I'm pretty sure that can be cleared with a bankruptcy. Considering a 19 year old isn't likely to have any non-exempt assets, they can go bankrupt with basically no penalty other than having a bankrupcy on their record for the next 7 years.
The thing is that what this guy did is absolutely gambling. Investments are gambles but the risk is low. This was just putting everything on 00 and when it didn't pay out, he got as much credit from the casino he could and bet again.
At least with normal stocks you have an asset at the end. This was options trading though lol. And shorting, which is like the most risky thing. You have finite possible returns but infinite possible losses.
Boomers keep telling me I should have put $20 in my savings account with every paycheck starting at age 18 and I'd be able to retire at 65. Dude was not going to be able to retire at 65 apparently.
He had $400 left in his account before the margin call. The trouble with options is that they can be very highly leveraged, meaning you're trading on credit, and you can lose a lot of money really fast (and likewise, gain a lot of money really fast). Most brokerages don't even let you trade on options until you can prove you have knowledge of how the market works. So the kid is probably smart, but like many smart 19 year olds, not smart enough.
How can copper possibly go up in price, its a soft metal, low tensile strength, not resisyent to acids, tarnishes easily. Literally useless except for, I dont know, pots or whatever! Literally nothing else in the world uses copper!
So he expected something like: "Those bronze medals look awful! Time to rip out all that copper piping and wiring from my home and dump it on the market!"
God I miss old WSB the memes were so spicy and loss porn was better than pornhub. I'll never forget that kid that got $800,000 loan on futures only to go like -$1.5Mn in debt lmfaoooooo.