OT, You make some excellent points - have to think how to handle some of these eventualities. Thanks.
Teach the kid to like math and science. Show him how businesses work and make sure he can read well enough to pull knowedge out of books on his own. An understanding of literature is important (and generally underrated) as well as an interest in art or music ... and a foreign language too. Trading is game. Its a second career thing. Trade after you have done some real things first. Its like playing poker except with stocks and has little applicability to other domains.
you are going to have a blast. The O'Neil book is "How to Make Money in Stocks" Read chapters 1 through 7 for the first few days. Then set up Stocktables.com for him to do the sorts on CANSLIM. Today's protfolios can be run on clearstation.com quite nicely. To have a nice reference for him use Technical analysis from A to Z by the prez of equis, Achelis. TC2000 has a text they recommend for beginners. It's by Meyers and matches the front end of Achelis. The NYSE still gives away "7 Keys to Value". I always loved when my students send away for the annual reports. Some companies behaved like ninnies it is true. Because my students didn't have computers and it was centuries before dailygraphs.com they plotted by hand daily and kept there charts along the wall of annual reports. The BS you are getting from some people here is really amusing. Students do HARD WORK all the time and they see the supreme values the free enterprise system engenders. It is, if fact, the best reality check young people will ever see. Absolutely every idea goes through the free enterprise chain of events. Nothing starts big and it is amazing to see the continual assimulation of this process. One of my former students asked for the reading list for the course he took as a sixth former when he got married after Princeton and Wharton. A few years back I saw in the Alum Mag he was given their business man of the year Award. He was running the bond dept of then Lehman bros. This is coincidence I know, but it was neat to see a person and his bride thinking about reading some stuff. Two books were: Beat the Dealer and How to Lie with Statistics. I just never ever got over how much fun it is to learn. LOL... I started writing books myself at one point.
Why teach kids trading in the first place? Let them engage the cruelty of the society as early as possible?? Cheating, dishonesty, and manipulation. You name it. Or it is to offer more minors to the labor market?There are millions of better potential opportunity to do thing other than trading for their goods. What the h do you think you are doing?
I really disagree with second career thing. Trading can serve a multitude of purposes with the money and freedom in generates. Soros is a perfect example, and so is Harrison of minyanville.com.
I mistakenly post this in another thread. Try to move it here. Thanks. --- Characters of what? Disgrace, fear, and greedy? Consequence of whose action? The markets? Anyway, I just point out the negative side. If you only look at the positive side, go ahead to turn your kids into traders and brain wash them as early as possible. I don't think 99% of kids will become trading genius but normal dumb traders for their best chance.
with my 13 year old son.... I try to differentiate between investing vs trading.... I think at this age, the value of seeing the "big picture" and setting the framework is more useful than the techniques of trading....that can come later...
qdz2, With such a negative feeling towards traders and trading i'm curious why you are involved in trading. No offense, but can't help but wonder. I loved the markets at a young age and bought and charted stocks when I was 12. I played baseball, football, etc. also but was fascinated by the markets. Their are worse things for 14 year olds to do.
I happened to do it backwards. I got married halfway through my working career (at 26yo). Sometimes I wish I had continued to balance things with work and investing. I have to look back now and see the non investing stuff that I did like teaching and writing not too imporant for income, etc and learning about HARD WORK others have learned about and done. It's funny though, I did feel tired sometimes.