Self-taught and sharing what they’ve found out, a new generation of retail investors is taking the markets — and not memes — seriously. In March

Trading Stock Tips on TikTok, Newbies Are Deeply Invested in Learning

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2021-06-06 23:30:06

Self-taught and sharing what they’ve found out, a new generation of retail investors is taking the markets — and not memes — seriously.

In March last year, Kiersten Crum was a stock market novice. The pandemic had forced her college classes online, her father’s bar was temporarily closed, and she started working at a grocery store to earn extra cash. With $500, she bought shares of the Carnival cruise line, her first foray into stocks.

Now she has a five-figure stock portfolio, she’s in the middle of a gap year to focus exclusively on trading, and her online presence — be it on Twitter or TikTok — is fully turned over to what she calls her stock market obsession.

“I started teaching myself as much as I could,” said Ms. Crum, 21, whose interest was piqued by an investment club meeting just before the coronavirus shut down her campus last spring.

Ms. Crum, who calls herself the Stonk Queen, using the deliberate misspelling of “stock” that’s popular among online traders, has used the year to learn how the market works. “Any terms I didn’t understand I wrote down on a list,” she said. “I treated it as school.”