By Oyin Adedoyin and Dalvin Brown
Dec. 1, 2025
Mizu Pope can’t yet vote or drive, but she can trade stocks. Sort of.
When the 13-year-old from Massachusetts wants to buy or sell, she needs her mother’s permission. She said she likes to buy stock in companies whose products she uses, such as Netflix and McDonald’s.
Yoyo Zheng Janice Chung for WSJ
“I kind of just wanted to see if it would work and how much money I could get,” said Pope, who started investing at her mother’s suggestion. She uses money she earns hauling neighbors’ trash bins to the curb.
Already, young people in their 20s are trying their hand at investing in large numbers, and now just behind them is a surge of teenagers like Pope who are getting familiar with markets. Greenlight, a platform that lets children invest with their parents’ permission, said the number of trades directed by minors last month was up 77% from two years earlier.
Contrary to the image of reckless traders chasing meme stocks, many young Americans are responding to this year’s market volatility with the patience and steadiness of investors decades their senior. That has been tested anew lately, with a skid in tech stocks pushing indexes down earlier this month and making some investors nervous.
This approach is apparent even among those who haven’t yet hit adulthood, with some teens who set up portfolios already saving for financial milestones such as buying a home. Retiring early is also a favorite topic among the students in the personal-finance class at Winooski High School in Vermont, according to teacher Courtney Poquette.
Avery Shannon of Prosper, Texas, was initially skeptical when her parents, a speech pathologist and a banker, started investing her money for her in high school. She had made money from running kids’ camps, creating balloon installations and baking cookie cakes, and was worried the earnings would be lost.
After she saw her money grow by more than $500 in a year, she was on board. Now 19, she has cumulatively invested about $55,000 from those side gigs and manages her accounts herself. When stocks dipped last month, she moved $5,000 into a total U.S. stock-market index fund. She consults her parents as needed, she says.
Researchers have long noted Americans’ lack of financial literacy, but now more teens are learning about markets and money in school, through investing platforms or from parents who wish they started investing earlier themselves.
On Greenlight’s platform, a growing share of children are setting up recurring transfers to their accounts that get invested automatically, according to Jennifer Seitz, the company’s director of education. A majority are weekly contributions, which Seitz takes as a sign that many are less focused on the daily moves of the market than on longer-term goals.
A dozen states currently require students to take a personal-finance class to graduate from high school. That number is expected to rise to 30 by the time the Class of 2031 graduates, according to the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College.
Early exposure to markets presents some pitfalls. Poquette, the teacher in Vermont, said one student lost thousands of dollars of college savings in a crypto-related scam. She said she stresses the difference between investing and speculating, and teaches her classes how to spot scams.
Yoyo Zheng, 19, learned about investing in a high-school finance class and was intrigued when she turned a notional $100,000 into $300,000 in a stock-simulation game.
Growing up in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Zheng translated her immigrant parents’ tax forms for them and noticed that classmates’ homes were nicer than hers.
“I felt an obligation to be financially stable because my parents aren’t always that stable,” says Zheng, now a college student studying finance and accounting.
In February, she bought stocks with her savings from working at a restaurant and an eye-care clinic. She picked AI-related companies such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices during a chip rally, and put roughly 25% of her portfolio into bitcoin as a long-term bet.
A couple months later, her holdings took a hit of nearly $2,000 as President Trump’s tariff announcements rattled markets. Losses can scare off inexperienced investors, and Zheng’s father had told her, “You cannot trust the market.”
But she stuck with it and felt vindicated as the market recovered. Her hope is that her investments will help her pay some of her tuition bills and build up a down payment for an apartment.
Gen Z investors said they got started at age 19 on average, six years earlier than millennials’ self-reported average, according to a 2024 survey from financial-services firm Charles Schwab. Investors must be 18 to open accounts on their own, but custodial accounts let parents start investing on behalf of minors.
Martin Franchi, chief executive of trading platform NinjaTrader, said the finance club at his 16-year-old’s school is so popular that its classroom doesn’t have enough space for all the students who are interested in joining.
Abdullah Ahmed, 15, buys stocks through a custodial account and runs an 80-member investing club at his high school in Scarsdale, N.Y.
Some 45% of his portfolio is in stocks he considers stable, such as Apple and chip maker Marvell Technology. Another 40% is devoted to short-term trading, and the remainder is for dividend stocks and options.
His father Raja Ahmed, who worked in finance, adds money to the account every two months as long as Ahmed completes tasks such as listening to a company’s earnings call or reading its 10-K filing. His portfolio is currently worth about $5,000, and he makes investment decisions himself.
Ahmed ultimately wants to spend his life traveling and launching small businesses abroad. The bestselling personal-finance book “Rich Dad Poor Dad” convinced him that investing could make that possible.
“There’s no way that I’ll be able to make enough money, even as a doctor or lawyer,” says Ahmed. “I don’t want to have to trade my time for money.”
Write to Oyin Adedoyin at oyin.adedoyin@wsj.com and Dalvin Brown at dalvin.brown@wsj.com
This Wall Street Journal article was legally licensed by AdvisorStream.
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
