when I was a kid I never went to a shop I never went to a restaurant suddenly you're given all this money and I realized that what I thought I wanted as a kid was to be rich and I realized now that what I really wanted was just not to be poor that's that's what it was and then once I wasn't poor anymore it sort of it meant I had to kind of reassess everything what do I actually want from them Gary Stevenson was City bank's most profitable Trader in 2011 he made Millions by betting on growing economic inequality but he decided to leave a life where he was making millions to raise awareness around the inequality that he had become so aware of he focuses on teaching people about wealth inequality and the economy I go to the street I grew up and it was always a poor Street you know it's right next to the railway small houses it used to be families of four or five now there's like 15 individual impoverished people living in those houses sharing rooms you know this is the transformation of our society away from a respectable if sometimes difficult middle class life to Broad Mass poverty I think one problem you have is these two sides they don't get to see each other I didn't work with anyone who knew that poverty was happening and you know I go to the streets they don't know these guys are making $2 million a year so the poor don't know that the rich are taking everything and the rich don't see that the poor are struggling to eat hey everyone it's Erica I've prepared something special for you I want to invite you to my one-of-a-kind five day challenge where I'll be sharing how you along with thousands of others can start investing with confidence you're probably thinking Erica I've never invested into the stock market or I don't have a of money lying around but that's exactly why I created this challenge for you it doesn't matter if you have lots of money to start with or next to nothing you'll discover easy and fun ways to start generating passive income multiply your money and create a future of financial independence without the guesswork complexity or risk when it comes to investing the challenge starts soon so secure your spot by clicking the link below and by the way this challenge is completely free so click the link below or go to erica.com invest now let's get back to the episode I'm Erica Colberg and you're listening to the Erica taught me podcast you didn't have the typical path to becoming a Trader did you no I think in many ways I was not the typical Trader I grew up in East London in a very poor neighborhood and a very poor family it's actually a kind of stereotype in London Finance of the sort of cocky wide Boy bar boy Trader but the truth is nowadays and even when I was a Trader 10 years ago almost everyone is from wealthy families wealthy backgrounds but in London we have two Financial Centers we have the city of London in the center and we have Canary wolf which is actually in East London so when I was a kid sort of 9 or 10 we actually saw these this new Financial District being built and we saw these skyscrapers like going up on the end of the street and I think we all kind of dreamed that one day we would be working in there and you know when I was a kid I was very very good at math I've still got a little trophy in my front room some competition one when I was 12 or 13 and um I think if you grow up poor in London being good at maass you just think this is where we're going to go you know Finance is the big job it's there on the end of the doorstep and I just thought you know I'll work hard I'll do the maths and I'll end up you know some Big Sky scrap for making fancy money it didn't go as as simply as that you've probably seen in my book that when I was 16 I got expelled from school for what I usually call a drug related incident but even when that happened it didn't really sort of I always thought I'll get through this cuz I had this really strong confidence in my math ability and um and it pulled me through you know I had to sort of study at home sitting on the floor doing my math homework I didn't have school to go to but I killed my exams and I managed to get into lsse the London School of Economics which for those who don't know is a very fancy Finance School basically in London and it's a bit of a crazy place like it's where Gaddafi sent his kids you know the Lian dictator it's a lot of a lot of international money wealthy fam sending their kids there and when I went there I just thought you know we're going to do the same thing we're going to kill all the exams going to kill all the math exams and then and then we'll get a job um but once again it wasn't quite as simple as that and um where did you study what university did you go to I went to Notre Dame for undergrad and Georgetown law for law school okay so I don't know if you had a similar experience but I thought you just go in I was told when I was a kid study hard do one your exams you get a good job but what actually happened was I studied hard I did well in my exams and then suddenly second year of this economics master degree lse everybody became obsessed with Banking and they started talking this other language they started talking about m&as and cdos and cdss and IBD I everything was a three-letter acronym I don't know why and they started applying for internships and they were applying for literally 30 internships each and I just didn't know how to do any of this you know and and so I spoke to a friend and he was like well you have to write 30 CV and cover letters and that's when I realized all of these guys they they' been being prepped for this from six seven years old you know they'd all played the OBO at the Royal Albert Hall they'd all like dirt bike through the Sahara Desert for charity they were members of the junior United Nations and me I when I was that age I was trying to like start a rap group you know I was fluffing