Can you intentionally throw away large sums of money through transaction fees on the stock market?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: gnasher729 Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/152208 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. On another thread, there was a question about a divorcee who lost tons of money day trading just before the divorce, with the result that the ex-wife received a lot less money. Question: If you had say a million dollar, and you want to destroy it on the stock market, could you just make lots and lots of trades and lose all your money in a short time through fees?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Hart CO Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/152211 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. It would take an incredible number of trades for fees/commissions to wear down an account. The fastest way to deplete a brokerage account would be with derivatives. For example, SPY has options expiring 3 days a week, you could spend the entire account on out of the money options for the next expiration and potentially lose it all. Some people facing divorce might be inclined to make such a gamble not to intentionally destroy money, but in hopes of winning enough that splitting assets is less painful. If they lose it all then the fact that the ex gets less too might be some sort of consolation. It doesn't make great sense in any case. I would imagine that such action could be considered in divorce proceedings and may result in unfavorable outcomes (especially if there was evidence that the person did it intentionally to avoid having to split marital assets).

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: littleadv Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/152215 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Intentionally causing loss to the communal funds in a divorce to reduce the proceeds to the ex may not be seen kindly by the courts. This is a legal question. What you're describing is called "breach of fiduciary duty". Causing intentional damage to the marital funds us a breach of trust between the marital partners, and you may be hold liable for damages. I.e.: if in the divorce you need to split $1M, but you intentionally wasted it all on frivolous investments during the divorce process, the court may hold you liable to your ex for the whole amount even if you no longer have it. Example article explaining this issue for the US California divorces (but it's similar almost everywhere).