Son wants to quit A levels early to try day trading

[Gingerbread981]

My 17 year old son wants to quit his A levels, he’s one year through, got an A in maths (fast track) without much revision and is studying further maths and physics.
Hes decided to leave when he turns 18 in a few months without completing A levels because he doesn’t want to go to university or work a 9-5 job lining someone else’s pockets.
he’s adamant he will make it as a day trader and become a millionaire. It’s driving me crazy, he’s so bright yet so silly to throw away the chance of A levels.
im on my own and will lose a little Universal credit, I’ll lose child benefit and have to pay the extra 25% council tax. I’ve said he will have to contribute if he leaves education but this hadn’t put him off.
he now wants to leave asap as he’s got himself behind as mentally he’s left!
I can’t physically push him out the door as he then won’t drive there.
I just don’t want him to waste his opportunities.
any ideas?

No it’s hard to get a job around here, he worked hard all summer as a builders labourer, £13 an hour full time, didn’t save much of it. So he’s learnt what hard work is. It’s just so frustrating, he’s gone down a rabbit hole saying the education system is just a farce 😩
he’s planning to start by trading with prop funds (other companies money as far as i understand)
he needs to work to contribute to living at home as I’m not funding this ludicrous idea.

Take the router with you to work then!

If he was as clever as he thinks he is, he wouldn’t be contemplating this route for all the reasons other posters have already raised.

Which makes me wonder, is there anything else behind this? He ‘only’ got an A in his maths A level, in a world where the top few Maths and other STEM degrees are typically getting students with two or more A stars. Do you know how he’s doing in physics and FM? It may be that he’s not doing quite as well as he assumed he would and this is avoidance. Whether he’s got the innate ability or not, it sounds like he’s lazy/massively distracted at the moment.

Frankly he needs to grow the fuck up and get real. (You know this, of course). He needs to pull his socks up and do as well as he can in his A levels so they’re ‘banked’. Then, maybe, he could plan a gap year - at the moment it doesn’t sound like he’s got the motivation and self discipline to do well at uni anyway tbh.

Why would "other companies" give your 18 year old control of their funds to trade when he has no track record? Is this a thing? Companies who actually generate cash from doing something to add value willingly hand this over to teenagers on a promise of getting a return?

Prop firms involve you paying money to 'pass an eval'. They give you an account with e.g. 100k of demo money in it, and a profit target within a certain time frame. If you make it, you're allowed to pay more money to get access to a 'real' account with 'real' money in it, supplied by the prop firm, and then you either pay a monthly fee for access to their leverage and/or split your profits with them.

They're popular with beginner traders in the US, but full of traps. Some take your money but refuse to pay out profits. Other traders get trapped in a cycle of blowing their accounts and paying for another eval, and never make a profit. The profit targets and time limits add a pressure that makes this more likely.

More concerning too is that prop firms are not regulated in the UK. If he's thinking of using a prop firm then he's 100% down a social media scam rabbit hole and you need to step in sooner rather than later @Gingerbread981

Thank you, that’s more than he’s explained about it!
yes I do think he’s fine fine a rabbit hole.

Not if you change the password on the router it won't.

But he'll go to Macdonald's or the library or trade on a phone so maybe not much point.

The very fact he's planning to throw away his A Levels (a return, an asset nobody can take away from him) rather than sit tight for 8 measly months, shows he doesn't have the discipline and emotional maturity to succeed with trading at this point. Put the whole thing in terms of risk and reward.

He gets his a levels and proves that his idea can work by paying you real board and doing the “work” part time

I loved the balance of working for an employer as a technical researcher - basically research means you decide what gets worked on - huge amount of freedom with the only caveat being that it had to sound like a sound business reason to look at the idea and if you couldn’t convince people then it’s a great safeguard against going down a wasteful rabbit hole - and the employer gives you a guaranteed income , holidays and pensions

he’s been scarred by a bad experience and is now believing a load of crap and missing some great opportunities for those bright in maths and physics ( yip my subjects )

Agreed, what’s the rush? Why can’t he do both? That way he’ll always have his A levels behind him.

Even if they’re weren’t an out and out scam, he’d still be working for someone else with them creaming whatever profit he might make. They’re not doing this altruistically ffs. as soon as AI is cheaper/ better for this nonsense the meat robots will be dropped.

This was literally my stepson a year and a half ago, except he wanted to drop out of his degree to do full time day trading.

He was absolutely convinced he was going to make his living doing it, you couldn't tell him otherwise. He and his friends were all doing the online training for it together. To be fair they spent a lot of time studying and trading on the practice accounts etc.

Aug-December he did actually make, and withdraw from his trading account, about two thousand pounds while trading around his university stuff.

He then had huge plans for the next lot of money he'd make: buying a car, going on amazing trips in the summer etc, and again was threatening to drop out of uni.