pillows at a sofa store because I needed to pay my University fees you know so I was like really depressed actually because it was like I thought it's it's not fair you know like I I'm like I was one of the best kids my course I was killing the exams and yeah I wasn't going to get in because I didn't have this background stuff it's kind of like there's a wall basically yeah and unless you're from that rich background you can't get in so I just thought what I'm going to do is I'm going to just be big I'm going to be really loud I'm going to kill all the exams I'm going to make sure everybody knows who I am bizarrely that worked and and one one day I was sitting in the library London School of Economics Library doing my maths homework and some guy who I never met before came up was like you Gary Stevenson and I was like yeah and he said City Bank has one Trader a year through a card game which is a mats game he just briefly explained the game to me and he was like you know you should enter it if you win you get a job and then he walked off and and LSC is this kind of place but for me you know I was always good at math I was always good at games I was always good at competitions and it felt to me like well here's a game you know here's a fair game and we can do it and um I went to that competition and it was a mass game and I won it I got to the National final and I and I won that and then suddenly that meant that when I was 21 just turned even when I was 20 I was on the City Bank trading floor doing like trading internships that got me the summer internship and I got the job that way what was crazy about it was I hadn't done any of this prep I hadn't done any of this memorizing the words memorizing the language I was literally a kid from down the road who happened to be good at math and I think that's it works really well for the book because it really means I was someone who knew nothing about that world and now you can kind of see it Through The Eyes of someone who knows nothing you know even Michael Lewis is kind of coming he knows that space and he's using that language but but really you get the chance to see as this is I'm you I'm a kid who doesn't know anything about this world doesn't know the language walks in and sees all this m stuff so yeah that's how I got the job and that was the internship while you were still in school right and then the internship would lead lead to the full-time offering yeah so I got that got me that got me a twoe internship and I requested to have the first week straight away because it also got me an interview for the summit internship so I just went in straight away and I just said hello to everyone on the floor so that when I had my interviews for the Sumit internship it would definitely people that I'd met and then they all knew me so they got me to the summit internship the summit internship I was insane the summit internship had three trading competitions in the grad scheme and I won all of them and it even had one public speaking competition and I won that and I all I can say is like when I was a kid I was very very competitive I was a very I'm I'm an old man now and I'm more relaxed but you know I was a poor kid you know I've been sleeping on a broken mattress for 20 years you know and I don't want to do that and I knew I was as good as he these guys so for me I was just going to I was going to make sure I got it so yeah two onewe internships led to the summer internship and that got me the full-time job so you secure the internship how then do you secure the job okay so I had these two onewe internships and the second one week the first week I just met everyone on the floor that was the credit desk which is one of the desks that blew the world up later on I didn't my career didn't go that way then I had this internship on the St desk which is the short-term rat trading desk which is basically where the vast majority of this book is story is is told and um so St short-term interest rates trading is quite interesting in the sense that up until 2008 it had become like a really like unfashionable Backwater of trading City group as it is today is a merger of City Bank and Salamon and Salamon is this like this fancy big money world that was written about by Michael Lewis in lias poker and City Bank is a much more like prosaic just like money management thing and St was in the City Bank side it had a reputation as like not making any money so up till 2008 you know younger people won't remember but before 2008 everybody wanted to work in credit these guys were making a ton of money they're making super complicated things they're making loads of stuff and because I had a mat background people kind of thought Gary's going to go work in credit but I got this place on the stt desk because it was so unfashionable it was a bunch of older guys like they hadn't managed to like hire many young guys and the younger guys who'd come in are kind of the guys who'd failed to get jobs on the other desk kind of like the rejects like so as the older guys there was a guy there who never went to University from Liverpool worked his way up from being like a cashier at a local bank there was a guy there from Australia who used to be like a top level rugby player who'd gotten in through connections and there were a bunch of kind of social weirdos who had not been popular enough to get other good desks and when I went there I actually felt much more at home because they they were like the other desk were just these like this sort new breed of Young Money slick back hair expensive shirts whereas here there were people from places with accents I kind of liked it and um I I just sort of offered to buy people their lunch cuz that's what I was doing at the sofa store I worked at I was hey you want me to get your lunch so I was like doing lunch runs for these guys and they they loved it they loveed this like