Translator: Tanya Cushman
Reviewer: Riaki Poništ My daughter just started kindergarten. So this is a really exciting time. It marks a time when me, as a parent, is going to hand my child over
to this education system and hope that she learns the skills
she needs to be successful in life. I've only dropped her off at kindergarten, and I'm already thinking
about high school. But really, when we drop off our kids at school, it kind of evokes a lot of deep
philosophical reflections about what we need in order
to be happy or to be successful in life and what our children will need. Now, one of these topics is something that I know that she's really
not going to learn in school, as much as I wish she would. And oftentimes, this conversation
doesn't actually happen at home. The topic that I want to talk
to you about today is this, and specifically:
"How do you make more of this?" Now, my experience with money
started very differently than most. I was in education; I was an educational consultant,
worked there for about ten years. And at the time, I was doing
my Masters of Education, and I had this hobby
called "trading in the market." As you can imagine, when I first started,
I didn't make a lot of this stuff. And what I decided to do
when I did my Masters of Ed was apply the things I was learning
about how we learn best with the skills of making money. It ended up working out really well. I left that full-time job, and now I do this for a living,
and it's pretty fantastic. But it's with this perspective
of both education and investing that I want to talk to you about today. When we think about money, many of us are very familiar
with the skills: "save more," "spend less," "budget." Those are terms we use all of the time;
we throw them around, we know they're things that we should do, and they're really focused
on preserving what we have. Then on the other side of the coin, we have this idea of what it would be like
to make a ton of money. We have these ideas and notions
in our head when it comes to the market - that we think we need to risk it all
to make millions of dollars. This is Gordon Gekko, a very familiar character
when it comes to making money. We've probably all seen
the movie "Wall Street," we might watch shows called "Billions." This is the typical depiction of what we normally think about
when it comes to trading. This is me. (Laughter) Trading in a coffee shop
while my baby is sleeping on me. What we see and hear
when it comes to money-making is so far removed
from what it's really like. So, if you have a bit of money saved, and we've done what we're supposed to do, and we want to actually grow some wealth, many of us are trying to hit that other very traditional notion
of what it's like to be in the market, the notion that's actually more
appropriate for institutional investing or people who already have
millions of dollars trying to make more. Depictions of average people
are few and far between. If we actually want to do
something with our money, we are somewhere here in the middle,
and there's a big knowledge gap. And so, no wonder it's pretty
confusing for all of us. I mean, 76% of millennial women
find investing confusing. 71% of Americans find talking
to their financial planner scary. And get this: 44% of Americans find the most
challenging conversation you can have is about money. Even the topic of death
comes in second at 38%. So this is a real problem. We all work really hard for our money. We are all told to save our money. But what do we do if we want
to make a little bit more? What do we do if we're somewhere
here in the middle? Most of us are probably handing our money
over to financial institutions because this is often
what we're told to do. And when we do that, that's fine for some. But unfortunately, we don't really
get to see what they do, we definitely don't get
to learn how to do it, and many of us don't even know
the questions we should be asking about why are they making
the decisions that they are. And I don't think
that this is really right. Many of us don't even realize
that we actually have the technology to be able to log in
to your cellphone or your laptop, and to be able to trade
at any point in time during the day. Unfortunately though, the skill set that's gone
along with this hasn't really kept up, so many of us don't really know. So what if we turned, then,
to the formal education system? This is where we would think about: "We need to learn to make money." So, the latest term that we have here
is called "financial literacy." This is supposed to help
all of our money woes. But if you look at the narrative about what it still being discussed
when it comes to financial literacy, we still are talking
about the same old, same old: "save more," "spend less,"
"budget your money." And I want you to think
about it for a second. If we actually took this idea and started helping people
to know how to make money, and then they started spending money based on the profits
that they actually made from money they earned, how would that change
the conversation about money? We need to help our students realize that when it comes to the markets
or the ability to make more money, this can be actually
very achievable for most of us, but we need to stop trying to make
millions of dollars and risk it all and start realizing that this is a skill that any of us can do
at any point in time. We need to take some of the skill sets
that kids already learn. So think about something like: "compare and contrast"
or "sorting" for that matter. In kindergarten, they're starting to learn
