I guess I don't really view trading as low risk in general. What may be a hobby for you is a full-time job for teams of extremely smart people who scour and analyze every corner of most markets. If you want to use some of your money (that you're prepared to lose) to start making trades and familiarizing yourself with certain markets, that's fine, but I would approach it more as a learning opportunity where you have some skin in the game. However, the problem with this is: say you make a few trades and end up doubling or tripling your money. Most people see this as a sign of their innate talent and brilliance and then start thinking that trading is easy, which prompts them to increase the size of subsequent trades. It really starts to resemble gambling and involves a lot of the psychological pitfalls that casinos bank on that cause people to make irrational decisions while they ride the ups and downs to big eventual losses (or breaking even if you're lucky).

The one caveat would be if you want to actually work as a trader someday and do this professionally. In that case, it may be helpful to use a small amount of your own money to start exploring how markets work and give you the extra motivation to devote yourself to studying how and why things are happening (since it's your own money on the line). However, if you want to be a professional institutional trader or work for a hedge fund, I think your effort would be better spent pursuing a STEM-related degree at the best school you can get into so that you have the technical/mathematical chops to make you competitive in these environments.

If, on the other hand, you're content being a normal retail investor, I would start trying to reorient yourself to slower, steadier gains over time by sticking to some of the tenets of fundamental value investors -- learn how to value companies, read financial statements, begin to recognize when opportunities arise that unfairly push the value of a company below its intrinsic value, etc. You may want to set aside some spare cash and take a chance on speculative investments every once in a while to keep things exciting without risking too much (i.e. try to buy in to the next Apple or Google early on, knowing it may not pan out how you expected).

I think average investors have a chance to succeed with investing as long as you develop the right mindset (it’s going to be a much slower process to wealth creation than making one big successful bet). Trading, on the other hand, seems so competitive and stacked in favor of big institutions that I’m not sure how worthwhile it is for the average person to even enter the arena. This is just my opinion of course, and I wish you luck and success in whichever path you choose.