Teenagers across the U.S. are increasingly active in the stock market, with a Fidelity study estimating that about a quarter of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 have started investing. Since minors generally cannot open their own brokerage accounts until they turn 18, adults set up custodial accounts that are later transferred to the children when they reach legal age.
Sophia Castiblanco, a 17-year-old high school junior from the Chicago suburbs, is one such example. She invests in stocks like Tesla, Apple, and Amazon.com. Her parents encouraged her to invest some of her earnings as a social media content creator, rather than keeping all her money in a savings account. She has several thousand dollars invested across accounts at Charles Schwab, Edward Jones, and Robinhood.
Rachael Kim, a 17-year-old from Orange County, California, initially saw a roughly 300% profit trading AMC Entertainment Holdings during the meme-stock era, but later realized the unsustainability of such aggressive profits. She now regularly invests about half of her earnings from social media, a cashier job, and church teaching into index funds that track the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100. Similarly, Mahanth Komuravelli, a 16-year-old from Edison, New Jersey, has approximately $7,000 in his portfolio, with a portion in an S&P 500 index fund and the majority in large companies like Amazon and Advanced Micro Devices. He uses a Fidelity Youth Account set up by his father.
Kaida Benes, a 13-year-old from the Minneapolis suburbs, has accumulated around $1,000 in her investment account from household chores. Despite initial anxieties about potential losses, her mother has helped her understand market volatility, teaching her that stock fluctuations are normal. This trend of teen investing highlights a broader surge in financial market participation among Americans since the COVID-19 pandemic, with many young investors recognizing the long-term benefits of starting early.