little Cockney guy from down the road buying them lunch and they would ask me every day to get like more and more complicated lunch orders and then on the last day the head of the desk was like today you're going to buy lunch for everyone on the floor and he asked me to like buy lunch for everyone so I ended up buying like a hundred burgers and carrying them back and forth and then when I came back I was just like exhausted and he was like you do you have a passport I was uh like yeah he go right go get your passport you're going skiing he sent me home to go on this ski trip and I was like texting my dad you know where's my passport and then they took me skiing and and these guys I didn't really realize it at the time but I think they kind of like fell in love with me in a way and I think this stuff I was like 20 years old I didn't realize but kids from my sort of background my sort of voice local kids from the area don't appear in this place and I think they saw it's what they want Finance to be they want Finance to be young kids you know like going for it like really like the local talent and they like we want this guy and they made a really hard pitch me like we want to hide to this desk and my mates at LC were like don't work in that area it's unfashionable but they said to me if you work on this desk we'll let you trade from day one and the way it worked back then I think still now is you have to go on like a graduate scheme six months of training a year of training 18 months rotations then you get a desk you're not really trading for three years until you start these guys like you can trade from day one and I was so confident as a kid I was like that's all I want if they can let me trade from day one I'll kill it and I mean I was right because within a few years I was a top Trader at the bank basically so I hired to this desk the third desk unpopular desk 2008 happened suddenly they are the most profitable desk on the entire floor because they're making short-term loans and after the credit crisis nobody can get short-term loans so suddenly these guys have all the money so I end up in this kind of mad desk with a bunch of Mad Men Who are have been unpopular for years nobody's been listening to them and suddenly they're like the kings of the trading floor and I was just like like scuffling around around trying to figure out how they making their money but but yeah that's that's how I did my internship and that's how I ended up getting the full-time job did you want the money or the success more what was really your driving motivation that is a really good question because if you would ask me when I was 18 19 20 I would say I would have told you the money I would have said definitely what I want is the money I want money I want money because you know what I was poor I was real poor you know I was like skipping meal poor and I think if you ask any 19-year-old who's that level of poor what they want they're going to tell you want money but the weird thing was like what I wanted was to be making like 60 70 p a year which back then to me was I couldn't imagine that then when I saw how much money the guys were making it blew my mind and I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe it it was actually like almost upsetting to me and then within like a couple of years I was a multi-millionaire by 25 and then once I had that money it didn't make me happy this so cliche thing to say but like I didn't even know how to spend money so I got like I got given loads of money and I bought this flash new apartment I didn't even know like where do you buy a table where do you buy a sofa how do you choose a sofa when I was a kid I never went to a shop I never went into a restaurant suddenly you given all this money and I realized that what I thought I wanted as a kid was to be rich and I realized now that what I really wanted was just not to be poor that's that's what it was and then once I wasn't poor anymore it sort of it it meant I had to kind of reassess everything what what do I actually want from that what was your relationship with your parents like and how did they talk to you about money or the lack of religious Mormons and there's a concept in Mormonism of the straight and narrow path and the great and spacious building which is like the straight and narrow path is the difficult path of righteousness and the great and spacious building is The Temptations of the world so I think when I got expelled from school for selling drugs at 16 and then became like a very successful Banker I think they had some concerns perhaps about that I'm not religious anymore you know I I stopped going to church when I was very young and I think this is something interesting perhaps about a maybe something that's different between British and American culture my mom's family is is Italian and they're a migrant family my dad's family is very traditionally typically that English working class there's this comedy sketch we have this old comedy sketch rich person is I am working class I look down on him because he's middle class I middle class I look up to him because he's upper class I look down him because he's working class and the working class person says I'm working class I know my place and I think there's this sense in in traditional British workingclass cult culture like for example in dick in Great Expectations like if you're poor and you try to get rich only bad things will come of it so I think my parents were a little bit worried about just where I was going what I was doing it didn't really tie down with their values but I think at the same time they were very they were proud of how successful I was I think more than anything where they are now is confused I think they're confused to see their son become a very successful Trader and then become a YouTuber become a campaigner now become an author it's um I've taken a few