After you have made an initial assessment of the list of your target companies, many experts feel you should select those stocks with high quarterly earnings, low P/E ratios, low debt, and strong product quality and demand. Perhaps your child may have some intuition regarding the future prospects of success with a particular brand, even though its current performance may not support the decision to select this particular stock. This may be an opportunity to teach the child about owning riskier investments, and the reasons why a company with certain attributes may not be such a great investment today (such as high debt, higher than normal stock price, low earnings, etc.).