

Either way, why kill yourself over it? They can't get blood from a stone, just go bankrupt.

That a huge amount to bare for him that is why he decided to quit his life, first all why people have to such risk if they are not ready face the negative consequences.Before doing anything in our life we need to double check whether we have to do it or not but if you decided to go but in the half way you don't want then people will consider ourselves as a weak human to live.

Such a shame 
Very tragic that he killed himself over this. Maybe he had other problems that we or the author of the article did now know about.

Rest in peace
Alex Kearn

For sure they are aware and there is indeed some liability on their part and i can say that kid was just too rushed up on doing things without even trying to verify everything if its purely a loss or
some technical glitch or problems for that do raise up into that certain extent.

Well, its quite understandable that when it comes to dealing up with investment or on economic side which do particularly deal of with these kind of mess and if you are really not aware
of such then you wont simply able to tell to yourself on what would you gonna do if you were in his foot.

While I agree why do you think this is not the case? After all it is not as if economics is an incredibly complex topic if we compare it to math, chemistry or physics, so why governments do not do it? And the answer is simple, this is by design.

They do not want smart people making all kind of questions about why the economy works the way it does, they want sheep that follows orders without any questions and for that you need people to be ignorant about the topic and believe it is something only Nobel Prize winners in economics have a chance of understanding.

Once this is achieved they can do whatever they want with the economy and yet the population will never protest about it since they do not have an understanding about what is happening.

This is how I see things here, there is some liability on the part of Robinhood and I'm sure they know this sort of short comings or some error that this platform has provided. I for now things that this is how they designed their system in the first place.

This kid has really a bright future, there's a lot of "If's and "could have" if he grow and become a veteran trader, sadly it was cut short and it's really a tragedy.

Right, he is very young that's why he can't take seeing his balance going negative. I'm sure he might know the risk, but perhaps he reacted the wrong way and yes, the failure of robinhood to clear about those balances reflecting on your account. I agree on what @tbterryboy teaching our children at a young age about economics, I think a simply savings will be good for young kids specially today.

Agreed, but this is waaay beyond what would ever be taught in conventional education.

Robinhood is designed from the ground up to appeal to people who otherwise would never have traded. It's on them to hold their hand every step of the way. There are an awful lot of ways to screw up and in this case to believe you screwed up.

The designers will have known users would be shown a giant negative balance while the trade was open. I would've made sure the user had pressed a big flashing button giving an explanation and saying 'do you understand what this means and why?' before showing to them.

They can't account for everyone's emotional state but at least make it clear as possible what is happening at every relevant moment. If I hadn't informed myself or been informed I certainly would've shat a brick briefly too.

Honestly, we need to teach children at a very young age about economics. I understand that studying mathematics, history, geography, science and all other stuff at school is very very important but we should add economics at a very young age as well.

You know what my school had? Economics "branch", we had these branches like first aid branch, history branch basically extra curriculum stuff that each student would pick, it wasn't a class but it was a extra stuff that you did time to time outside of school class hours.

Well, I was in the economics branch and I could say that from age 7 I have learned the importance of saving whatever you can, even if it is 1 dollar, always try to buy everything as cheap as you can, and that helped me out a lot in life. If we could have simple economics class from very early age to end of high school, everyone would be smarter with their money.

Reminds me of that movie where the main character thinks the situation is so desperate it's better if he kills his family and commits suicide but when he kills them and is about to end his own life he is rescued.

Usually it's all in our heads and if we were able to leave our bodies and see that whole situation from a different perspective we wouldn't feel like it's the end of the world.

A really unfortunate coincidence for that poor guy.

There was no risk at the moment he killed himself. He was fine and his balance was positive. It was a misunderstanding on his part and a failure of the site to make things clear enough.

This is a prime example of not weighing out the risks. Leverage in trading works in both ways, so if you're prepared to go all in without even being bothered about the consequences well I'd say that's complete foolishness. No amount of money is worth a life. So this is a very bad tragedy others should learn from

Article in the Sunday Times about this today -

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/the-trading-apps-accused-of-turning-stocks-into-a-game-kpz68kp0h

http://archive.is/Uw72b

It reemphasises that the $730,000 was a temporary figure and he was actually in the black throughout.

