>but I presume he did try to google things before offing himself? Or do you think he just panicked? Total guess and speculation, but I think it is the latter.

>but I presume he did try to google things before offing himself? Or do you think he just panicked? Total guess and speculation, but I think it is the latter. Because, at the time when this happened, I knew way less about option spreads than he did (I only knew that it involved two option legs), so I decided to search online to find out whether what he saw on the chart was normal or not. Took me barely a few mins until I found a bunch of posts with people asking a similar question at many random points in time, with answers confirming that it was totally normal. And that was with my almost-non-existent level of knowledge about option spreads. >We've had issues with people lying on online prescription forms in the UK and getting opioids and other controlled substances. Once one person has got them, the 'right answers' spread online and tons of less-informed folks get in. I don't think you can rely on any online form without checking documents. Solid point, but most people can easily guess "correct" answers for brokerages specifically. It is just about earnings, and your experience with options. Maybe a few other basic questions of a similar type, like your employment situation or your personal risk assessment of your profile (been a while for me, so I forgot the details). Since it is a multiple-choice dropdown, you can just pick a really high earnings number and then for the other question pick "multiple years of experience trading options" (or something like that). While with your opioid example, i can totally imagine what kind of an advice people online would give, since the situation with that is a bit less trivial. To be honest, however, I assumed they were checking this info on some level before granting a permission to trade options. But I am not gonna comment on that, as I have zero knowledge of how they process those permission checks. My permission for options was granted naturally through trading for a couple of years and slowly getting more accustomed to the whole process, so I didn't give much thought to that process.