The sense of community provided by online forums dedicated to trading - not to mention the proliferation of TikTok influencers, some as young as 14, offering trading advice to their millions of followers - was also a way for people to have some fun during the pandemic. Investors can see what assets are most popular on the platform at the moment, and getting a friend to sign up increases their chances at buying hard-to-get stocks. New users' first trades are celebrated with a burst of animated confetti on their screens. It's true that the app uses game-like graphic elements as well as social networking in a way that increases the fun factor of trading stocks. These accusations have reemerged in recent weeks. Last year, securities regulators in the US criticized Robinhood for its supposed "gamification" of investing. "Or, people could take responsibility for themselves," answered another, adding that they didn't want some "kids app." Social media meets the stock marketīut the question on regulators' minds is whether it already is too much like a kids app. Robinhood should take some responsibility in this," one user wrote, commenting on an article in which an American professor warned that young people could become addicted to online stock trading.
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"We are having fun here, but people are losing life-changing money. On r/wallstreetbets, the now infamous subreddit whose users sent shares of Gamestop for a roller coaster ride, some users have voiced concern as well. "He had no training, no income, no qualifications to make those sophisticated trades." "He shouldn't have been allowed to trade these complicated options in the first place," the young man's father told CNN. Gambling addiction: An expert's view Blame game This has drawn attention to the growing influence of a new type of investor - individuals who trade stocks on their phones.īut the venture also saw many lose money, and the new lawsuit is a sobering reminder that making daytrading accessible to anyone with internet access and a bit of petty cash comes with a new set of risks. Some made thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from the move. The news of the lawsuit comes weeks after a band of retail investors, guided by chatter on the social media platform Reddit, drove up the prices of certain short-sold stocks, rocking markets. Now the man's family has filed a lawsuit against the trading app Robinhood, accusing the US investment platform of causing the untimely death of their son and brother. It later turned out that the young man merely misunderstood the balance sheet. In June 2020, a 20-year-old US college student took his own life after a mobile app he had been using to invest in the stock market showed that he was $730,000 (€601,000) in the red.