Perhaps he was inclined towards extremely volatile emotions anyway. Perhaps this situation was the first to put himself in a position where they could harm him. Something like this certainly would if you didn't take the time to breathe and think.

It wasn't a rational act to get started trading knowing nothing. It got less rational from then on.

The thing is that this is extremely common, it is impossible to stop inaccuracies like this to happen from time to time, I think we have all suffered a time in which one of the services we were paying showed an amount that was unreasonable and instead of taking such an extreme measure we just grabbed the phone and talked to the customer service to get a clarification, this was mostly an interface issue and a lack of understanding of trading in general which unfortunately had such a sad ending, if anything this should be a lesson to not trade if you do not know what you are doing.

damn the kid just decide to kill himself while not really a real negative balance?   not familiar with robinhood but if they can be sued for this tragic death, it would help the future platforms to also follow a standard.

the kid started trading at this early years of his life, he could be learning a lot and will likely be a pro before 25. but that wouldn't happen now because of the gui that robinhood provided.

It's crazy that someone is trading on this exchange and doesn't know about this. I can't understand how this guy didn't do something first, like ask support, call them, I don't know... Why would he raise his hand on himself before even trying to sort things out?
It's to late for this guy, but this can be a strong message for newbies to not rush anywhere, to sit and think before they actually do something. To do some research before they join the circus, to know what they can expect, and to learn how to deal with all the problems on the way.
This definitely a sad story, I hope some people will learn something from this, especially young people.

If you can imagine to kyc after seeing something on monitor, you should throw this monitor away 

This was a UI problem and the way Robinhood feeds info to customers. The negative balance was there while his trade was active. Once it closes it would've gone away.

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

It's a failure on their part not to explain sophisticated instruments better to their customers. All he had to do was ask but it should've been made a whole lot clearer what was an obligation and what wasn't.

Damn, I cannot imagine how he will pay his debt almost a million dollars. I don't know what to do if I was him, but hey suicide is not an option maybe going to jail at least. Well this is warning for youngster traders that how risky in trading, acquired knowledge first.

However, a negative 730 grants are just too big to handle. He's too young to work and live under such a very big pressure like that. I'm older than him but I can't even stand if I owed someone a thousand dollars or so. Living under debt is never an easy thing to do! What happened, happened. I hope people will considering carefully before investing to avoid this kind of sad news!

I think this is a case of jumping in a wrong conclusion, it could also happen to me or anyone if there is no warning of the real case, the brokerage company should clarify or with an attached note that it's temporary balance until the stocks underlying his assigned options actually settled into his account as they say in their statement, this is very saddening seeing he has a future in stock trading, the blame is on the trading firm and they need to take action that it will not happen again.

Yeah, seen this one on my suggested notifications about news and this was really a tragic loss of a young man. He should have ask the support of Robinhood onhe know what really happen, he did act recklessly.

Well, it happened already and hopes this was really an eye opener to everyone that trading involves all your senses.

Non-sense.. It's not a question of age here. Look at Nick D'aloisio, he became an entrepreneur when he was 15 years old.. his net worth is more than 30 million $.

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It was probably fear and all the emotions coming out of the shock of seeing that huge amount of money in red that led him to take such an unrational decision.. I guess if there was someone with him at the time that reasoned him he wouldn't have done it.

I agree that trading without knowledge or doing mistakes or whatever is probably a cause for having a 730k debt.
However, is there zero blame on robinhood? This app allowed a 20 year old kid with zero income to somehow rack up 730k debt, don't you think he should have been banned or not even allowed to do something like this?

If I was an exchange I wouldn't allow anyone to make a debt more than the amount they have on their accounts, you either trade with the money you deposited or you don't trade at all.

Making a debt on investment is the most stupid thing there is, at the very best case for them the deposit could be made with credit card and that is the max allowed should be, we all know credit cards have realistic limits so the dude would probably have like 20k debt which is nowhere near and could be paid even with a mcdonalds job.

YES! I believe it should be on Robinhood. They took the risk of giving an unemployed 20 year old "almost a million dollars" in leverage, that could not pay the negative $730,000.

