A 16-Year-Old In New Jersey Made $300,000 Trading Penny Stocks While In High School

If you’re a business-minded Bro — or, hell, just someone casually interesting in finance and how the markets work — one of the best things you’ll read on the Internet today is over at The Verge. It’s about 16-year-old Connor Bruggemann, a Bergen County, New Jersey teenager who managed to flip $10,000 in savings from restaurant job in $300,000 by day trading penny stocks WHILE AT SCHOOL. Amazing the things you can do with an iPhone on a 4G-LTE network. Via:

Over the summer his father had opened an Etrade account for him, using around $10,000 Bruggemann had saved up over two years working as a busboy and waiter at a local BBQ joint. At first Bruggemann had used that cash to buy some big, well-known stocks: Apple, Verizon, and a few others. But today was different. One by one he liquidated those positions and put almost everything he had into American Community Development Group Inc, ticker sign ACYD, a penny stock selling for $.003 a share.

Over the next year Bruggemann would turn that $10,000 into more than $300,000, principally trading penny stocks, a practice rife with risk, fraud, and wild swings of fortune. He took off school that day, but for most of the time when Bruggemann was trading, he was also a 16-year-old high school junior in Wyckoff, New Jersey. With his iPhone in hand, Bruggemann would buy and sell six figures of stock from his lunch table, the bathroom, and, occasionally, on the sly while sitting at his desk.

And, yes, he spend some of that money, buying “himself a new BMW with his earnings, a new Macbook for each of his parents on their birthdays, and iPads for his siblings.” But, smartly, his parents are still running the show with that money… Until he turns 18, at least:

While his father is technically in control of the custodial Etrade account, Bruggemann’s parents give him wide latitude to manage his money. “I’m not supervising him as much as I should,” admits his father. “But he turned $9,000 into a lot of money; he’s entitled to it.” He did, however, insist that Connor transfer about half his profits into a much safer long term investment account that his father still controls. “I take money away from him so that he can’t lose it all. I’m gonna trust that he knows what he’s doing, that he’s not going to put it all on one bet, but if it all goes, he still has the down payment for a house. If he lost everything, I would never forgive myself.”

Go read how he did it over at The Verge. It’s worth the 15-minutes.

 

Stock market pic via Shutterstock

Brandon Wenerd is BroBible's publisher, writing on this site since 2009. He writes about sports, music, men's fashion, outdoor gear, traveling, skiing, and epic adventures. Based in Los Angeles, he also enjoys interviewing athletes and entertainers. Proud Penn State alum, former New Yorker. Email: brandon@brobible.com