How these Coppell teens are using the stock market to aid their community
A group of Coppell teenagers invest not only in themselves but in their community as well.
Kavin Sampath, 17, started investing as a child. The Coppell High Senior has been managing his mother’s Roth IRA account for several years. This passion inspired the teenager to start an investment club with friends that now benefit local nonprofits.
“Our most important mission statement is to go against the common stereotype that investors are only there for themselves,” said Sampath. “You are investing at the expense of others. We show that you can also invest on behalf of others. “
Originally, Sampath wanted to start an investment club while in school, so he reached out to friends to join. Campus leaders turned down the idea, however, finding that Coppell High already had a surplus of business-minded clubs.
Still wanting to start the group, Sampath convinced his friends to start the Charitable Investment Club outside of school in January 2020.
Founding members Aksh Tyagi, Rohan Nalla, Prabhav Kumbum, Rohan Pritmani and Nikshith Konnuru are all still in the club and serve as the club’s board members, along with Sampath as its chairman. Anshul Shah later joined the club as a member and is now the director of marketing.
“What really won me over to the idea was that he told me how we first learn about the stock market, but also use whatever we learn to create positive change,” said Tyagi, senior at Coppell High.
The club spent this spring teaching each other about investing and how the stock market works as a whole. When summer came the club made its first attempt to invest with the money raised by its six original members, Sampath said.
The club’s first donation went to the North Texas Food Bank, where they provided more than 200 pounds of peanut butter.
In order to have a deeper impact, the Charitable Investments Club has been converted into a registered not-for-profit organization, Sampath said.
The association now has around 20 members. Some are analysts who watch and note how the stocks perform. Others work with marketing and fundraising teams. The ultimate decision as to which stocks to invest in rests with the Group’s board of directors.
Everything the club does is all about learning, with Sampath and the founding members largely self-taught. The first summer they started investing was full of lessons of profit and loss, he noted.
“Experience is a really great teacher in the stock market world,” said Sampath.
One of the group’s biggest cheerleaders is Brian Simpson, a business teacher at Coppell High.
Simpson, who contributed to the club’s first press release, noted that teenagers are more current than many in the market and in terms of the stock. He was encouraged to see students research and exchange with one another so thoroughly, added Simpson.
“These days we shouldn’t have a class or classroom where the teacher just gives information about the students,” Simpson said. “Students are now the resource.”
In addition to hanging out and building with friends, each board member has their own personal reason to stay with the club.
For Tyagi, working with the analyst team, it is able to teach new members the principles of investing. By the time the 17-year-old joined the club, he wasn’t as accomplished in the field as his peers, but he did develop his knowledge over time.
Kumbum, a senior, is excited to coordinate donations with nonprofits and see their contributions translate into real results. The club recently donated money to sponsor a day of meals at The Stewpot, a Dallas homeless shelter.
Not every member wants to pursue investing as a career. Some are interested in finance, others gravitate towards unrelated fields like computer science. Regardless, everyone wants to pursue a career in which they can make a difference.
The board of directors – all seniors – hopes to be able to continue running the association after graduation. You want to create enough experience for younger members so that the subclasses can keep the club running. Some even consider transferring the mission to college.
“We’re just trying to create a legacy by breaking social barriers of teenagers making a difference in the world,” said Pritmani, a senior. “The goal at the moment is to just lay that foundation.”
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