Junior Tyler Lee looks forward to living happily in early retirement and enjoying the comforts of long-term returns. He believes the best way to be smart with your money is to buy stocks. When companies are trying to raise money they will sell stocks, which are portions of the company. 

To buy stocks, Lee created a brokerage account with Charles Schwab, a brokerage firm, and transferred money to start investing. Now he has the Charles Schwab app on his phone and can buy and sell stocks with the tap of a button. 

“I don’t get joy from just looking at numbers. It’s very stressful to watch the minute by minute moves to the stocks,” Lee said. “The fun part for me is picking companies that I think will do well and then visualizing the long term gains they can give.”

Lee started investing in six companies in April and is now invested in eight companies with big brand names like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Disney and Target. His original investment of $4,000 has now grown to about $7,000. 

“I picked a really good time to start investing and I guess it was kind of by accident, because I started investing as soon as I felt that I had the knowledge to be able to invest,” Lee said. “This was probably sheer luck, but those were the companies that everyone needed during the pandemic, so they’ve done really well.”

Lee owned Peloton, an exercise equipment company, shares for a month, but sold them because he thought it wouldn’t be as successful once the pandemic ends and people started going back to gyms. To keep up with these changes, Lee checks periodically between classes and reads the Wall Street Journal, all totaling to no more than an hour per day.

“I like to know how my stocks are doing. So, I check on them and try to follow the company news on what the companies are up to, to see if there’s anything I should be aware of,” Lee said.

Lee hopes to take his interest into a career in finance and has even started a finance club to share the benefits of investing and to have students take part in a market simulator. Lee doesn’t remember the exact point in which he first got interested. 

“I think it might have just been the app on my phone that has the stocks on it. I saw them changing every day, and I knew that was interesting. I thought, ‘Let’s see if I can make any money on this,’” Lee said. 

Lee’s interest was peaking after receiving “The Motley Fool Investing Guide for Teens” on his birthday, and ever since he has looked to gain more knowledge in investing and improve his portfolio. 

“I don’t want to throw money into the market and not know what’s happening with it. Because money is important; everyone needs it. The goal of investing is to try to make money, and I wanted to be able to put myself in the best position to be able to do that,” Lee said.