different parts if you've listened to some recent episodes of this podcast you'll have heard me talk about hostinger and they're incredibly easy to use website creation Services I actually did a walkr to set up 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same thing well done and that was it and I've always backed myself and I think my parents have always had a lot of faith in me probably my sister's been more sort of supportive on the way but I think one thing that I always remember when I went to lse I thought lse would be full of geniuses because it's a very prestigious University it's not not it's full of kids with very rich parents and um if I'm going to be honest LSC was quite easy for me and I just got my first girlfriend first year of LC so I spent my whole time back in ilford my hometown East London messing around and I didn't really study very hard and I got like a good grade in my my first year and and I spoke to a friend of mine really nice guy he mentioned in the book and his family owns like the entire East African soap industry I noticed after my first year that suddenly everybody was like paying me a lot of attention and I said to this guy why is everybody paying me attention and he goes because of your exam grades and my exam grades were good but they weren his grades were better I said but your grades were better and he said yeah but nobody expects that from you and that's when I sort of realized because if you ask my friends if you ask my family if you ask my parents if you my sister what do you expect G they would all say he's going to be a millionaire because they saw me from Young Smart hungry ambitious energetic but it's actually these guys from richer backgrounds that were surprised and that's when I realized something which stayed with me a lot which is that a lot of people from richer backgrounds think that people from smarter backgrounds are stupid people sometimes ask me like you you're rich why do you dress like you dress why do you talk like you talk and I remember people when I was a kid saying if you want to be successful you got to change your voice for me if I was to change how I dress change how I talk change how I look it's not worth being successful because I want to show people that kids from my background and you don't need to be from London you could be from anywhere you could be from poor background in the states anywhere there are smart kids in these places and the reason they don't get in is because the system is not there for them so I think a lot of people have influenced me I think in many ways I do it for my parents but not just my parents everyone from where I'm from and that could be in London that could be in Scotland that could be you know that could be in Alabama you know anyone from a place where people thinks people from that place who sound like that who look like that are not successful I want to show like look we're as good as anyone no I think the power to want to prove something to yourself to people who are doubting you to people who would look up to you if you're successful is so strong I feel very driven by that too like I always want to I don't know I I also feel like I want to prove that you don't have to come from a fancy background to to be successful in this world yeah I want people to know that you when I was a kid so we're talking in London I'm from east London which is the the poorest part of London probably now and historically when I was a teenager Grime music just started you know Grime music no gri music is a London originated like kind of rap genre and a lot of guys came through that were from very close to where I'm from DIY rasol Wy these guys like from very close where I'm from and I remember up until then we were watching us hip hop and it was all guys like popping champagne into swimming pools and this was not my life you know what I mean so to see a bunch of guys coming from where I'm from sounding like where I'm sounding and feeling like they had a life like my life it meant so much to me and that's why like I don't want to change the way that I talk I always remember David Beckham is from East London from Leon and you know we don't pronounce our te's and I remember when David Beckham made it famous guy started pronouncing his te's it broke my heart you know and so for me I want to be like people from where I'm from because that's where I'm from and I want to show those people as well as richer people that there is Talent there is talent and there is ability and and yeah because it means a lot to me can you just take it back a little and explain very simply how stt Works how do they make money okay so St stands the short-term interest rate trading whenever you hear interest rate trading you should hear loans interest rate trading is loans making loans borrowing loans borrowing and lending of money and the idea is you want to borrow money at a low interest rate and lend it back at a high interest rate so short-term interest rates is just doing that short-term loans loans of largely up to one year sometimes up to two years a lot of what what St desks do is literally on day loans bond is a form of a loan but they're doing sort of 10year bonds 10 year loans stir desk one year loans six Monon loans three Monon loans one day loans a ton of one day loans so if you're like a a corporation and you want to borrow money for two years there's a few ways you can do it you can go to a bank and you can say lend us money for two years or you can go every day and borrow money one day at a time and a lot of people do this one day at a time so it's very high volume business but it's not very sexy right like because everybody knows what the rate is today but it's simple things like what's the fed or the bank of England going to do next week what's the interest rate going to be be in two weeks time so 2008 or just to address your question quickly