Juniors Tahmasebi and Davarparast invest and navigate the stock market

Mailan Nguyen

Circulation Editor

Waitering, babysitting and tutoring are just some of the many common ways students earn their money, but Mira Costa juniors Darion Tahmasebi and Kasra Davarparast have been helping students earn money by investing it into stock markets.

“Six months ago, my uncle who is a professional stockbroker introduced me to stocks and started showing me how they work and how to find good ones that you can invest money in, and be able to sit back and hopefully watch it grow after doing a lot of research on it,”  Tahmasebi said.

Tahmasebi and Davarparast first became motivated to start their own stock investment company, Darion The Kasra (D.T.K.), when they heard about the successes of a student from Dubai who works for Messe Frankfurt, the world’s largest trade fair. However, to order to work here requires years of experience. This led Tahmasebi and Davarparast to choose not to take a percentage of the money made through their clients’ investments.

“We knew we needed a lot experience and knowledge about stocks to be able to work with Messe Frankfurt, so we thought about how we could accomplish that by creating a business where students can come to us for help with investing money into stocks,” Tahmasebi said. “It’s great because our friends and clients are getting money,
while we’re getting experience.”

They first got the idea to start D.T.K. in early Sept. of 2018. A month later, they started creating a logo, business cards, and contract. The next two months were spent solely researching and learning about stocks, Tahmasebi and Davarparast said.

“We started all of this because we’re obsessed with financial freedom,” Tahmasebi said. “That’s why we want to work hard now and learn these habits for us to be able to live the life we want.”

In Dec. of 2018, D.T.K. got their first client who is a junior from Lawndale High School. They now have around twenty-five clients, a majority of which are students from local high schools. Before getting to the point of investing a client’s money into a stock, there is hours of time put into researching stocks and finding the ones they believe have the most potential of growing, Tahmasebi and Davarparast said.

“Our first client gave us two hundred dollars to invest and he didn’t fully believe in us at first, but in one month, that amount doubled which made him gain our trust and he started recommending us to his friends,” Tahmasebi said.

According to Tahmasebi and Davarparast, their hope was nearly lost after driving for an hour and a half to attend the Trading Academy class in Westwood and getting denied because of their age.

“We didn’t give up from the beginning because the first class we were let into at the Redondo Beach Hotel, we thought we were prepared but when we sat down and listened, we were really confused and had no idea what they were talking about,” Tahmasebi said. “Right after that class, Kasra and I went home and did research every single day to learn and try to accomplish our goal.”