Junior Victor Guan does not fit the stereotype of a corporate investor. He is not shark-like in demeanor, nor does he come to school in a frumpled suit and meticulously slicked back hair. It would take severe imaginative gymnastics to visualize him frantically hovering around a mess of red and green data in the One World Trade Center. Guan does not rave about optimal beta values or lapse into any cryptic jargon, and is instead relaxed and, more importantly, understandable in his crystallization of being a student investor.
“It honestly feels great to come home after a tough day at school and check your numbers,” Guan said. “You obviously want them to go up, but it doesn’t even hurt that much if they go down … it’s like gambling, but for sensible people.”
Of course, the cultural psyche’s distorted view of investors extends to investment as a whole. People view investing as an arcane activity, a window into an incomprehensible world of sectors and volatility and capital, a high stakes activity that should be left to the professionals. To student investors such as Guan, this is anything but true.
“Investing, at least for me, is a pretty low key deal,” Guan said. “It was easy to get started … I just needed to open a brokerage account, something that’s pretty easy to do online, and then I could start buying stocks … I’m definitely not some master investor, and I still rely heavily on data and advice from various websites before making any decisions.”
Many see investing, especially investing in the stock market, as an opportunity to spend money smartly to make even more money. This is less the case for Guan, who finds stock exchanging to be more intrinsically rewarding.
“At this stage in my life, since I’m not in a position where I can spend huge amounts of money, I’m not exactly expecting to rake it in,” Guan said. “My most expensive investment by far is a share in Facebook [which as of February twelve was worth $176], and I would make around a $10 profit if I were to sell everything now. Honestly, I’m more concerned about getting experience for when I invest more seriously as an adult than I am about what marginal gains or losses I make in the present.”
It’s hard enough for a high school student to motivate oneself to get a job, and investing in stocks is a more cerebral yet risky iteration of this, so what gets students into investing? For senior David Wu, it was video games.
In some online-oriented video games, such as Team Fortress 2 or Counter Strike Global Offensive (CS:GO), there are market places at which players can buy, sell and trade various items they acquire in the games. These game markets are surprisingly complex, with seemingly arbitrary distinctions determining each item’s worth and various sub-currencies.
“About a year ago, I bought a few very expensive skins [cosmetic changes to game weapons that do not affect gameplay] for CS:GO, and I felt some buyer’s remorse,” Wu said. “I was going to sell back the skins to reduce my losses, but then sunk cost fallacy sunk in and I decided to sit on the skins. A few weeks later, the prices of these skins had gone up and I sold them for an actual profit. I realized this was a way I could make money, so I began investing.”
Wu’s investments have evolved from virtual knife paint jobs to the bizarre realm of cryptocurrency, which is a form of decentralized online currency, the most well known of the bunch being Bitcoin. The important thing about cryptocurrency is that its worth skyrocketed at the end of last year. One year ago, one Bitcoin cost $923 and now one costs $8,780. Even though its peak price of $19,187 was nearly two months ago, Bitcoin remains an alluring commodity.
“I invested about $200 in Bitcoin pretty recently, so we’ll see how that goes,” Wu said “Hopefully it will stay on the rise, and I’ll have made some bank.”
Sophomore Daniel Duan, president of Investor’s club, has a less mercenary attitude toward investing.
“A lot of people are immediately engaged by the get-rich-quick allure of investing, but we try to show that there is more to it all than simply making money,” Duan said. “ As arbitrary as much of economics seems, the market moves for reasons, and it is beneficial to unpack those reasons, to more adequately comprehend complex cause and effect. This is practically an advertisement at this point, but learning the nuances to invest can really open your mind.”