Jan - May...he spent a lot of time trading. But his trades didn't work out. He just kept "losing". I think he managed to withdraw a few hundred, but nothing like the thousands he had expected to be raking in. Towards the end I think he was on some sort of roll amassing money where he really thought this was going to be the big win and would give him the money for this amazing summer he had imagined, but...it all disappeared in one bad day. He was absolutely gutted and the scales fell from his eyes.

So, he basically learnt the hard way, but he has actually learnt. It's cured him of this idea that it's going to be his career. Your son probably needs to learn the same way. The marketing around it all is so effective, it really sells the dream.

I would give him a choice.

He either does his A levels (including studying and getting the grades he’s capable of), then once they’re in the bag, he can do his crazy plan and you’ll support him.
Or he starts paying rent and bills right now, using money from a job or from savings.

Teens often think that they can step off the education treadmill and continue their lives as they are. It’s important they realise that doing nothing is not an option, and we can only fund their lives if they’re in education. Once they leave education, they’re just a basic adult, and like all adults, they have to bring money in.

Just to point out, my DSS didnt actually lose his own money day trading (not more than the small ~£50 sums he paid out a few times for his trading accounts over a year), you can do it in ways where you risk very little of your own money. It's the time spent that turned out to be the loss.

From what I understand about day trading, your son could potentially do it just in school holidays as a "trial". I don't think there's any imperative to trade every day, at least not the way my DSS did it. But you do need to be able to give it your absolute full attention the days you do do it, during stock market opening hours.

He sounds like a clever lad and I’d encourage him to finish his A levels and at least he’ll be next-level qualified. With A levels he could do a degree apprenticeship and it just opens more doors and he can do trading on the side now even.

At that age (and even older) young people are idealistic and act on instinct. We are there to be the voice of reason and if in the end they don’t listen then on their heads be it. I’d insist on a contribution to the household, child benefit will stop unless he’s in full-time education, once he reaches 18 too.

@CraftySeal ,

‘So, he basically learnt the hard way, but he has actually learnt. It's cured him of this idea that it's going to be his career. Your son probably needs to learn the same way. The marketing around it all is so effective, it really sells the dream.’

One of my friend’s adult children did the same with poker. A generous relative funded him to the tune of several thousand. After a year I think he returned the money. He was up, but literally a few hundred pounds….for hundreds of thousands of hours of work.

There certainly used to be prop shops in London. After a successful trading career, I tried one and hated it. They would give you a limit, fund you, and take 20% if you made money. I hated it and never made anything. It was like trading with all your advantages taken away (client flow, state of the art systems, buzz of a dealing room, paid consultants etc etc). However, there were people who made a decent living out of it.

They, basically, reacted to economic info very quickly and took profit (or loss) within seconds to minutes. I have no idea whether that is still going or has been replaced by AI, who could obviously react quicker.

It is really strange that people believe the marketing. Where do they think their profits will be coming from?! Trading is a zero sum game at best. In reality, it is a negative game as there are exchange fees, system costs etc etc

*hundreds OR thousands

To lose a hundred thousand they must have had a pretty good bankroll to start with!

Yes, had three properties, two rented out, which he ended up selling to constantly chase his losses in the vain hope of recovering them. I.e. lost a small fortune, sold a property to "reinvest" in the hope of making enough to cover his losses, then lost again, sold another, etc. It wiped him out as he couldn't accept losing in the first place and fell into the trap of thinking he could recover them if he took riskier trades with potentially higher profits!

It’s interesting he thinks the only kind are being employed other than day trading. My DH was a partner in a business at 28 and completely ran the show 15 years later. He was self employed and worked for himself although they did end up with 120 staff. DH was an engineer with similar A levels.

He can fairly easily trade whilst studying if he’s got money. Has he? He can trade what doing a degree as well. He would probably make more money being employed and work his way up in an organisation. Both my DDs are self employed too.

One final point. If he wants to make his fortune he would be way better to just start a business. I do know self made multi millionaires / billionaires (I work in finance) and that's how they've all done it. Find a gap in the market - whether it's an app or a product or a service no one else is providing. Grow the business and give it 5 years or 10 years and sell it for a profit.

I will repeat - I do not know any people who have made their fortune, or even a living, from day trading.

Depends on the strategy. If it's listed equities you don't need to be buying and selling constantly. My guess is he's more likely to be trying to edge the currency markets (as this is where the online grifters and manosphere will tell you you can make big bucks) - and those markets move in seconds and you need to be moving money back and forth. It's ridiculous of course as all the banks have algorithms that can do this in fractions of seconds.

I had a retired relative who fell for day trading. He pissed away all the family money ,approx £500k. Its basically gambling and he was addicted. He also got his daughter into it, she now sells those courses, there always is money in fleecing others.

This is a really good case study. Because ultimately 3k total 'win' over the best part of a year... he'd have done better way working at tesco and just sticking whatever he could into an ISA or a reputable fund. Let's say minimum wage £2k a month? He'd have been the best part of £17k better off in the same time.