how to sort things and build patterns. Those are skills that actually I use
in the market every single day. And, in fact, when I learnt how to trade -
and I trade for a living - a lot of the skills that I use
aren't actually financial skills; they're skills that I actually
learnt in other areas. So we need to help students bridge the gap between information
they're already learning and tying that to conversations about money. The other piece that I want to talk
to you about is realistic expectations. Again, this is something
that can be very appropriate for students when we talk about this with them. When it comes to the market,
it's not all or nothing. So, just for example here, about a week ago,
I got an email from someone. And he had $5,000, and he wanted to know how long I thought it would take
to go from $5,000 to $10,000. And that's the problem. $5,000 to $10,000, that's a 100% return;
that is doubling your money! Gosh, if everybody
could do that, wouldn't we all? It's all about our expectations. It would be far more realistic
for him to take his $5,000, trade with it, enjoy that, and take his family
out for dinner once a month as opposed to trying to double his money. There is nothing wrong with taking
a small amount of money that you have and only just focusing
on making some profits, and then spending those profits
on all the fun things that you love rather than trying to double your money It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And let me tell you, I am not an ex-institutional trader. And by the way, just because
you are an ex-institutional trader doesn't mean that you actually
know how to make money, or that it's appropriate
for us as average people. I also want you to know that I am not a certified
financial planner. I do not have an MBA,
nor do I have a business degree. I am an average person. And when it comes to making money, I am no more capable of this than you are. Home Depot brought "do-it-yourself"
construction projects to the masses with the tagline: "We can show you how." We need something like this for money-making skills, too,
for average people. We need to start seeing depictions
in media and entertainment that are actually
more realistic and focused on what most of us
can do with all of this. We need to stop idealizing these very fantasized versions
of trading in the market and [start] realizing
that this can be appropriate for all of us. So, there are three things that I really hope
you'll walk away with today. And now that I do know how to make money, this is what I hope you will write down and you will continue
to tell other people. The first thing is that when it comes to making money, there's this language to it. And there's lots of complicated terms. And one term is often used
to define another term. So no wonder it's confusing for all of us because none of us are using plain English when we start talking
about making-money skills, but particularly in the market. So let's start asking
our financial planners, all of the media outlets to start talking about all this
in plain language so that we can actually understand. If you want to continue to invest
with someone else, that's fine, but maybe we'll have
better questions to ask about the decisions being made. And if you want to do that yourself, it's even better. I also want you to know that the language shouldn't be
the barrier for you to do this; you don't need to know all of the words
to know how to make money. And vice versa: you can make money without knowing
all of the words in this industry. The second piece is that when it comes
to investing or trading or making money, it doesn't have to be a full-time job. Now, I love this, and I have to say I've done this
part time, full time, and I started trading four days
after my second baby was born. You can do this as a hobby too. The best part about trading
and making money that's more realistic is when you go to Starbucks
and you order a latte and it's free. And you know why it's free? Because I'm spending the profits that I made on a trade in Starbucks,
the stock, about a week earlier. That feeling is something
everybody can feel. If you have a little bit of money saved and you focus on spending it
on your indulgences, how does that change
your perception about money? The third thing that I want you to know
when it comes to making money is that it's a skill. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that come to the market and think
that they are Olympic mountain bikers before they're really ready
to take the training wheels off. So I want you to remember that when you first started
to learn to ride a bike, you probably started with training wheels. And you may have even fallen
a couple of times when you took them off, but you got up, and now some of you
might be Olympic mountain bikers, but others might just enjoy
a Sunday afternoon ride. And the same experience
can be true in the market. Just make sure that if you do fall down,
you can still get back up again, because it does get to a place
where it's actually really fun to do. I'd like everybody
to think about Gordon Gekko. What Gordon Gekko [did] is risky, but it doesn't have to be that way. And honestly, not knowing
about money-making skills is risky too. If we all ask more,
see more and hear more, we can learn to make more. And so this brings me back
to the beginning of our conversation when I dropped my child off
at school this morning, as many of you have as well. Are they really learning the skills
they need to be successful in life? And have the skills
that you learned about money helped you to get you
where you want to go? Thank you. (Applause)