in 2008 one big thing that happened was the market for loans dried up now on St we did a thing called foreign exchange swaps which is a kind of collateralized loan which is I lend you Euros you lend me dollars so it's low risk because I've got your dollars it's not an unsecured loan and suddenly after 2008 nobody would do unsecured loans so these FX swaps these secured loans were basically the only game in town so everybody needed this product to get their dollars especially City Bank as an American Bank had dollars one big thing that happened after 2008 was nobody outside the US could get US dollars so for us as the stir desk making short-term secured loans which are the lowest risk form of loans in dollars we were basically the only guys providing dollars to the rest of the world so it was very very profitable for a short period of time but I wanted to go quickly to basically the my big trade that made me a lot of money is a St Trader because I think it explains how St trading works and how yeah how how I made money from it basically which is in 2008 all of the base rates went to zero now if you study economics the theory tells you that should cause like a very powerful economic stimulus and everybody thought 2008 2009 2010 2011 because of that powerful stimulus we going to get a big economic bounce back and rates will come up very quickly so if you're sitting in 2010 rates are zero and you want to borrow money next year even though rates are zero it's going to cost you 2% because everybody thinks rates are going to go up now I reached the belief that rates would stay zero for a long time which meant I just went out and I lent everybody money at 2% and I know that if I wait long enough base rate will still be zero I can borrow back at zero if you lend a billion dollars out of 2% you borrow back at zero you make 2% on a billion dollars which is what 100 million 10 million $20 million make sense that was your big trade that was my big trade yeah and how what Edge did you have how did you come to the conclusion that it was going to stay at zero this is a big question the period between 2008 and 2019 is super interesting right because every single point in those 11 years if you were to ask an economist when will rates go back up they would have said next year and they were wrong every single year in the UK they did briefly go up in the US but they came down again and then in 2020 when covid happened finally everybody agreed rates will never go up again and then obviously they went up to 5% so if you look at the recent history of predicting interest rates economists are unbelievably bad at it we're almost always wrong at predicting interest rates so I was sitting there 2008 and I saw this crash happen nobody expected then everybody says 2009 massive recovery didn't happen everybody says 2010 massive recovery didn't happen and I'm sitting there like end of 2010 looking around all these millionaires who are wrong all the time and I'm thinking this is my chance here you know these guys are are idiots basically if I can figure out why they're always wrong and there's money in it for me right so the big question of that period of why rates didn't go up is why are people not spending money the reason that low rates are supposed to stimulate an economy is because they make it cheap for you to borrow they make it cheap for companies to borrow they make it pointless to save so spend spend spend so people should have been spending 2009 10 11 why didn't they you know I ask people I ask people you know why like Traders on the floor why do you think people are not spending money and they're like oh it's because the credit crisis you know recently I went to Oxford University I asked the professor why think people are not spending money he told me it was an exogenous shock to consumption savings preferences not quite sure what that means but this is this is what people were thinking at the time and I basically thought and this is where I think I was actually very much in some ways advantaged by coming from a poor background I just went and ask people why why do you not spend money why do you not spend more money and you can imagine what they said right they everybody said I just spend more money because I don't have any more money that's why I don't spend more money and um I didn't want to take that face value right so I sort of I started to look into the financial situation of my friends my family and my friends families what I saw everywhere was parents who owned property and kids who would never own property so what that tells you is your average British family and I don't think it's that that different in the US your average British or American family is going over time from being a property owning family to a non-property owning family does it make sense turn around to a family that is losing the only asset they have over time and say why don't spend more money it doesn't make any sense these guys that we know for certain that they're spending more than their income generationally year after year because they're losing their homes but I remember thinking sort of it you know these guys are losing their homes they're going into debt but like doesn't make sense like where are the homes going like who are they going in debt to and then early 2011 I got called into a meeting at City Bank we used to have like a weekly economics meeting there was one good Economist there who I who I rated quite a lot and he he walked us through the financial situation of Italy Spain Portugal Greece Ireland but also the UK the US Japan in every case what you saw was government going into debt spending more than their income losing their assets and I came out of this meeting and I couldn't help but see this like this symmetry between my friends and their families and like the world's biggest governments in every case spending more than their income