Maybe he needed support from his parents

...not so much customer service

https://www.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-us-family-sue-trading-020057091.html

Somehow a 20 year old with apparently "no income" started trading stocks as if he were a pro. There was apparently some app glitch they think, and he was led to believe he owed $730,000 which would ruin the rest of his life. So he ends his life. Parents are now suing the business as there was "no customer service" for him to call to straighten it out. I guess the stock trading company just weren't looking out for him as the parents thought they should.

Parents always pull that one when they screw up hard

Strange how kids usually can't get parental support in life emotionally before they get into dumb crap then when there is a disaster the parents see dollar signs and look for the cash and their own PR

Yeah I'mma go out on a limb and say that it wasn't Robinhood that drove the guy to suicide. Most people don't just up and decide today's a good day to die. Odds are the guy was already very depressed, most likely without treatment, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Parents are also often surprisingly unsympathetic when their children wind up depressed. I think they take it as a personal affront to their parenting because if they did everything right - which they all feel they do - then their child should never be depressed. But to be fair, plenty of young people suffer mental illness induced by crappy parenting, so it might not be that far of a stretch.

These assholes are only suing because people might question where this man's family support was when he decided to take his own life and it probably also makes them look like they're fighting the good fight and placing the blame where they feel it belongs (on the party with the thickest wallet) so their kid didn't die in vain.

The app did not force his hand. While anyone ending their own life is tragic, this man made a completely voluntary decision. I think this was just boiling under the surface and the sudden six figure debt is what caused the eruption. Robinhood had no way of knowing what this guy would do and if he was in such an emotional and mental crisis, he should have called a suicide hotline and not customer service. I'm sorry he's dead, but this is not the app's fault.

He also claimed in his suicide note that he was trying to prevent his parents from being responsible for a supposed debt of nearly a million dollars. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the parents have been on the hook for this anyway? Even more so, without him around to earn money. If the debt had been real, their finances would have been completely ruined and he'd still be dead.

Selling short is a financial practice akin to gambling and that is what this kid was doing. Even seasoned professionals lose their shirts on these practices. It's dangerous and risky and he got burned.

The parents are doing what most people do--find the deep pockets to pay for someone's stupidity.

As an aside, the recent Gamestop gaming was nothing that hedge fund managers are not doing on a regular basis. Shame on the SEC for stepping in and (temporarily) stopping RobinHood from being able to trade. If short selling is a permitted practice, the Government needs to sta out of it. The ideal solution would be to eliminate 10% down for short selling-- if someone wants to risk money, make them pay the full amount up front. But Congress will never agree to do this because large hedge fund managers have Congress in their pocket, thanks to lobbyists and donations. AOC and Mitch McConnel are in agreement against any kind of regulation and when both parties are together like that--you know what that means: SCREW YOU to the little investor or consumer.

I don't know what kind of trading he was doing, but the 730k debt that he saw didn't actually exist. There was some kind of timing issue where one trade hadn't finished posting yet and his account was showing a huge negative balance. It was cancelled out after a day or two.

Part of what the parents are angry about is that he obtained margin so easily. Robin hood was giving inexperienced investors too much margin knowing they didn't know how to handle it.

Not to excuse the parents. Kid seems dumb in general.

the redditers beat the wall street pigs at their own game. so of course the hedge funder run squealing to the powers that be to shut robinhood down.

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

Dysfunctional relationships almost always have a child. The more dysfunctional, the more children.

The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

Some mistakes cannot be fixed, but some mistakes can be 'fixed'.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. Leo J. Burke

Adoption agencies have strict criteria (usually). Breeders, whose combined IQ's would barely hit triple digits, have none.

As toraneko said, the debt wasn’t even real. Had he waited a day or so for other trades to go through it would have cleared itself up.

It sounds like discovered the “debt” that night, realized that there had been some sort of error but didn’t know exactly what, emailed customer service three times, got a canned response overnight, and killed himself the next morning. It doesn’t sound like he was all there, honestly. Healthy people don’t go from zero to suicide in 12 hours.

This article talks about how they were such a wonderful and close knit family, etc. But if his relationship with his parents was so wonderful, why didn’t he feel like he could ask for their help in resolving the issue? And why did he not understand that even if he killed himself, the people in charge of his estate (presumably his family) would still be on the hook for the money?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-kearns-robinhood-trader-suicide-wrongful-death-suit/

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"Not every ejaculation deserves a name" - George Carlin

Quote
bell_flower
Selling short is a financial practice akin to gambling and that is what this kid was doing. Even seasoned professionals lose their shirts on these practices. It's dangerous and risky and he got burned.

The parents are doing what most people do--find the deep pockets to pay for someone's stupidity.

As an aside, the recent Gamestop gaming was nothing that hedge fund managers are not doing on a regular basis. Shame on the SEC for stepping in and (temporarily) stopping RobinHood from being able to trade. If short selling is a permitted practice, the Government needs to sta out of it. The ideal solution would be to eliminate 10% down for short selling-- if someone wants to risk money, make them pay the full amount up front. But Congress will never agree to do this because large hedge fund managers have Congress in their pocket, thanks to lobbyists and donations. AOC and Mitch McConnel are in agreement against any kind of regulation and when both parties are together like that--you know what that means: SCREW YOU to the little investor or consumer.

I agree with this. If hedge fund managers can short sell then anyone else can too.
I'd bet the SEC caused some issues with stopping RobinHood from being able to trade.
This wouldn't have made such a stink in the news if it weren't betting against hedge fund managers-the SEC would have left it alone. Anyone should be entitled to short sell and potentially lose their shirts if the law permits, not just hedge fund types.

I have no idea what this kid was doing but if he only had around $5K to invest it doesn't sound feasible that he could have such a big debt in the first place. Did he even bother to do the math to see if it was possible that he didn't owe this?

Robin hood had to stop trading to scrape together extra capital because their clearing house was demanding 100% of the cash up front for GME buys. They handled the PR poorly and let people think there was collusion going on. There probably was, since they are closely affiliated with Citadel, but lack of cash was the main reason.