Hacker News Reader

Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

Imagine: "A 20 yo runs across highway in heavy truck traffic, dies". Well, yes. There is an obvious risk, and you either acknowledge this risk and act accordingly, or get struck.

Fortunately, if you do a very bad investment, you can sell all your assets, go bankrupt, and keep your life. Too bad the poor guy chose to take his life. But this again looks like not doing enough homework.

This is very sad. I wish these things were written in large red letters on the signup page for a trading account, and one would have to type them in first person, like "I realize that I can lose all my possessions as a result of a bad trade" (no copy-paste allowed) to even accept the terms of service.

[Edited: spelling]

View on HN

My 1 year old has no preconception that running across the highway is dangerous, she'd do it in an instant if I let her. We'll spend the next decade teaching her that kind of stuff:

- the oven doesn't look dangerous, but it's hot

- this water looks like the other one, but it's boiling and will hurt

- a car can drive across the street and run over you

- the electric outlet looks passive but it'll electrocute you

Aside for very primal fears, people aren't born with a plethora of "things to know are dangerous in the modern world". So I'm not surprised that a 20yo would end up not knowing that there's a risk and that it's "obvious".

You're comparing a 20yr old to a 1yr old. there's some personal responsibility there - how can a 20yr old not know?

The underlying problem with the 20yr old is likely mental instability and depression - far too common amongst the young. The gamble on options for a way out, and having seen this fail, decides that their life isn't worth living any more.

It's a deeper problem than insurmountable debt and not knowing the risks.

Truly understanding risk in financial markets is incredibly hard and not intuitive. We can't use our every day intuition to warn us of risks on markets (other than easy money doesn't exist). But I don't think people would appreciate if you'd need a master in Finance or CFA to open a Robinhood account.

This reminds me of this brilliant interview with Ricky Gervais about atheism and religion : https://youtu.be/rYnjDCZUV6A?t=43

I think every high school student should have one day class dedicated on following topics and so many lives would be saved:

1. Folies of investments, how you can lose everything.

2. Folies of marriages, divorce laws and how you can lose everything.

3. Folies of gambling in casinos and how you can lose everything.

4. Folies of alcohol, tobacco and other soft drugs and how you can lose everything.

Each of these class should be given by 2-3 people who actually lose everything in these cases.

Also some exercises on how everything that sounds too good to be true is a scam.

Ideally, it would be great for a country to have systems in place so that the worst you can possibly lose is less than everything.

how would you make it so that i cant bet all my money

Technically I think there are lots of such laws. Like protecting the house you live in.

But in the case of things like taxes and child support, you can ultimately lose a lot more than everything.

That would definitely fuck up the housing market for starters.

They already teach math...

I taught my children all of these. Except 2), as they are girls:)

You're doing them a grave disservice, then. If you're a woman who managed to build up savings beforehand, or was trusting enough to be the main earner while your husband was going through school, you can end up the worse off financially for making a poor marriage decision.

And don't forget to mention all the women who accept diminished lifetime earnings because they were the primary caregivers for the couple's children, and then find themselves struggling to support those kids and themselves if their husbands leave, no matter what child support was awarded on paper. Even if the father does come through on the court-ordered payments, she's never going to get that decade of her career back, or the retirement savings she missed out on.

More generally statistics/probabilities and critical thinking.

That's a great idea! Even Github has better safety guards to make sure you don't delete a repository accidentally

This is pretty tone-deaf.

Please notice how highways are full of warning signs and barriers that prevent you from accidentally running across them. Same with construction sites, or heavy industrial plants.

Maybe other risky places should have more warning signs, so that an optimistic 20-yo would have to stop and think before acting.

So if there are warning signs you're okay with allowing someone with no income to leverage to the tune of $700K?

I think this is the basis for the accusation of tone-deafness.

Please note that I did not even say anything about taking the leverage, only a about signing up.

Power tools have safety feature; the leverage tool should, too. AFAIK Robinhood won't allow you to make a naked call, you have to show that you have enough to pay. Either their safety feature failed (very bad, needs fixing and constant checking), or the poor trader used something else as a collateral, and that could be an important part of the tragic outcome.

Noted. Thanks for clarifying.

> no income to leverage to the tune of $700K?

if robinhood is willing to take on the risk of a counterparty bankruptcy, i don't see why not. Robinhood is on the hook for lending the margin, not the boy.

What’s heartbreaking is that he didn’t trade any leverage at all. He executed an options spread that was worth about $700k on each leg. Due to the nature of buying and selling options, the app showed his position as short $700k because the long leg hadn’t settled yet. All he needed to do was wait and he would have seen the balance go back to what he expected.

To give a bit perspective: in many countries there are mostly no warning signs and barriers on highways. Sometimes a few trees, the occasional speed limit sign and warning of steep slopes. Only on places where accidents are so common they add barriers to prevent cars going into oncoming lanes, but that doesn’t prevent accidents from happening.

It’s tragic that the 20yo died, many sites warn that trading is risky. What they shouldn’t allow is to trade with more money than you can prove to possess.

Exactly the kind of comment I expected to see at the top when I clicked on these comments, really. HN loves to assume that everyone is a perfectly rational person who has infinite time to read and comprehend all minutae before doing anything, and anyone who fails to do this clearly had whatever happens to them coming.

A person who goes on to operate a large table saw, very rational or not, should read a manual, and become acutely aware that cutting off their limbs is a very real danger.

Anyone who sells access to such a tool should make sure of that happening. That's my point.

An app is not a table saw.

And your comment here is at odds with the tone you used above.

Considering he managed to lose his life over the app, I'd say the comparison is fair.

How exactly? Even that whole tweet thread is placing blame on Robinhood who offers worse and less margin/leverage than normal brokers?

If there is energy to direct, it has more to do with people that don't have a self preservation instinct and deciding whether we actually want to add one back to them. Very different than misattributing disdain towards the action they ascribed to their suicide.

It is pretty tone deaf to get this mixed up.

> But this again looks not doing enough homework.

It seems naive to read a tweet with a little information about someone completing suicide, and then assume that if they had known (more) about bankruptcy they would not have done it.

There are other things that we can't read out of the tweet that are really important in these situations, like access to social support.

I know others who make profit from borrowing leverage and bet that Robionhood is doing same.

What you propose is nice, but against platform financial interests.

I bet having to publicly explain real credit card interest rates, or the components of food, or conflicts of interest for top corporate officers, can be against some powerful interests.

But I suppose this such cases are some of the few cases where regulations (not even necessarily state-imposed) really work in the public interest.

I mean, I assume he lost significantly more than all his possessions

here we go again. This is like one of these "more people are killed by their washing mashines than by terrorism" takes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com