Can't be more agree! Please, people! When you invest your money, your time, your works into something, please learn about it first! Do not invest in something that you don't even know a little bit about! There's no easy money in this cryptocurrency market (well it was, back in 2017 when any single coin can gain its value dramatically) but it's not the way it was anymore. Equipping yourself with fundamental knowledge, skills, information about this market helps you a lot in achieving your goals! Don't hesitate to learn!

This is the consequence if trading does not have enough knowledge, and should be accompanied by experienced people. This tragedy
becomes lesson for all of us, that before entering into the world of trading must master the knowledge of trading first. So psychologically
more ready to accept losses. And always use capital according to our abilities, then avoid using it the leverage feature if you don't master it.

Well, yeah, simple words that has a lot of meaning.
Killing your self and escape from your entire losses cant help you in that way. Just like you have been stabbed with a double-edged sword, --losing your money and your life as well. But I don't know the whole story yet perhaps the money that the kid used in trading that has been lost perhaps the money used in trading was not his own, --sort of borrowed money. Indeed, what a dumb mind of a poor kid, mercy him.

First I was thinking how you should stay alive no matter what but now I am thinking more about how at my early marriage years I was feeling too much pressure about paying for everything and when I quit my job to become a freelancer the income wasn't too big so I wasn't making too much profit and it was insanely difficult to pay even the bills and I remember clearly thinking about committing suicide to get out of all the trouble and I kind of gave him some empathy.

I didn't do it thankfully because now I am earning quite enough for me, I am in no ways rich but at least I can pay for bills and food and at the end of the month it is a tiny bit difficult for last few days and that's it, so that is alright life if you ask me considering people are starving at the same world. So, if he lived I am sure he would see a better life in the future, but I can't say I don't emphasize with him neither.

We are not the only ones who are suffering huge financial losses like this kid right here. For two years since I began cryptocurrency trading, I made some bad decisions in my life. Not just in trading, but spending money as well from my gains. As a result, I have lost a lot of money.

There come a time that I didn't pay attention to a specific coin because I was busy with some other stuff. I made a bad decision to buy during that time, and the price fell by 800% or more and struggled to go back to the price where I bought them. I had so many regrets and financial losses that time, and I was on the brink of giving up.

Good thing that my crypto friends keep telling me that the funds I've lost can be recovered anytime as long I believe and keep my options open on other opportunities. And you know what? They're damn right! Because I've been on the brink many times in my life, but I keep getting back up rather than staying down for good.

If I am in his shoes to lose that kind of amount, it would be very hard to accept and may suffer potential mental breakdown or so. However, it also reminds us that when life throws a curve ball at us, we have to swing it to the fences every single time. It's better for us to be trained emotionally if we are in a similar situation like this young guy who committed suicide.

Condolence to his family.

I don't think the customer is dumb enough about trading that he gets assigned that type of account? Maybe something happened behind the scenes that were not published in any news article out there. Think about it, how would someone, a big corporation or a trading firm, trust a 20-year-old with that kind of money? For sure, he has some other issues that might affect his reasoning and thinking that it's the only way out.

That's what people should learn is to be calm with what happens, thinking clearly would've been better. If he wasn't that reliable on the app itself, he might notice that there's something wrong with the interface, but it seems that layer and layer of problems may have clouded his judgment overall.

What I could see with this is that Robinhood is going to improve more based on this and would not let it happen again within their platform or something. Disclaimers are for sure there, but it still lacks in terms of awareness with the risk, maybe.

That was a real huge problem caused by a tiny mistake .

Can never imagined to felt like a lost ball in the high weeds like that. Poor kid.
Financial problems always become something scary, don't play with it if you can't really get your emotions redeemed.
I was and currently in that kind financial problem..
And guess how desperate i am? Yes I'm thinking to go for suicide if only I'm not tqlking to anybody.
Fortunately yeah there's someone pushing me through this situation and a bit makes my mind clearer than before.

The key is to talk!
This is indeed a crazy story that would blow everyone's mind and makes the financial market slightly had a bad side for a while as the news itself become trending everywhere.

When stress and emotion do sets in then its really hard to be stopped when you are a kind of person that doesnt really handle problems to well and end up into those kind of conclusions.

There are lots of possibilities that do happen but if there we no technical glitch do involved on here then its really hard for a 20 year old to have that kind of debt.
Someone would really have those suicide thoughts.

