Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Handout
A cognitively impaired Connecticut man who died by suicide in 2021 after losing $700,000 trading stocks online never should have been allowed to make the highly risky investments, his family says.
William Tyler Allen’s traumatic brain injury made him “quite impulsive, which often led him to act without fully considering the consequences of his actions,” according to a lawsuit filed by Allen’s mom and obtained by The Daily Beast. But investing “requires a cool head, especially during market volatility,” it says, noting that Allen’s capacity for emotional regulation had been severely diminished by the TBI.
The lawsuit, filed Sept. 29 in New York State Supreme Court, blames the online trading platforms Allen was using, Fidelity and Interactive Brokers, for his death, arguing the firms had a responsibility to stop him from taking risks inappropriate for someone with severe brain function issues. Allen, 27, was trading options on margin—that is, borrowing cash from his brokers to place bets on a stock’s future price. It’s a technique that can lead to an outsized bloodletting if the gamble goes sideways.