<story><title>20yo Robinhood Customer Commits Suicide After Seeing $730K Negative Balance</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-commits-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>et2o</author><text>How would you suggest to limit option trading?</text></item><item><author>superfrank</author><text>&amp;gt; Am I reading this correctly and he really wasn&amp;#x27;t in the hole badly, but a crappy presentation of information broke him?&lt;p&gt;Yes, but I think it&amp;#x27;s important to note that every other broker I&amp;#x27;ve used presents the information in the same way and the way they are displaying the info is an accurate representation of the state of the account at that moment.&lt;p&gt;Blaming bad UI is the easy way out here. Robinhood should take the blame for this, but not because of bad UI. Robinhood should be at fault because the knowingly allow tons of &amp;quot;investors&amp;quot; to have options trading access with little or no screening and verification.&lt;p&gt;Blaming the UI here would be like blaming a single specific gun maker for a mass shooting, when the real question you should be asking is how did this person get a gun at all?</text></item><item><author>protomyth</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Kearns may not have realized that his negative cash balance displaying on his Robinhood homescreen was only temporary and would be corrected once the underlying stock was credited to his account. Indeed it’s not uncommon for cash and buying power to display negative after the first half of options are processed but before the second options are exercised—even if the portfolio remains positive.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;“Tragically, I don’t even think he made that big of a mistake. This is an interface issue, they have slick interfaces. Confetti popping everywhere,” says Brewster referring to the shower of colorful confetti Robinhood routinely deploys after customers make trades. “They try to gamify trading and couch it as investment.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I reading this correctly and he really wasn&amp;#x27;t in the hole badly, but a crappy presentation of information broke him?&lt;p&gt;Firstly, if someone reading this is in the same situation, take a breath and know this is not Student Loans, you are young and bankruptcy is about as bad as its going to get.&lt;p&gt;If you are the interface designer, well, I don&amp;#x27;t know what to say to you other that sort your damn self out.  Its your job not only to convey the truth, but show what the final result is approximately going to be.  Conveying just the current facts is as misleading as outright lying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragontamer</author><text>My broker (Scottrade and now TD Ameritrade) called me, asking for a verbal agreement that I knew that options were high risk and yadda-yadda that can lose more value than they are worth after I signed some forms.&lt;p&gt;These instruments are very high risk and not really meant for average investors. Their primary goal is for hedging and leverage.&lt;p&gt;----------&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons for the &amp;quot;Black Friday&amp;quot; (kicking off the Great Depression) was the proliferation of leverage among people who didn&amp;#x27;t really understand it. That&amp;#x27;s why most other companies make you sign forms and ask for verbal agreements before allowing you to have access to things this dangerous.</text></comment>
<story><title>20yo Robinhood Customer Commits Suicide After Seeing $730K Negative Balance</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-commits-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>et2o</author><text>How would you suggest to limit option trading?</text></item><item><author>superfrank</author><text>&amp;gt; Am I reading this correctly and he really wasn&amp;#x27;t in the hole badly, but a crappy presentation of information broke him?&lt;p&gt;Yes, but I think it&amp;#x27;s important to note that every other broker I&amp;#x27;ve used presents the information in the same way and the way they are displaying the info is an accurate representation of the state of the account at that moment.&lt;p&gt;Blaming bad UI is the easy way out here. Robinhood should take the blame for this, but not because of bad UI. Robinhood should be at fault because the knowingly allow tons of &amp;quot;investors&amp;quot; to have options trading access with little or no screening and verification.&lt;p&gt;Blaming the UI here would be like blaming a single specific gun maker for a mass shooting, when the real question you should be asking is how did this person get a gun at all?</text></item><item><author>protomyth</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Kearns may not have realized that his negative cash balance displaying on his Robinhood homescreen was only temporary and would be corrected once the underlying stock was credited to his account. Indeed it’s not uncommon for cash and buying power to display negative after the first half of options are processed but before the second options are exercised—even if the portfolio remains positive.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;“Tragically, I don’t even think he made that big of a mistake. This is an interface issue, they have slick interfaces. Confetti popping everywhere,” says Brewster referring to the shower of colorful confetti Robinhood routinely deploys after customers make trades. “They try to gamify trading and couch it as investment.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Am I reading this correctly and he really wasn&amp;#x27;t in the hole badly, but a crappy presentation of information broke him?&lt;p&gt;Firstly, if someone reading this is in the same situation, take a breath and know this is not Student Loans, you are young and bankruptcy is about as bad as its going to get.&lt;p&gt;If you are the interface designer, well, I don&amp;#x27;t know what to say to you other that sort your damn self out.  Its your job not only to convey the truth, but show what the final result is approximately going to be.  Conveying just the current facts is as misleading as outright lying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>superfrank</author><text>Options are already broken into levels 1-4 (this is an industry thing, not just RH). Levels 1 and 2 don&amp;#x27;t run the risk of this happening since you can only sell to close. On other platforms that I&amp;#x27;ve used, going from levels 2 to 3 took a while and required some verification steps to try to confirm that I knew what I was doing.&lt;p&gt;Robinhood already asks for information about your net-worth, income, etc. The problem is that they verify nothing (at least in my experience). I read &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;wallstreetbets all the time, and plenty of 18 year olds say they are making 100k+ and RH just approves them. They need to improve that process.</text></comment>