I wont say that its easy when you are in the actual situation.

Fortunately none of us have to spend the rest of our lives paying back debts. If it was so people like Mark Karpeles would be splitting rocks or plowing fields for a few lifetimes

Most debts expire after a few years. I think in most EU countries it's between 3 and 5.

The worst thing they can do to you is seize whatever money you have in the bank and the property that's yours alone. They can't even take property you share with someone else like a spouse.

Kearns is very young and I guess he had little knowledge on trading. If he was enough aged, I guess he would consider it as a bug since he had no possible ways to get a negative balance. Either way, it's a lesson for the young traders, they must have enough of knowledge before starting trading.
I don't see Robinhood guilty here though.

This is the sad reality of life.
We don't know the reasoning behind why he took his life.
But clearly, he couldn't handle this situation so he thought ending his life was the only way to get out of the situation.
If he will be much older, maybe the action will be different. It is only money, so one can replace no matter how long it will take.
But life, we have only one life. Truly a sad news to hear.

I think is better before you get yourself into anytime learn it first and have some kind of decent experience that will warrant you to do what you do (trade) and also dont panic too much Learn some patience

I would hope by age 20 I'd be smart enough to talk to Robinhood and a lawyer before jumping to any rash conclusions.


Even if it were possible he was really down $730K (and I don't see how it was possible based on the amounts he was trading) that debt would probably not be collectable. He could have at least declared bankruptcy and got a clean start.

I don't understand how people jump to these sorts of conclusions. It's just tragic, no other word for it really.

At first I thought it was Cobinhood. There is an exchange named like that if I am not mistaken.

This is tragic.
I guess it was not his money since he is too young to be holding such a huge amount.
To avoid being blamed or having a huge sum of debt to be paid afterwards he just finished it with his life.
This should not happen at all.

This is the result of aggressive marketing that shows how it easy is to earn money by trading, but they don´t tell that only 10% of all traders are in profit.  Every one has an experience with cold calls from brokers, that they have a special offer for you, 500USD deposit bonus, and so on, so it is pretty easy to get into and lose money without any knowledge. 

Is this for real? How come the assrt could incurred a negative value when you dont have much balance on your margin account? I understand if he did some loan that been set to margin trading like Binance. But when I read the article its not like that. Its the fault of the robinhood platform. How come their system could inflict such figures like that? I dont understand. Can someone explaine it to me? Im using Binance future which is not different from this case but hell this would happen to me.

And that's the crazy part of this story, IMO.  I generally don't get all sad when I read stories like this on the internet, but this one is indeed tragic.  Poor kid probably felt like losing that amount of money was the end of the world for him--and even if he had lost that much, it's still only money.  He was young enough that he could easily have had time to start over again.  Many traders have made and lost fortunes before--this reminds me a little of the story of Jesse Livermore who was one of the first TA traders back in the early 1900s.  He blew his brains out later in life, though I can't remember if it was specifically because of losses he suffered.

Ah well, RIP trader dude.  

Uh....yeah, I'd say it's the ultimate way to do it.

Of course this is a great grief for the family. but nevertheless, adulthood comes at the age of 18 and everyone should really evaluate their actions and opportunities before starting any activity, especially in the cryptocurrency market. it’s better not to get involved in any kind of credit business, not only in real life, but in cryptocurrency trading. It seems to me that each trader with certain indicators can have a leverage of such volumes, and the age of an adult has nothing to do with it.

We don't know what is the story behind how he got that huge amount of money in that age, but one thing for sure is, killing yourself is not a way to escape reality. But I also understand that it shocked him seeing such loss and that he cannot control his emotions. We also don't know if he's facing other problems aside from this loss that's why we can't blame him if he aggressively invests all that money, but it's a lesson for us especially for those who are still learning and exploring about trading that it requires knowledge not only about on how to trade, as well as on how to deal with unexpected losses.

If you are still new, or even trading for quite some time now but can't handle such situations, always be mindful of the possibilities you might encounter because trading involves risk. I still feel bad for this young boy and his family.

Ain't sure if this kid at a young age (20 years old) can't manage himself from bad consequences in any form of risk activity like trading or even sort of gambling. It's sad to know that there are people like this, just only money you've supposedly been lost not your life. There are certain ways to find a solution to overcome lose money than your life. I didn't where the money comes from why he was so affected after seeing losses.

