Here’s a heartwarming story that’s come out of the drama between hedge funds and retail traders (many of them from Reddit) who drove GameStop shares up in the stock market this week. The rise and fall and rise again of the stock price for GameStop (or GME) over the past couple of days sent everyone who isn’t up on the trading lingo to try and figure out what exactly was even happening and if it was too late to get in on it.
But 10-year-old Jaydyn Carr in San Antonio, Texas, was already in his bag. The fifth-grader is now a few thousand dollars richer thanks to a prescient investment his mother made on his behalf in GameStop shares. Speaking to San Antonio News-Express, Jaydyn’s mother said she gifted her son 10 GameStop shares for Kwanzaa 2019 to mark Ujamaa—the principle that celebrates cooperative economics during the African American holiday.
Those shares turned into a win for young Jaydyn, who decided to sell them for about $3,200 on Wednesday after his mother consulted him during the upswing in the GameStop stock price.
From San Antonio News-Express:
“My phone was going off, because I have GameStop on my watch list,” the mother said of watching prices skyrocket. “I was trying to explain to him that this was unusual, I asked him ‘Do you want to stay or sell?’”
While even adults are asking for stock-savvy friends to explain the situation to them, Jaydyn said he wasn’t at all confused by his mom’s urgency or what was going on.
“Any time I learn something, I show him as well,” Nina said. “I wanted to pass on the knowledge I have now because I learned it late in life. I want to give him a step up.”
How beautiful is that? While many of us adults were googling “How to invest in the stock market 101" (which I got around to doing right when the ironically named trading app Robinhood decided to freeze purchases of GameStop stock through its platform after hedge funds started crying foul at retail investors getting in on the game), this fifth-grader knew exactly what he wanted to do and was already well-placed to make a profit. That’s what you call staying ready so you don’t have to get ready!
Most of the money Jaydyn made from selling his GameStop shares will be put into his savings account, his mother said, but they plan to invest $1,000 in further trading. The young investor said he’s interested in getting shares in the online game platform Roblox, which is expected to go public on the market any day now.
Meanwhile, I am inspired by Jaydyn’s trading success and will be rededicating myself to figuring out how to make some money-moves of my own.