U18 trading?

ProblemMonkey

Hi all,

First off, allow me to provide some context: I got into trading a little over three years ago just before my 14th birthday. I wanted to trade, but knew I needed some experience before hand, so opened a demo account which I've been using to teach myself since then, having turned the original 10,000 into just shy of 90000.

I've just turned 17, and want to get into it properly, as I foresee a market crash in the near-future. I know I have to be 18 to open a trading account in my own name, but was wondering if there was any kind of custodial trading account my parents could open in my name to make this happen? For reference, I'm in the UK and have a little over £1000 I'm willing to fund my account. Can any of you help?

I know most of you will probably say "wait until you're 18" but if there's any way I can get an extra year of returns and find out about it in two or three years' time, I'm going to kick myself, especially if I'm right about the recession/crash.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Frequentlyhere

Sure, I bet firms are just lining up for the 'parents fronting for their kids day-trading' market, lol.

Though seriously, if your parents are actually supportive then I suppose they could open you a junior ISA and you could I daresay perhaps find an inverse stockmarket ETF to burn yourself on suggest they invest in, maybe? Or would that not be fast-paced enough for your needs?

https://www.unbiased.co.uk/compare/compare-junior-stocks-shares-isas

PS - all of the above not particularly aimed at your age. Any 'I can make easy money daytrading' post from people young or old deserves deep scepticism.

wmb194

ProblemMonkey said:

Hi all,

First off, allow me to provide some context: I got into trading a little over three years ago just before my 14th birthday. I wanted to trade, but knew I needed some experience before hand, so opened a demo account which I've been using to teach myself since then, having turned the original 10,000 into just shy of 90000.

I've just turned 17, and want to get into it properly, as I foresee a market crash in the near-future. I know I have to be 18 to open a trading account in my own name, but was wondering if there was any kind of custodial trading account my parents could open in my name to make this happen? For reference, I'm in the UK and have a little over £1000 I'm willing to fund my account. Can any of you help?

I know most of you will probably say "wait until you're 18" but if there's any way I can get an extra year of returns and find out about it in two or three years' time, I'm going to kick myself, especially if I'm right about the recession/crash.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

AJ Bell offers a bare trust dealing account for children. You would be the beneficial owner but you need an adult be to a trustee. IIRC Hargreaves Lansdown offers or offered something similar as well.

https://www.youinvest.co.uk/investing-for-children/dealing-accounts-for-children

Albermarle

I've just turned 17, and want to get into it properly, as I foresee a market crash in the near-future

As you can apparently see into the future, if you could tell us the date when it will happen (+/- a couple of weeks will be fine ) then that would be very helpful. 

Cus

Junior isa. Friendly parents who will do the trading on your instruction.

How did you get from 10k to 90k?

ProblemMonkey

Cus said:

How did you get from 10k to 90k?

A mixture of luck, a love for aviation and Covid. 

Bumbling around with joke trades, just making them for the heck of it to see what would happen, sometimes making money sometimes not. Turned 10000 into about 15000 but incurred quite a few losses along the way.

Then I "bought" a bunch of pharma shares just before covid hit (pfizer mostly) then "sold" when they skyrocketed and put it into low cost airline stocks (Ryanair) when their stock collapsed and "sold" at the start of the year before Russia sanctions/inflation/whatever and put it into Mexican airport shares which were undervalued by 50-odd percent which have since recovered as I knew they were expanding some of the airports they already owned for more cargo flights (which do relatively well all year round rather than the huge peaks and troughs of passenger flights) and were buying some more; which was why their profit dipped quite low last earnings report - evidently investors got scared or something. I've since "sold" that too. I looked at this number and wondered how I could do this myself now, hence the question here. 

jimjames

Cus said:

How did you get from 10k to 90k?

But only an imaginary £90k. The way you act when it's real money is somewhat different I suspect.

ChilliBob

I get most people being sceptical on the day trading aspects, and yeah, I wouldn't go near this, but, you have... 

Without sounding lame, nice one, well done for taking an interest in something which most people your age don't bother with. Something which could prove very useful in later years. 

If you're putting in £1k then if it all vanishes it's not a disaster but good luck. There's some kind of saying that the one of the worst things that can happen to you as an investor is getting really lucky/doing well to start off with rather than being burnt!