Feel sorry to him and his loss, this might a big lesson to everyone that only invest of what you can afford to lose. If you are trading in crypto, you should understand first how it works and how to conquer those consequences in trading either bad or good.

It's a pity how a misunderstanding could take a life so simply. This is why those, especially at the age bracket of 18-25, should always study and learn what they are doing truthfully while investing slowly. Whether it be a "game" like investment opportunity, investment is still an investment. Also going bankrupt is still a lot better than losing your life tbh, and I don't understand why they refuse to do something instead of just being shocked to the point of committing suicide. If they instead, contacted customer support, understood what actually happened to his balance ( cause as far as I understood, the balance just went up to negatives after him doing something when it shouldn't have done that cause there was an exit point to reduce losses). He misunderstood, and that was it, instead of questioning it, he just accepted it.

Understanding any system should be one of the key to  traders to actually avert this kind of situations. Ignorance is actually a big disease that need to be fight against because it was the problem of Robinhood. How I wish he was able to understand that the figures were tempora, he shouldn't have taken his own life. Though, this should be a lesson to all traders either old or young, what you don't understand you are to stay away or research into it before approach is made.

Though this is a very tragic and a sad incident, it gives a strong message to the people about why we should educate ourself so much that we understand the basic complexities of technology. If that person would have understood that it's a technical glitch then and would have been patient for a while then he would not committed the terrible act of suicide. Day by day the technology around is evolving and with the development of more technological stuff, there comes more technical problems. So it is our responsibility that we educate ourself to embrace the growth of technology.

We can only speculate, we don't know what the kid is thinking. You have to factor in that he is still very young, he could be trading thousands of dollars one time, but would you react at 20 years of age to see that you debt? Maybe he didn't think clearly at that time and that's why he didn't call support and ask for details, maybe for him this is everything and he put the blame on himself, triggering emotional stress and the eventual collapse psychologically.

Yes he could have call the support and ask what really happen to his account and why the hell with all those negative numbers? But then again, he is very young, and really don't know how to react with the huge debt in front of him. And we really don't know what inside his mind, and for him that time, the best thing to is kill himself, so it's really a tragedy and hope that crypto traders will have that mental toughness and not make hastily decision.

That's a real huge lump sum, if you asked me. But money is still here making itself and he took a life he couldn't create. Material wealth shouldn't be handled as if they were a matter of life and death.

I think this also underlines the fact of people not wanting to read T&C of every contract they indulge before clicking the "Accept" button. Perhaps such bug would've been taken care of in the T&C as an occurrence that possibly will happen. Well, RIP to the lad.

I do not think that the app is not liable, yes that is their interface problem but wouldn't the interpretation fall back to user? He could've contacted the app's tech support but he did not because of utter shock, I for one would be shock that I would incur that kind of debt because that is a lot of money, this is a tragedy that imparts us a lesson that there will be hardships that will test our mental fortitude and we need to be ready whenever that time comes.

That's true the blame is on the company, it's very deceiving to put something like that without a big notification that it's only temporary, this is a big lesson learned for the company or any trading company, real time results should be displayed or give an explanatory note that will explain the balance, but it's over now,I wonder if they can sue the company for negligence for showing that kind of balance.

Don't get me wrong, this is tragic and everything. But how did he not dig into his transactions at all and realize the option expiration and stock settlement don't occur at the same time?

How do you just look at a cash balance on your screen and decide to kill yourself?

Maybe call support first and ask why you're account is down $730K (when the max risk of that structure was probably $1-2K).....

I think it’s high time we start letting people know that trading is not a means to gather gold and silver, it’s a very risky thing to engage yourself in, because you can lose everything in it. This is a really bad news and something anyone would never wish to come to them, but that’s not enough reason for him to take his life.

I feel really sorry for him and I wish he didn’t take his life because of this and I wish he didn’t even involve himself in this kind of thing. Young adults shouldn’t involve themselves in this without guidance. They should always have someone that guiding them to avoid making mistake. There is nothing in life that is enough to make anyone take their life.

