Anne Arundel Co.’s teenage day-trading hobby turns into a business

OMCP / Michelle Basch

OMCP / Michelle Basch

OMCP / Michelle Basch

The coronavirus pandemic has fueled an increase in the number of young people trying their hand at day trading, and a teenage girl in Anne Arundel County, Md., Wants to help them.

Charles Engler, 17, of Lothian, is self-taught and over the past seven months has traded $ 135,000 in stocks and made a 13% return. The teenager has been trading since the age of 14.

“Since I started investing, I’ve achieved about 12-15% off the stock market,” Engler said.

He saved money for college and bought expensive shoes and clothes. “I would say I’m a little bit successful. Not yet at the level of Jeff Bezos, but I hope someday.

For his very first transaction, Engler invested his father’s $ 200 in Cronos Cannabis. After three weeks, he made a profit of $ 80. However, his next five trades were losses.

“It’s like any other sport, isn’t it? You train to improve, ”Engler said. So he read many investment books and websites, researched and traded others.

Engler said he is generally an aggressive investor who averages about 250 trades per month. But with the stock market’s wild ups and downs brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, he challenged himself to relax and focus on testing his methods.

“If I manage to reduce my strategies throughout these crazy and volatile years… what do you think will happen in a bull market? I’m just going to be a lot more prepared than so many other people, ”Engler said.

One of his fastest lucrative deals was at school. “I was on a gym break and getting ready to put on my gym clothes. I saw that a stock is tearing itself apart right now, ”Engler said.

So he used what is called a rebound play strategy to decide the best time to buy. He bought the stock and sold it back within 30 seconds, making a profit of $ 250. “And that was it,” Engler said. “Then I got ready for the gym class. “

But as Engler learned early on, day trading can be risky because of its ebbs and flows without any constant.

He said all the tools available to investors today – including stop-loss orders – can really help. “The stock market is one of the few places where you can really control the risk. “

In recent years, Engler has posted promising stock alerts on Twitter and Stocktwits, as well as videos on TikTok.

He said young investors started asking him for advice, and that’s what prompted him to start his own business a few months ago. OnPoint Day Trading’s offerings include downloadable courses, one-on-one coaching, and email support.

Literature professor Paul O’Hearn got to see Engler’s passion for day trading in a classroom in 2019.

“The moment I started to understand his passion, it was a break in class. I usually give the class a 5 minute break. It’s 85 minute classes here in St. Mary’s, so it’s a long time, ”he said.

That’s when O’Hearn saw Engler staring intently at a computer screen and decided to take a look at what had caught his student’s attention.

“I see a day trading platform on an iPad. Not ‘Clash of Clans’, not a game or something like that, ”O’Hearn said. “A full-fledged day trading platform, which was not what I expected to see”,

Engler has just graduated from St. Mary’s High School in Annapolis, and in the fall he will be heading to Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York State to study economics and finance.

“One thing that has always impressed me about Charles is how much he cares about others,” said St. Mary’s High School principal Mindi Imes. “We want to encourage students to be servant leaders, and I see that in Charles.”

What is Engler’s ultimate goal?

“I would like to help any young investor to get interested or to go public,” he said. “At the same time, I like the feeling of just being on Wall Street, or even working in a hedge fund somewhere. Maybe even Goldman Sachs one day.