A 10-year-old boy, the unexpected beneficiary of the Battle of Trolls vs Wall Street

The rise in GameStop shares benefited retail investors, many of whom were surprised by the unlikely gains. Maybe not as much as a 10 year old from San Antonio, Texas.

The fifth grader received 10 shares of GameStop, each for $ 6.19, in December 2019 as a gift from Kwanzaa – a holiday celebrated by African Americans in the US – in December 2019. His mother bought the shares from him simply because he her son liked to buy video games in the store and wanted to teach him about the stock market.

Within minutes this week, Jaydyn Carr became an unexpected beneficiary of the chaos in the marketplace as his $ 60 stake in the video game store increased to $ 3,200.

“Is this really happening now?” Recalls Jaydyn’s mother, Nina Carr. “I couldn’t believe it was true.”

Carr, 31, was working in his home office on Wednesday when a string of news stories about the Reddit-powered GameStop spike started appearing on his phone. Her jaw dropped.

Once the news was absorbed, he ran to his son’s room. “I was very excited for him,” she said. In simple terms, he described to Jaydyn what happened to his GameStop shares and why they had suddenly exploded. “He said stocks almost never go up like this, so if you wanted to sell them, do it now,” said Jaydyn. In the end, the choice was his. “It wouldn’t be fair if I made the decision on his behalf,” Carr explained. And besides, he added, ‘if he lost the money, it would have been a lesson.

So he asked his only son the burning question, “Do you want to sell or stay?”

Much to your relief Jaydyn decided to sell.

“I was really excited. I didn’t even think it was reality,” said Jaydyn.

Carr followed his son through the sales process and he cashed in on his shares. The plan is to put $ 2,200 in Jaydyn’s savings account and then invest the remaining $ 1,000 as a mother-child team.

When Carr bought GameStop’s 10 shares as a gift from Kwanzaa in 2019, he certainly did not expect the value to ever rise spontaneously, he said. His sole intention in buying the stock was to teach his then eight-year-old son about Ujamaa, which means “cooperative economics.” It is one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa.

“The goal was for him to know the value of a dollar and how to handle money,” Carr said, explaining that Ujamaa’s idea is to share wealth while strengthening his personal finances and self-reliance.

In addition to linking the gift to the deeper meaning of the holiday, Carr said that since Jaydyn’s father passed away in February 2014, teaching her son about money management has been a priority for her. “I am very frugal and saving is a big part of what I do. As the only parent I want to set a good example, ”she explains. ‘I started with finances when his father passed away. I wanted to make sure his future was in good hands. “

According to Jaydyn, she has already learned a lot from her mother: “She’s always teaching me what to do in an emergency and how to save money to buy a car and a house one day,” she said.

Carr – who is a public health nutritionist and runs her own business – felt the gift was an opportunity to bolster the importance of investment, she said.

When it came to deciding which company to invest in, the choice was obvious: Jaydyn is a video game aficionado, so “we were always in and out of GameStop and were constantly buying different video games,” explained Carr. “I thought, how is that possible? I mix our Kwanzaa principles with something I know you really want?

In an effort to make sure her son had an appropriate present to open, “I had to come up with something to unwrap this boy,” she recalls. “I printed out a template and filled in the details, put it in a photo frame and packed it.” While the gift wasn’t the Xbox One I expected, “I was really excited to see the GameStop name on it,” Carr says.

Jaydyn was also delighted after her mother explained that she owned a small portion of a business she loves. More than two years later, the frame still features prominently in Jaydyn’s bedroom. Now, however, it has a new meaning: a memory of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

While market manipulation is not a new phenomenon, “the scale, scale and speed of this is unprecedented,” said Veljko Fotak, a professor of finance at the University at Buffalo.

While the plot is problematic in many ways, Fotak said, “I think the more children learn and the more they understand the markets, the better equipped they are to plan their own retirement, and the better it will be as a society. . “

For Jaydyn, this is just the beginning. He already has big plans: “Now I am looking for companies that pay dividends,” he said confidently.

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