Awesome, if that kid sticks with it he's going to be one of the best when his time comes.
I started around 13, and forced all my friends to join me. I remember buying Playboy thinking everyone loved porn, then I got pissed off when the stock kept falling. 10th grade came around and we had a stock market competition, we loaded up the entire portfolio on TASR. Watched it sky rocket up then sold a week before it's collapse. We won the competition, and that record is still in place lol My friend and I would ditch class to go check on stocks, it was great. My senior year it got really bad, I just flat out wouldn't go to school because the market was much more interesting.
He sees CNBC as a way to keep in touch with the market. He'll eventually learn how stupid some of things he did were, but he'll grow from them. When he starts with real money, he'll make some serious mistakes and wonder why trading paper was so easy. But it's all apart of the process.
I think this is pretty cool. I just hope he continues to learn and push himself and never give up.