I couldn't give two shits about my 18-YO self, because my 18-YO self didn't bother to tell my current self anything. So fuk him. All hands on deck, and all are out for themselves. Dog-eat-dog, man.
1. Get the absolute best education you can 2. Get a halfway-decent job 3. Get a mortgage for a decent house in a decent area 4. Maximise pension contributions and start planning early retirement 5. Get a trading account and start long-term trading 6. Put nothing in stocks 7. Don't spend any money trying to find a life partner
THAT could, and should be expanded to points 2 through 1287. It is literally impossible for anyone starting out to even define what "absolute best" means. I say this as a guy who has spent the majority of his life as a professional educator (outside the stultifying, destructive "education system" that we have, TYVM.)
I know I was clearly thinking the highest secondary qualification available. What's best is a big question indeed, but I was thinking best in terms of which most impresses most employers and supports the widest choice of careers.
This has turned into "here's how to live right" rather than just a focus on trading - but I don't see any conflict in that, since trading takes... a lot more than just the mechanics. Following suit: 1. Get your head right. If you don't learn to think rationally from the start - and that means having a set of good thought models in your head, good judgment of where they're applicable, and a damn good set of negotiated agreements with your inner self so that you have alignment and integrity in your life - you're subject to being fucked by every passing disturbance or unexpected situation. It'll take a long time to learn all of this, but every increment pays off. 2. Get your body right. I've spent the greatest majority of my life failing at this, and being a couch slug - and now, I'm having to work insanely hard to remedy it. Don't, please, do this to yourself. Chase that inclination to do martial arts - you've got access to some of the best teachers in the world, don't waste it! - and throw in a bunch of body-building into the mix (Matt Furey is awesome.) Really, do it. You'll love how it makes your entire life feel; living in a fit body is a joyful experience. Plus the chicks get off on it, too. 2. Learn soft skills and get very good at them (effective communication, sales, marketing, leadership, problem solving, flexibility/adaptability, related psych.) People who own these rule the world - or can at least mitigate many of the effects of being so ruled. 3. Learn about finance. Don't bother going to school for it (you don't realize it, but - just as you're getting out of your teens - there's a TON of free, or dirt-cheap off-market educational opportunities opening up. TAKE THEM. Any subject that get you excited and jumping out of bed in the morning.) 4. Make your learning explode by taking whatever job you can in the fields you're interested in. Yes, they'll be shit jobs at first... trust yourself: you will fucking SMOKE to the top of whatever field you truly want to be in. I speak from decades of unfailing experience in this. 5. When it comes to women, trust your dick. For most people, the big head works much better than the little one in relationships... and yeah, correlation does not equal causation... but in my life, that's been the only way to participate in those incredible, life-changing ones (all the others have been... OK. Pleasant. That's not nearly enough.) Similar dynamic for friendships: if you don't want to be there with all your heart, walk away with kindness... but walk away. Make all your relationships about "hell YES!" - or "no". 6. Quit listening to an aging fart like me already, get your ass out there, and get INVOLVED with the goddamn world! Climb mountains, sky-dive, cross the desert, sail the open ocean alone... even better, think of things I haven't done - things that totally turn you on and light a fire in your heart and under your ass - and go DO them. I promise... you'll need those memories in the tough times. Which WILL come. Go get'em. And yeah, trade. It's a hell of a lot of fun of a certain sort. Goes well with a good life.
I'm... highly ambivalent about the value of this, progressively more so as time goes on. IME, the most effective learning path is to find out the minimum necessary to learn where the brick walls are, then go get focused, professional training in breaking through them. My "employment" history has been mostly as a consultant - and what employers I've worked for reached out to me because of the reputation I've built. The people I've always cared about "impressing" were my clients - and I've spent more (usually, unseen) effort to provide them with quality work than most people would imagine... but this let me stay mostly independent, successful enough financially, and as free as I wanted to be (seven years of sailing the Caribbean, 20 years of living aboard, off RV cruising - while trading - now.) There are indeed careers that absolutely require a long, committed, formal learning track; I don't recommend any of them unless someone is really on fire for that kind of thing. Outside of those, I think you can live a much more fulfilled life by following a more active, more engaged path through it. Wasting years in an attempt to get a piece of paper that impresses someone... I just don't see it.