going into debt losing their assets and it's impossible right everybody can't lose their assets simultaneously and everybody can't go into debt simultaneously somebody has to own the assets somebody has to own the credit on the debt and I was kind of thinking who is it and I was sitting there and I remember like I used have to bring the bring the burgers to that meeting so I was sitting there surrounded by like hamburgers on my desk and just looking to the people around me and a bunch of idiot Millionaires and I just realized it's us isn't it it's us we are the guys who are getting richer when the world is losing their homes we are the guys who own Italy's government debt we are the guys with money in the bank we are the guys with the assets and I realized as we get richer and richer they will get poorer and poorer and there's I realized there was no Dynamic opposing that I realized that and having studied economics nobody was talking about it nobody I realized this is inevitable the path that will we will take now which is the middle class will lose their homes the middle class will fall into debt governments will lose their assets governments will fall into debt the rich and the super rich will get richer and richer and richer which means these people who aren't spending now will never be able to spend they will get poorer and poor and I knew straight away what that meant it meant I had to buy green Euro dollars which is a bet on the interest rate so I I knew that it meant that interest rates couldn't recover because the spending power of the people couldn't recover I think what I had first I had access to real people which I think most Traders nowadays don't because they're from Rich families Rich schools completely Rich backgrounds but I think secondly I was able and willing to step back from just the textbook economics and look around at the world and ask what's happening and I think nowadays people who study economics economics is a very very very heavily mathematized degree and they just want numbers but I think if you take a step back and you look at what's happening you can you can see every ordinary person knows that ordinary families are losing their homes governments are clearly being bankrupted wealth inequality is clearly going through the roof that's going to that's going to keep happening and I think that for me the one Edge that I had from that moment and which has always been very profitable for me trading is I understand that inequality will increase I understand what that means for ordinary families and I understand what that means to the economy and that's it's not a complicated thing but it's very monetizable because economists don't know it and they don't talk about it you know in from the beginning of covid the US government has given out more than $2 trillion sorry more than3 trillion do since the beginning of covid it's thousand it's tens of thousands of dollars per family it's overwhelmingly pulled with richer families if anyone did the analysis at the beginning of covid you could have seen inequality will explode during Co and the first ever YouTube video I made with the reason I made the YouTube channel is cuz I wanted to tell people inequality is about to explode you need to be ready for this anybody could have seen that but most economists simply do not think about inequality they do not think about distribution so that's first of all it's it's terrible for our societies and for our future because it means they're not going to fix it and secondly for me it has been a massive Edge in markets because it's it's in my opinion it's dominated what's happened you know I was able to predict the cost of living crisis I was able to predict the increase in house prices and the increase in stock markets because I understood the inequality effects of Co so for me really in my opinion the art of trading it's not about being right it's about being right when other people are wrong and it's about seeing the important things that other people miss the economy as it exists right now there is one massive massive hugely important thing driving everything which is hardly ever spoken about which is the growth in wealth inequality and the loss of wealth of governments in the middle class and if you understand that then you can you can trade very profitably and I do trade very profitably but I think you know I think it it also should force us to ask what does that mean for our society what does that mean for our future and and what should we do about it with this Edge that you have knowing about this growth in income inequality do you feel some sort of obligation to help reduce that or change it and do you think there is a solution I mean for me it's it's not about obligation right it's about it goes back to this if you see a terrible thing happening do try and stop it inequality was getting worse anyway before Co the amount that wealth inequality increased during Co is insane and once you start that it creates a momentum of itself so in covid the richest families accumulate hundreds and thousands the average US billionaire doubled their wealth in the first year of covid right you see this enormous increase in wealth cash accumulation by richer people what are they going to do with that money rich people they're not going to spend it right they'll spend a bit of it for sure but they're going to mainly use that to buy assets where are the assets going to come from just the struggling people hanging on to the middle class right you know that's so once you give them that money they use that money to buy the rest of their assets which then means ordinary families their kids don't get homes and if they do get homes they have to get massive mortgages which they're borrowing from the rich which means more rent payments more interest payments it means government is in debt to the rich more interest payments higher