If this is a route you want to go down, I'd seriously consider this a 'fun' portfolio, and open a 'real' and boring one for a larger percentage which you put in buy and hold equities, starting at your age, as you know, will give a great head start!

Malthusian

ProblemMonkey said:

Then I "bought" a bunch of pharma shares just before covid hit (pfizer mostly) then "sold" when they skyrocketed 

Pfizer shares crashed along with the rest of the stockmarket when Covid hit and didn't recover fully until July 2021 (apart from a brief trip above water at the end of 2020).

and put it into low cost airline stocks (Ryanair) when their stock collapsed and "sold" at the start of the year before Russia sanctions/inflation/whatever 

That would have doubled your money - an undeniably good result. Unfortunately some of that profit would have been cancelled out by the loss you made on Pfizer shares and pharma in general, because their shares collapsed at the same time as Ryanair's (Pfizer was 29% down in April 2020).
If your pharma shares included one of those obscure biotech shares that rocketed thanks to the vaccine push then well done, but I'm surprised you didn't mention them.

and put it into Mexican airport shares which were undervalued by 50-odd percent which have since recovered 

I Googled Mexican airport shares for my sins. Grupo Aeroportuario Centro Norte and Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste are both up about 5% year-to-date. Neither has had a 50% drop since the rona meltdown. 

Ever considered getting rich by selling a book, or TikTok tutorials? "How I turned £10,000 into £90,000 with one successful spin on red or black and a couple of unremarkable 5-10% profits." 

To answer the original question, by far the easiest way of achieving your objective would be for your parents to open an account in their name with £1,000 and hand you the password (after disconnecting any linked payment cards). This is their money rather than yours, but while adults gambling with their children's money is legally problematic, there are no real problems with doing it the other way round. When you turn 18 they can then gift you any profits. If you lose their money that's their problem. 

There is nothing stopping you promising to pay them back £1,000 when you turn 18, or following through - they just can't enforce it. 

If they can't afford to lose £1,000 to either start you on your successful trading career or give you a lesson about the financial markets, you probably can't afford it either. 

There is no practical way to risk your own £1,000 in the way you will be able to at 18 - welcome to being a minor.

I know most of you will probably say "wait until you're 18" but if there's any way I can get an extra year of returns and find out about it in two or three years' time, I'm going to kick myself, especially if I'm right about the recession/crash.

If you can get rich quick by successfully predicting stock market crashes and shorting the market accordingly, you will still be able to do that when you turn 18. There will be other crashes than this one. One year's lost profits on £1,000 will be neither here nor there. Might take you at most one day longer to buy the 40-foot gold catamaran.

Exodi

ChilliBob said:

If you're putting in £1k then if it all vanishes it's not a disaster but good luck. There's some kind of saying that the one of the worst things that can happen to you as an investor is getting really lucky/doing well to start off with rather than being burnt!

Was going to say the same. The bull run over the past 2.5 years has been unprecented, mostly subsidised by quantitive easing (aka money printing) and governmental support in most developed countries in response to the pandemic.

This unfortuntately has bred a generation of investors, who dipped their toes into investing in 2020 equipped with furlough (or stimulus) money and time, and only seeing their investments going up - it almost didn't matter what you invested in over the past 2 years. You now have a whole army of cocksure investors thinking they are warren buffets successor, by virtue of making money in one of the biggest bull runs in history.

Obviously the OP is slightly different here, as you didn't just 1.5x their money, they say they 9x'd it. I'll be honest, I'm completely sceptical on this - even if they predicted the perfect moment to put all their money in Pfizer/Ryan Air and sold at the absolute peak, they would have doubled their money in each instance. They would still need to over double their money a third time and this obviously this requires some god level insight - particularly putting all of their money into Pfizer just before a global pandemic. I think they'd have trouble explaining this as anything other than complete luck (if it's true).

I 100% predict the OP being burned in the future and losing their money. As you say, getting lucky at the start is very dangerous to a new investors mindset - but we all learn one way or another, there are very few people that are able to consistently outperform the market.

EDIT: it doesn't help that Tiktok is absolutely crammed with god awful 'financial advice' promoting daytrading as an easy way to make money - usually validated by posting screenshots of successful trades (but perhaps forgetting to show the not so successful ones).

jimjames

Malthusian said:

There is no practical way to risk your own £1,000 in the way you will be able to at 18 - welcome to being a minor.

Is it possible to do trading inside a JISA S&S account?