FPNI.

The mistake a lot of people make is being suckered in by the high apparent yield; unless you absolutely need current income at the expense of long term capital gains, the “yield” (covered call writing) funds are a bad deal because that’s exactly what they do:  trade LTG for current income.

There are much more efficient methods of hedging (using a base index and derivatives) which allow you to participate in more of the upside without the heavy drag and upside penalties of the calls.

I contend the exact opposite is true.

First, risk is a function of one’s investment horizon and in a teenager’s IRA, that horizon is several decades.

Granted, single or few (less than 11 or so) stock risk is higher, it won’t always be his only or almost only stock.

He has many decades for NVDA to grow and add other stocks along the way.

By way of “money where your mouth is”:  I have owned NVDA for a long time; my original number of shares was tripled via stock splits and while it wasn’t my only stock, it has grown to one of my top five largest positions.

In reality, a smarter approach would be to just keep putting it into midcap ETF until he had enough to start effectively buying individual stocks.

Again, exactly what I did with my lawn mowing/landscaping money when I was a teenager:  IRA, S&P500, never touched it, well into 6 figures today.

We tried.

Good luck.