High school student scores $72M playing the stock market
He’s the teen wolf of Wall Street.
A kid from Queens has made tens of millions of dollars — by trading stocks on his lunch breaks at Stuyvesant High School, New York magazine reports in its Monday issue.
Mohammed Islam is only 17 and still months away from graduating — but worth a rumored $72 million. “The high eight figures,” is as specific as the shy and modest teen would get when asked his net worth.
Islam bought himself a BMW but doesn’t have a license to drive it. And he rented a Manhattan apartment, though his parents, immigrants from the Bengal region of South Asia, won’t let him move out of the house yet.
Still, the cherubic prodigy is living, and dreaming, large.
“What makes the world go round?” Islam asked in the interview, explaining his preference for trading and investment over startups. “Money. If money is not flowing, if businesses don’t keep going, there’s no innovation, no products, no investments, no growth, no jobs.”
Islam and a pair of other young, Wall Street wolf-cub buddies eat regularly at hot spot Morimoto, where they enjoy $400 caviar and fresh-squeezed apple juice.
They hope to start a hedge fund in June, after Islam turns 18 and can get his broker-dealer license.