How the Stonk Queen made $80k trading meme stocks during the pandemic

Kiersten Crum’s life was that of a typical college student before the pandemic. She attended the University of Kansas, where she was a business administration major, with a minor in dance, and was active in her sorority.

That was until spring break 2020, when she had to leave campus like millions of other college kids due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After being sent home and seeing her father’s bar business completely shut down for several months, Crum decided to drop out of school and help support her family.

Amid financial desperation, she took a leap of faith and started investing during one of the worst stock market downturns in history. In just over a year, Crum turned an initial $500 investment in Carnival Cruise Lines into an $80,000 portfolio and built a powerful personal brand as the ‘Stonk Queen,’ gaining nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok. She now uses her brand to help educate young investors on how to start investing and grow their net worth.

Select interviewed Crum about her story, how she embraced the unknown and her advice to those that haven’t started investing yet.

During her sophomore year of college, she learned about compound interest for the very first time. But it wasn’t until a few of her statistics classmates invited her to an investment club meeting in Feburary that she began to really dig into investing. 

Apprehensive at first, she decided to attend a meeting, with the incentive that there was free pizza. When she arrived she found a room filled with young men flashing their Robinhood accounts, some of which displayed multi-thousand-dollar balances.

Over the next few days, several people helped her start investing, right as the market began to fall. Her very first stock purchase was an extremely risky one — Carnival Cruise Line. On Jan. 1, 2020, the stock price was $51. By the time the initial pandemic lockdowns went into effect in late March, the price bottomed out around $9. She bought in near the bottom with a very simple rationale: “What can I grab that is only hit because of Covid-19?”

While stock market plummeted, her father’s restaurant business completely shut down. As the weeks wore on, things became financially bleak. Crum had to work two jobs at a grocery store and a local restaurant to help support her family. Still, she continued to build on her position in Carnival, investing any money she could in stocks.