What was your reaction to the stock market crash in 1987? It inspired Kevin Prigel to pick his first investment fund, even though he was only 8 at the time. Clearly that eagerness has paid off. Now 21, Prigel is the CEO of StreetAdvisor.com, a stock analysis Web company he founded in August 1998 while attending Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth. Shortly after the site’s launch, Prigel scooped Wall Street by tipping off customers that America Online was considering acquiring Excite@Home. Though the deal never went through, Excite@Home’s value shot up $4.2 billion, and Prigel earned attention from Barron’s, the Financial Times, and Wired News. The Wall Street Journal even featured him in a story with the headline, “At 20, Student Already Moves Stock Markets.” Since then, Prigel has expanded his operation nicely, having recruited a staff of thirty experienced analysts. But what makes his site’s advice better than the Psychic Network’s? Detective work. “It’s the one plus one equals three rule,” he says. “Taking a lot of pieces of the puzzle, putting them together, and finding something that everybody else is missing.”