Go bankrupt. That's the point of it. It'll screw with aspects of your life for quite a long time but it's far from the end of the world. Millions of people do it around the world. If you're looking at a debt that'll take more than 3-5 years to pay off that's the recommended option.

https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/

I think a big debt doesn't really mean you should end your life, it is probably one of the worst things that could happen to you considering you have zero income and only a 20 year old kid.

However being a 20 year old kid is a good part of being in debt, you still have a long life ahead of you and you could pay it back slowly. Sure it will cripple your whole economy and you would be living probably in poverty for majority of your life just to be able to pay it back, however taking your own life is not really a solution to the problem, it is running away from it. If he kept his head down, lived a bad life, it would still be a life, it wouldn't be great, it would be bankruptcy filled one with worrying where the next meal will come from but at least he would be alive.

This was picked up on by CZ and binance implemented a timeout for shit traders.

https://mobile.twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1273872555791638528

The normalisation of leveraged trading in all areas is one of modern life's weirder developments. It wouldn't have occurred to older generations.

A total waste of a life. I hope someone learns something from it.

If it were me I would've gotten a job counting penguins somewhere remote and popped back a few years later.  That's if it was an actual debt which if it isn't is even more unfortunate.

Yes, that debt forces the kid to commit suicide of the huge amount he incurred.

This is really tragic to see someone to take his life because of debt. Not the first time to hear though, but he is still young. Robinhood is not commenting on the subject, but definitely they have to improve their system/service as a result of this incident.

Reminds me of the tales from the oil price crash, the same problems, and "technical difficulties" scared the hell of a lot of traders, in some cases people with a few tens of dollars were suddenly millions in debt:
A day trader who bought hundreds of oil contracts was told he owed $9 million after a trading-platform issue meant it failed to show oil's historic plunge below $0
Trading is not for the faint hearted, and not for the ones that are betting all their money on something they don't truly understand.


If they had a disclaimer in their ToS about this exact situation and how a negative balance might show up and what are the true implications they will get away with it without anything happening. If not they will probably just enter a settlement with the family.

This is actually quite clearly stated in the linked article. The 20-year-old was shown a balance of -730k (screenshot of his mobile phone can be found in the article).This is supposed to be a display problem due to the kind of options he was probably experimenting with. Here is the relevant part of the article again:


It is of course extremely tragic when something like this happens because of a display problem and something like this has such consequences. I hope that the Exchanges will take this case as an opportunity to improve the situation and show, for example, that the amounts displayed do not correspond to the actual balance.

I believe they do and they have reached out to his family but they're not yet ready for speaking to RH.

Basically, it was an issue with the UI.
<sup>Read the following links with its comments:
- This and this.</sup>

Well, honestly I'm not exactly so sure about what I understand about the article.
As I can see with the story the kid decided to suicide himself because of 730, 000$. Now, the 730k$ was the
kids debt? Correct me if I am wrong to my understanding, that's what I felt actually.

Can Robinhood though has some liability here? It seems that the victim saw negative balance but the article it is just temporary but this could have triggered everything. If Robinhood display it real-time, this could have been avoided?

This is unfortunately a tragic example of how ignorance can kill a person, because it is actually something they have called an "interface issue". Kearns's trading required knowledge of the system and how it actually showed the data, and what he saw was actually only temporary and the negative balance wasn't really negative in the literal sense of the word.

Inexperience, a lack of knowledge, and a system set up to display data in a rather clumsy way have convinced someone that he have a debt of as much as $730 000. I hope this will be a good lesson to others not to play with things they don’t understand.

I cannot also manage that problem so maybe if that thing happens to me, I am also going to kill myself so it is better if you don't start trading until you learn how to trade in a right way and how to manage your money. If you feel you are losing, stop trading and continue tommorow with a great start. I hope that something like this will be no more happen. If there will be another case like this, maybe the users are going to scared on using crypto currency and that will be a big reason for mass adaptation to occur on a longer time.

20-Year-Old Robinhood Customer Dies By Suicide After Seeing A $730,000 Negative Balance

I hate to bring this sad news, but I thought that everyone could learn a thing or so, specially those young traders out there who are vulnerable. Its really really sad to hear this kind of news, specially a very young kid at 20 years who ended his life.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-commits-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/#5421ac305928