Beware of 'soundalike' charities

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

Day-trading loss leads to suicide

Popular trading app Robinhood is planning new limits on options trades after a 20-year-old customer's suicide, said Yasmin Khorram and Kate Rooney at CNBC. The move comes after Alex Kearns, a sophomore at the University of ­Nebraska with a "growing interest in financial markets," died by suicide after thinking he had racked up a negative $730,165 cash balance in his account. However, Kearns "may have misunderstood the Robinhood financial statement," which appears to have reflected the other side of a complex options trade that had not yet been settled, rather than his debt. In a suicide note, Kearns admitted "he had 'no clue' what he was doing."

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Beware of 'soundalike' charities

A mysterious "soundalike" foundation has been collecting millions of dollars meant to support the Black Lives Matter movement, said Ryan Mac and Brianna Sacks at BuzzFeed​ News. Some of the biggest companies in the U.S., including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, encouraged employees to give to the Black Lives Matter Foundation in Santa Clarita, California, offering to match employee contributions. The foundation's founder, ­Robert Ray Barnes, a 67-year-old music producer, claims that Black Lives Matter "actually stole his name and idea." But in the five years since he registered the foundation, Barnes, who is black, "has yet to launch any of the programs" listed in his charity's mission statement, "because it's taken him a while to 'outline a real plan of action.'" One fundraising platform, Benevity, raised $4.35 million for Barnes' foundation and almost delivered the money before realizing its mistake and freezing the funds.

Use a Roth to lock in low tax rates

Personal-finance guru Suze Orman says tax rates are so low that savers should "stay away" from traditional IRAs, said Shawn Langlois at MarketWatch. A traditional retirement account, or 401(k), is the typical fund of choice for savers, because they "get the tax break immediately upon contribution, allowing their investments to grow tax-free" and paying taxes upon withdrawal in retirement, when your rate is likely lower. Orman, though, says that you should "take advantage of the lowest tax brackets we're likely to see for a long time." For a married couple, income into the low $300,000s is taxed at a federal rate of just 24 percent. She advises using a Roth IRA, Roth 401(k), 403B, or a Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), which are funded with after-tax dollars.

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