4 minute read
Investment @ Students
BY NICHOLAS
Staff Reporter
February 2021 saw the famous Game Stop short orchestrated by users of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets. Furthermore, apps such as Robinhood and Ameritrade allow seemingly easy access to the market and can get new investors into the market quickly. It is obvious that something is happening within the scene of stock market investing, and quickly.
For a long time, the stock market has been seen to be an untenable structure for most modern consumers. Plagued by elitism, Wall Street has often been restricted to the few and elite. After all, the complex nature of the stock market and market dynamics makes them inaccessible to amateur traders.
Officially, apps like Robinhood restrict minors using their platform by disallowing accounts made by those under eighteen years of age. However, they do allow parent account systems, where a parent supervisor makes the account for them. This has allowed a new influx of youth investors into the market.
According to a survey of Sequoia students, around 16 people out of 73 responses reported investing in the stock market. While this is only around 21 percent of people, considering that the vast majority of survey respondents are still minors and have to jump through hoops to invest in the market, this is a lot. This does not include the people that have considered investing, which is much higher. Only 25 percent of students reported never thinking about investing in the market, due to 16 saying never out of 64 responses. Furthermore, around 11 percent of participants reported that they thought about investing often, and have only been blocked due to other reasons. The motivation, however, to get into this market remains as a question.
“I was initially interested in stocks because before and after the pandemic I looked a lot at stock market analytics, and I did a stock market simulation where I actually ended up doubling my money and that’s how I got interested,” senior Raul Moreno Negrete said.
For him, his obsession with the stock market started with its possibilities. With just a bit of luck and know-how, one could exploit the market and make money, with seemingly little investment. The accessibility of apps like Robinhood made it so easy to dive in quickly, and without much setup cost. Furthermore, the stock market is often similar to gambling in a lot of ways. Hitting it big on the stock market can often cause dopamine release, further incentivizing potential investors to keep pooling money into it.
Even if people have not deliberately taken advantage of these opportunities through direct investment, the sentiment is still there.
“I’ve seen a lot of people get into stocks in my class, but the IB business curriculum doesn’t really do that. In IB business, we mainly learn financial theory and everything revolves around the IB Business exam that people take later in the year,” David Weyant, Sequoia’s IB business teacher, said. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions around the class and the IB Curriculum, IB business cannot do much with on-hands, practical, trading experience.
Even if official school curriculums aren’t that good at supporting trading, many on campus still participate. For instance, this sentiment does not only exist in students.
For many people, the stock market can seem like a game, and one that one could be good at and strike gold. However, this is not the case, but there are some Sequoia attempts to increase student financial literacy, even if curricula may not initially support it.
“In IB buisness, we do a financial literacy course after the IB buisness exam. We do this consumer economics unit where they figure out how to buy a house, to buy a car, all that stuff. They can also go into the stock market there,” Weyant said. For many, this is their first introduction to the world of business and finance, so this preparation is very crucial for an introduction to the topic and field.
However, support structures do not only exist with teachers.
One notable example of student organization in the stock market is the Business Club, which was started by seniors Christopher and Nicholas Kwok.
At the Business club, students are able to give presentations and learn about various competitions related to business and finance. One of the most recent projects of the Business Club was the mock stock investment project, where students competed in a given time frame to win various gift cards.
“The Business Club prepares students for the real world of finance and business. Also, I know that a lot of students are majoring in Business, so we would like to give them realworld experience there” Christopher Kwok, a senior and the president of the Business Club, said. As part of its mission, the Business
Club enters different business competitions, have members give presentations on various aspects of financial theory and business and more.
Therefore, it is likely that we will see greater amounts of participation in the stock market than ever before, as this culture only grows. “There is a big startup culture here, I definitely think that us being in Silicon Valley has something to do with everyone’s entrepreneurial enthusiasm,” Weyant said.
The fact that so many people are investtiing in the stock market with such seemingly low support only indicates how strong this sentiment is at Sequoia. Moreover, the fact that the Business club, a student-run club, is one of the only places for stock trading advice and investment tips, further reveals the extent of student involvement within this field.
Overall, the fact that 21.9 percent of Sequoia students responded that they have invested demonstrates the widespread desire to become more involved in financial affairs, which until recently, have been relatively cutoff and gatekept from the general public.
“I think there’s been a lot more interest in business because people are really seeing how useful entrepeneurial skills are, even if you’re not starting your own business, [those skills] give you a lot of important tools for life,” Christopher Kwok said.
