Thursday, June 18, 2020

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

It just shows you how careful you have to be, especially if you don't have much money. The tragedy is, the debt was probably just temporary and would have corrected itself.

The note found on his computer by his parents on June 12, 2020, asked a simple question. “How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?” The tragic message was written by Alexander E. Kearns, a 20-year-old student at the University of Nebraska, home from college and living with his parents in Naperville, Illinois. Earlier that day, Kearns took his own life.

Like so many others, Kearns took up stock investing during the pandemic, signing up with Millennial-focused brokerage firm Robinhood, which offers commission-free trading, a fun and easy-to-use mobile app and even awards new customers free shares of stock. During the first quarter of 2020, Robinhood added a record 3 million new accounts to its platform. As the Covid-19 stock market swung wildly, Kearns had begun experimenting, trading options. His final note, filled with anger toward Robinhood, says that he had “no clue” what he was doing.



2 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Didn't know what he was doing... until it came to suicide.

Matt Franko said...

Not a recommendation....