quote:

Just curious, what sized portfolios did they have, how much did they start with in options trading, and what was their background?

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The kid was 20 and home from college. He is from Naperville which is an affluent burb of Chicago. Here is the story which may have been referenced above from another source:

NAPERVILLE, Ill. — When a 20-year-old Naperville man opened his trading app on his phone, it showed him close to a million dollars in the red. Soon after, the man took his own life, but his family says he actually didn’t lose the money at all.

Alexander Kearns was home from college from the University of Nebraska when he became interested in investing. His family said he downloaded the Robinhood app and began making trades.

On Thursday, the 20-year-old opened his app and looked at his account. That’s when he saw that he had a negative $730,000 balance.

“It’s actually a user interface issue and when Alex opened his app, he saw his cash balance was $730,000 and when you look at the screenshot, he had $16,000 in his account which was his true saving,” William Brewster, Kearns’ relative, said.

His family said he took a screenshot and wrote a suicide note. His body was found the next day. He had thrown himself in front of a train.

Brewster said the issue on the app needs to be fixed and said the company needs to address the potential harm that the glitch can create.

Robinhood issued the following statement:

“All of us at Robinhood are deeply saddened to hear this terrible news and we reached out to share our condolences with the family. We will not share any details regarding the account to respect privacy and confidentiality.”

Brewster called Robinhood’s response “canned” and said he is still reaching out to contacts he has in the financial world to find out why the account would show a negative balance.

LINK: https://wgntv.com/news/napervi...e-on-investment-app/

That was literally what I posted this morning on the previous page.

I was asking mrvmax how the people (coworkers) have managed to make so much money in options, given to write covered option, you must have a position (100 share blocks in a brokerage account), and to write uncovered (naked short) call option, the brokerage firm typically requires you to have 40% (minimum) of the value of the underlying stock in cash in your account. So either you have a bunch of stock that you write calls against, or you are not invested in the market and writing naked short calls on a large pool of uninvested cash.

I am not doubting you can make money with covered short calls in a bear market, but unless they have boku positions in stocks, it gets kinda tough.

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This particular app appears to be targeting impulsive millenials with little to no experience with stocks. Just the name Robinhood implies that.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
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This particular app appears to be targeting impulsive millenials with little to no experience with stocks. Just the name Robinhood implies that.

The other story I posted about Dave Portnoy (Barstool) is a direct correlation getting people interested in investing, but act out a cult like mentality. Robinhood is just the intermediary that has made getting an account so much easier. They have increased their number of users from 1mm to 10mm in less than four years.

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Yep making it easier. Even the casinos do not have ATMs directly adjacent to the tables. Online sports book is much the same and is very popular right now.