The lockdown death of a 20-year-old day trader

The suicide of Alex Kearns – who thought he had lost heavily – has triggered calls for reform of online brokerages such as Robinhood.

Robinhood added 3 million users in the first quarter, pushing its total number of users above 13 million.

Robin Wigglesworth, Richard Henderson and Eric Platt

Updated Jul 5, 2020 – 12.19pm, first published at 12.01pm

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Kragero/Melbourne/New York | Alex Kearns was an ordinary 20-year-old. He played the trombone, studied at the University of Nebraska and, like millions of other Americans, traded stocks to pass the time or make some money when the coronavirus shut down schools and workplaces. Unfortunately, his youthful dabbling ended in tragedy.

On June 12 back at home in Naperville, Illinois, Kearns took his own life, after believing he had lost nearly $US750,000 ($1.1 million) in a soured options bet made on Robinhood, an online brokerage that has become emblematic of a new era in retail investing.

Financial Times