The mobile internet enabled one New Jersey teen to lead a risky second life…
As a day trader.
From The Verge:
It was just a few weeks into the new school year when Connor Bruggemann decided to play sick. He holed up in his bedroom, shut the door, and opened his laptop. 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.