You can start personal forex trading with $50 - $100. Forex trading transaction are estimated $ 4 Trillion per day.
Yet another troll. This guy had $90: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e03-margaritaville
buy some crap from china town/drugs/pirate software/stolen goods and sell to your friends at a 100% mark up. Rinse and repeat.
This may be highly illegal so check your local laws 1. invest the money on envelopes, stamps and fancy paper 2. then find a company awaiting fda approval 3. send letters to 500 people telling them the company will bust, and another 500 telling them they better buy the stock 4. take the 500 winners and find another stock, do the same. 5. now you will have at least 25 people (10% of 250) who will trip over eachother to sign up for your discounted yearly membership to your newsletter for 95$ a year. you have just made 2,500% on your innitial investment within a few months. This may be highly illegal so check your local laws
Size of capital matters in investing. The return of the investment has to be large enough to cover the resources you've put in (time, energy, capital, opportunity cost ...etc). Your idea of investnig in your future is admirable. However without accumulating a large enough capital base any investment return you get would be meaningless in monetary terms. With $90 the best return you can get is to invest your money in books (and actually read them). Below is a list of books I found interesting and actually helped expand my mental horizon. Even if you buy all of them you would still have a few bucks left. I can't think of a higher return of investment than investing in books or knowledge. 1) Rich dad poor dad This book tells you the difference in working for money and having money works for you. http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor...740X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292953014&sr=8-1 2) Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not! An general overview of different investment possbilities. http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dads-Gui...7469/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1292953144&sr=8-4 3) Rich Dad's Prophecy: Why The Biggest Stock Market Crash in History is Still Coming...and How You Can Prepare Yourself and Profit From It! Touch upon some important mega trends such as demographics...etc http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dads-Pro...41/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1292953144&sr=8-13 4) The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life Biographies are my favourite. Learn from the world's best investor. http://www.amazon.com/Snowball-Warr...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292953345&sr=1-1 5) The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures , Revised and Updated Best mega trend book I've read. Richard Duncan is my favourite. http://www.amazon.com/Dollar-Crisis...1701/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292953045&sr=8-1 6) Sam Walton: Made In America Another great biography. If anything we can all learn from Sam Walton's work ethic. http://www.amazon.com/Sam-Walton-Ma...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292953630&sr=1-1 7) Think and Grow Rich The most powerful weapon you have is your mind. http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Ri...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292954590&sr=1-1 8) The Richest Man in Babylon The power of compounding. http://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-B...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292954641&sr=1-1 The Rich dad series have the problem of turning a few simple ideas into hundreds of pages. However those few simple ideas are worth spending the time reading IMHO. Hope it helps.
Don't buy books with your 90. Instead open up an account with www.intrade.com make a few binary bets on financial events and or indexes. Guess right and you will aggressively grow your capital. You must take risk with small capital or you are wasting your time. Good luck! Ps. The rich dad books are hugely misleading. So are most of the others on that list. You will only learn by doing
Spend $76 bucks on Justin Bieber tickets with an obstructed view. Find a Dad who promised his 10 year old daughter that he would take her and needs to find a scalper. Lie to the dad and tell him what great seats they are. Dad gives you $200 bucks for your $76. You make around 250% on your money. P.S. Dad has your cell phone number though. Dad calls you up and asks you for another set of tickets. You meet Dad again in Aventura wherein Dad breaks your nose and borrows a couple of your teeth. On second thought, just meet some nice girl, take her out somewhere and enjoy yourself with your $90 bucks.
You are clearly much smarter than some of us were at your age. At that time I would have used $90 to purchase dope or something equally stupid. You have received several good suggestions here. I like the IWM one best, but that's just me. But in general, this is a fairly bad place to get advice, unless you know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. To learn to do that, your best move is to read, and keep on reading. If you continue reading everything you can get your hands on about trading and investing for the next 5, 10, 20 or more years, then you will be very well equipped. Reading such material is a lot like the Internet or television--most of it is crap, but there is great value to be found by those who are willing to dig and to think. My best nugget is: Do not fall in love with any investment or trade. Before you purchase anything, decide under what circumstances you will your exit. Best of luck to you, and let us know what you decide to do--with the $90, and otherwise.
jakeman, Why can't you just do what teenagers do and go out and find your future wife? All the adult things will come later, whether you like it or not. Believe me... nothing that you do now will matter later other than finding a wife. ES