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Comment by enilakla | Hacker News Reader

Something seems off here. The person would have had to have significant assets or collateral to end up negative; regardless of age and income.

It just doesn’t work like that.

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You're right, but due to Robinhood's terrible UI/UX, when you hold a spread and the short leg gets assigned, it shows your account as owing an astronomical amount. In reality, you have an opposite leg that gets exercised and you're only out the difference in the spread (which that risk is based on your account balance/margin/etc).

This kid didn't lose $700k, his account just shows -$700k until Monday morning when it will update with the other leg being exercised and he probably lost a few grand instead. Here's a similar situation where someone thought they lost $172k, when in reality they lost $2k. [1]. It's a combination of a shitty UI and people not understanding option spreads.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/aohvow/hi_t...

This is exactly right.

This story just got a lot more tragic... He maybe lost $10k. Maybe nothing at all.

Hell, he might have made money, but the RH UI just showed him this abysmal number.

Or there's more to this story. I would be interested in knowing how long the issue had been going on, and if RH support had been contacted.

Every broker shows the same thing. Sometimes the legs are exercised on different days leading to the large discrepancy until the other side is used to offset. It's ultimately up to the trader to understand their trades.

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