With money on the line and only a brief period of time between a stock’s rise or fall, the stock market is known as a high-risk, high-reward environment that takes years of experience to master. Despite this, some students have already begun investing in stocks, and a few are even finding success in the market.
Junior Terry Fung invests in the technology market. In fifth grade, he and his friends played “How the Market Works,” a paper stock-trading game. His mom, a former investor, helped him in the game. She invested in the technology sector, so he followed her lead. Fung said the technology sector is the most effective at making money.
Fung added that investing can be easy and fun, depending on the approach.
“If you make it simple for yourself, it will be easy to learn,” Fung said. “If you make it complicated for yourself and if you like complex things, then yes, it will be fun.”
For those new to investing in stocks, Fung recommends getting help from an experienced investor who has a deeper understanding of the market. He said it’s also essential to understand what causes stock values to rise and fall, as well as how news about one stock can impact others, which helps decide whether to buy or sell. Fung learned this while investing in Trade Desk, which he considers a weaker stock.
“I made the mistake of not selling it when it dropped down… I didn’t consider that there are stocks such as Microsoft, which are very, very strong stocks,” Fung said. “While their growth is not necessarily the fastest, it’s strong in the sense that, whenever there’s a crash, its ability to regain momentum, and ability to regain strength, regain price, is very easily done. It will take a little bit of time. It’s the patience that really allows you to hold on to a strong stock and get rid of the weak stocks.”
Senior Maisam Irfan began futures trading as part of his plan for long-term investment and to make money. He attributes the popularity of trading to its similarity to other opportunities, like starting a business or having a job.
“People don’t understand that with true risk management and true discipline, it could genuinely change their lives,” Irfan said. “It could be a life-changing opportunity, and it changed my life.”
Irfan is an aspiring investor and currently trades futures. Instead of traditional investing, where someone buys stocks at low prices and sells them when their values increase, he focuses on futures. Futures require the investor to trade multiple sessions and buy margins of a stock within a set time frame, typically measured in seconds, minutes, or hours. He said it is riskier than typical investing.
“A lot of people fail in trading futures because it’s kind of hard to regulate whether you should enter or not enter into a trade,” Irfan said. “And I think that patience is definitely important to an extent, but you also want to make sure you have that edge.”
Futures trading involves both skill and psychological understanding. Irfan learned to control his emotions through repeated failure. He now sees it as a learning opportunity and a way to improve.
“You have to master your psychology,” Irfan said. “You have to answer the market with no emotions whatsoever.”
He added that politics impacts the stock market through connections and controversies, exacerbating the already-potent risk of futures trading.
“Right now, the most significant thing that’s affecting the market is definitely when Trump speaks, because it could really take the market in any direction,” Irfan said. “But I think in general, over the last couple years, the tariffs have been probably the biggest overarching piece of news that affect the futures market.”
According to Irfan, future trading is heavily saturated with traders. Within five years, the markets, which are already risky, could become almost untradeable due to the saturation.
“My only concern is that it’s not really something you can sustain for a long time,” Irfan said. “And although I don’t plan to do this type of investing for the rest of my life, I plan to pivot to different types of investing.”
Meanwhile, sophomore Chloe Chen uses her JP Morgan stocks to invest in long-term common stocks. Over summer break, she was looking for something that could benefit her in the future, and possibly even use as “a crutch to get into college.”
She advises being well-informed as it is a “person’s best guide in society,” by learning from YouTube videos and reading different news outlets.
“If we put into perspective that we could possibly have more financial literacy in the future due to these opportunities,” Chen said.
Chen’s incentive for learning investing was to improve her financial literacy and to explore other ways to make money, instead of seeing a nine-to-five as the only way to earn a living.
“To just be able to be knowledgeable in different aspects of how wealth accumulates, rather than being stuck working for a corporation, a nine-to-five, and thinking that that’s the only way that we can earn money. But in reality, we can earn money from a variety of different ways, like smart investments, housing, different things like that,” Chen said. “And I think it’s very important to monopolize that, benefit ourselves in the day and age we live in.”
At Burlingame, students also learn about stocks and economics in their senior year. Economics teacher Matthew McDermott said he aims to teach students morality in trading.
McDermott advises students to make safe investments, though he warns them about the overvalued market.
“Make the safe investments in index funds or large-cap stocks that are very unlikely to go down in value. Be very careful about, you know, speculative ones,” McDermott said. “But, kids are making a bunch of money these days, but it feels like the market’s overvalued right now, so be careful.”
McDermott expressed dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump, saying he uses “undue influence” in actions of financial immortality. He cited Trump’s tariffs and use of power as examples.
“It just reminds us that it’s hard for the small players in the investing world, because it’s the big people that are calling the shots, so it’s a scary place for small-time investors,” McDermott said. “So the only way you can make a small-time person is just to kind of put money in and let it sit for a long time and not try to pick winners and losers.”
*Fung, Irfan, and Chen all legally trade under custodial accounts
