The observe discovered on his laptop by his mother and father on June 12, 2020, requested a easy query. “How was a 20 yr previous with no revenue capable of get assigned nearly one million {dollars} value of leverage?” The tragic message was written by Alexander E. Kearns, a 20-year-old pupil on the College of Nebraska, dwelling from faculty and residing along with his mother and father in Naperville, Illinois. Earlier that day, Kearns took his personal life. Forbes stories:

Like so many others, Kearns took up inventory investing throughout the pandemic, signing up with Millennial-focused brokerage agency Robinhood, which affords commission-free buying and selling, a enjoyable and easy-to-use cell app and even awards new prospects free shares of inventory. In the course of the first quarter of 2020, Robinhood added a file 3 million new accounts to its platform. Because the Covid-19 inventory market swung wildly, Kearns had begun experimenting, buying and selling choices. His last observe, full of anger towards Robinhood, says that he had “no clue” what he was doing. 

In reality, a screenshot from Kearns’ cell phone reveals that whereas his account had a unfavourable $730,165 money stability displayed in crimson, it could not have represented uncollateralized indebtedness in any respect, however quite his momentary stability till the shares underlying his assigned choices truly settled into his account.

Kearns apparently fell into despair late Thursday night time after his Robinhood account, which appeared to have $16,000 in it but additionally confirmed a money stability of unfavourable $730,165. In his last observe, seen by Forbes, Kearns insisted that he by no means approved margin buying and selling and was shocked to search out his small account may rack up such an obvious loss.