I created a monster....

hahahahha lol good one.

I think someone deserves to be taken out for ice cream.

I am an energy trader so part was happy.. other part said we need to talk

she also asked me if I knew ken lay.... I said no... pretty funny

delete your comment

you dont play like that with kids

should take her to work and show her what you do for a living she would prob enjoy it might have to give her ear plugs though :D

lol, actually just scratch that comment... DON'T take her to work! I went to work at the chicago mercantile exchange or whatever with my godfather one day when I was like 13 (and I'm a male, so theoretically tougher) and it was perhaps the most fucked up thing that ever happened to me. I had fun but I (1) heard some of the most sexist / racist jokes ever and repeated them for years to the boys at school and (2) saw cocaine for the first time in my life!

In reality though - you should be proud man. It's not every day one comes across an intellectual 12 year old who wants to be an energy trader!

did she watch the movie or read the book? If she read the book she's damn smart for a 6th grader. Unfortunately by the time she reaches age, finance may not be the big game in town anymore.

ideally though, you'd want you child to aspire to be a scientist or something intellectual that proves motivation beyond what's making money at the time. But eh, who's to say- I wanted to be a firefighter and my parents worried about my pyromania :)

So when you gonna set her up with a nice funded account, maybe put a couple thou in there so she can trade some crude futures etc?

she read book but i have the movie so may show it to her at some point... one of the traders in the movie was a manager of mine so that may be cool for her to meet..again at some point

she is actually in 8th grade and learning about colleges right now... so i get a quiz everyday on schools and fun facts...

i dont care what she wants to be as long as it requires some hard work and failure... i learned the most from failing.. but the more i failed the more i won in the long run

I rather her not trade at all now.. we spend a lot of time talking about greed and what went wrong at enron... I am getting her some books on firms ...maybe google, GM, etc etc

i dont care what she wants to be as long as it requires some hard work and failure... i learned the most from failing.. but the more i failed the more i won in the long run

what if she wanted to be a gold-digger? I have a sister-in-law that effectively does that (many failures but an eventual big success).

do you give her the pursuit of happyness [sic] speech? :)

seriously though a 12 year old 8th grader? I would be very concerned that she might burn out and drop out within a couple years. Does this concern you? imo there is a difference in overcoming failure with an internal vs. external motivation. (namely externally motivated people are more likely to break under failure- and you don't want a series of easy successes to culminate in a breaking failure during the college years). btw I use the term "break" loosely- more likely a large loss of confidence and "quietly settling".

Hey Gekko- You should work in politics. Nobody is criticizing the cute little 12 year old. I'm just giving my (unsolicited) opinion on parenting (which I realize is rude to some, but you should except at least that much on an online forum). Btw, I thought that 12 year-olds were regularly 5th grades but that seems untrue. It's pretty even between 5th and 6th grade- so the situation is a bit less drastic then I perceived. However, note that your Mozart example doesn't disprove my point in any way. There's no way one can argue that Mozart maximized his abilities with extrinsic motivators alone. e.g. No 6th grader successfully learning calculus today is motivated primarily (or more likely, at all) by payout in finance fields. (Although I'm sure he was kidding with bulge4lyf's greed quote and isn't really going "sitting back and trading energy = money, money, money!") that said, the guy is obviously a very involved father and she's a lucky child. Most father-daughter bonds are nowhere near this. But it's just something to think about. (Though it appears the OP is already somewhat aware of all this).

Lastly, about your over-used quote, greed can be a great external motivator for matured people. But it's far from an ideal motivator for young kids. In fact, it's pretty shitty. (Anyone can see for themselves- the first sign is when they start cutting corners because the end product (money!) is more important to them than the process- no way a child is mature enough not to fall into this common trap). Lastly, one might be inclined to think "okay she's doing it for the wrong reasons and the motivation will disappear in the face of adversity, but at least it's in a profitable field- at least she'll learn something financially useful in the process" -imo, wrong. Being ultimately mediocre in a field (which is the best you get with these factors alone*) is never useful. *However, I'm not saying there aren't intrinsic factors for her, maybe her main fascination with the enron book was an intellectual interest in the structure of energy markets, deregulation, law, etc. That's unlikely but completely possible, and would be terrific!

Lastly, let me point out that this expose if just for you, It appears the OP is already somewhat aware of all this judging by his last post.

runner99 were you touched as a child ?