Investing Motivation of a Teenager
Here’s a question from a 15-year old on Yahoo! Answers.
Stock Market Investing For A Motivated 15 year Old?
I’m currently 15, and I’m damn tired of waiting to get through high school and college to start making some serious money. I am a very motivated, smart teenager[4.0 with honors classes] and I believe that through some light research I have done, that the stock market is the way to go. I was reading about mutual funds and all this different stuff, but i figured why not probe Yahoo Answers for some info. What is the best way to get some money fast using the Stock market? What to invest in, what to trade, what broker to use, etc. A jump start in the right direction is really what I need here, as i just got some money and I am dying to invest it. I was hoping to get 1 mil in a couple years and eventually check out some hedge funds. Any help is appreciated.
Here was my response:
Glad to see that you’re so motivated. Don’t want to bust your bubble or anything, but it’ll take you longer than a year to make a mil. Learning to trade properly is a long process and requires many years of experience through the ups and downs of the market.
Take a lot of hedge funds that crashed in the bubble for example. Many of them were led by hot shots in their 20s and 30s who had never been through a bear market, so they were so leveraged that the moment something went wrong, they got destroyed. For all you know, by the time you start work, hedge funds could be a thing of the past if a major crash comes in the next five years.
Zecco is a good online broker to use because they offer 40 free trades a month. I’m glad that you have the excitement to make some real dough, cause I was like that when I was your age. I put money into the market when I was in 9th grade in the NASDAQ composite for a start and worked my way up from there. I’m 21 now and swing trading (2-12 day trading periods) with fairly good success.
Check out Investopedia.com, it’s a great resource with lots of great articles. Also, check out my website at www.thefreshtrader.com, which I’m writing to document my learning process so that people like you can find the information you need to succeed. A great place to start if you’re really interested is to try to look up asset management firms in your area and to call them up and see if you can get an internship. Most of the job will be really mundane work, but it’ll really open up your eyes to how the business works. I was lucky enough to intern for an asset manger at A.G. Edwards who was a former options trader on the Pacific Stock Exchange, and got to learn lots from him.
Remember, the key thing is to be patient and realize that you have a lot of time in the future to make the big bucks. Right now, you want to focus on learning the tools of the trade.
Best of luck!
Eric
I think there’s a good lesson to take away from this. Many people have the misconception that the stock market is very easy. On the other hand, many people have the impression that the stock market is very difficult. Most people don’t understand that the answer lies in between: it takes learning, discipline, and determination to truly know how to invest.
It’s funny, because I was a 4.0 student in high school too, and wanted to make some money. I got lucky because I hit the jackpot by making almost six digits playing poker, but I did start investing before my poker career. I worked at Longs and NASA in high school, where I put in about $5,000 into my Roth IRA. I don’t trade in this account; instead, I invest for the long run and have nearly doubled my investment since then (I’m now a senior in college at U.C. Berkeley). I now have the luxury of trading with my poker profits.
The main point I want to get across, however, is that if a 15 year old has the motivation and fearlessness to tackle the stock market, then you can too!