taxes for ordinary people going to the rich so once that momentum starts it will continue so for me my background is maths you know I'm looking at this as a mathematician I'm saying where does this go what this goes to is the the massive impoverishment you know the reason that us is a rich country the UK is a rich country is because they have large prosperous middle classes if you go to a place like India they don't have that you know if you go to the the 50th percentile in the US it's getting worse but it still has a decent standard of living you know you go to an India it's it's extreme poverty you know and that is what happens if you don't protect your middle class so for me I don't come from a rich background you know my family is not rich my friends are not rich right and I see what's happening to their lives and I know that that's just the beginning and that it will get worse so for me it's not about obligation it's just do you want the world to be terrible or not and that I'm somebody who's fortunate enough that I have the time and the money that I can devote some energy to trying to stop this and I think because I'm from that background an ordinary background I think I can speak to those people and I want to try and stop it and whether I do or not I don't know but you know that's that's what I want to do with my life so what do you say to your your friends your family who don't come from money I mean I I imagine you're not going to them and saying it's going to get worse for you yeah you know this is a tricky thing I went to like a friend's birthday party the other day and he's like 50 but his like one of his like young nephews was there and he's saying to me you know what do I do how do I make money like you did and of course like loads of people ask me these questions and they say teach me how to trade this kind of thing and actually you know at the beginning of covid I put out these videos and I wrote some articles saying house prices are going to go up which they have done which they did do significantly and a couple of friends of mine came to me like hey but I haven't got a house and you know they're sitting on like 50 60 Grand deposits they're saving up they can't afford to buy a house if house prices go up it's terrible for them right they know what can you do what can I do to protect myself and you know I personally when covid happened I knew asset prices would go through the roof and I was sitting on bonds before covid because before covid the US had a briefly High interest rate to were coming down and it was just my classic trade bet on interest rates coming down so I had these bonds and they went up and I wanted to get into gold because I thought gold price will go through the roof and early on Co gold spiked and then it collapsed and I couldn't believe it and I bought like a million dollars of gold and I've made a ton of money on that trade right and my friend say what can I do and I I just perhaps naively said oh well if you want you can do what I'm doing which is what I've done is I've opened a trading account I've bought a ton of gold you can do that if you want and they both went and they did this gold price went up gold price went up you know making Money G up like 20% so they're happy with you at that that point yeah but then then it had a little Spike down it maybe dropped 5% up up something like 15 20% and down 5% both of my friends called me like what do I do and I'm like well do you meet you they do anything you can buy a bit more if you want and they're like you don't understand like I'm done like I'm out I've lost all my money and I was like how how how it's gone up 20% and down 5% how have you managed to lose money and they both did the same thing which was first of all they didn't they didn't buy they wait it goes up 5% and they I should have bought it goes up another 5% now they buy it so they missed the first 10% straight away then it goes up another 5% and they're like oh this is good we'd buy a bit more then it goes up another 5% and then suddenly they have this moment where they realize that they themselves are geniuses and they buy they buy platinum and they buy padium and they buy Tesla and they buy Bitcoin they buying everything right and they they've gone mad they've lost their heads and then everything's Fallen at once and they've lost all their money and that is when I realized like don't try and teach people to trade and to be honest I don't think that ordinary people sitting on sort of ordinary sums of money 20 $30,000 should be trying to trade I think you should be trying to invest I don't think you should be trying to be like trying to be time the markets perfectly in this kind of thing because ultimately you want to beat the markets you want to beat me and I've been doing this every day for years you know I was waking up at 5:00 a.m. for six years I was doing this every day hours a day studying for this you know what I mean are you going to beat me you know what I mean if somebody came to you and said Hey listen I think I'm going to I think I'm going to beat you same Bol at the Olympics next year you know what I mean listen I ain't saying I'm same B but I was one of the best in the world at least for a period of time trading is a competitive market you know you're not going to watch a couple of YouTube videos and become the best Trader in the world so for me it puts me in this weird position because people come and ask me how do I make money and listen there's things sensible things you can do and I know that you give people sensible advice the sensible things that you can do but the truth is there's only so much you can do to protect yourself if the whole system is collapsing if you come to me with $100,000 $200,000 maybe there's a few things you can do but most people don't even have that so like what I want to tell people is you need to protect yourselves from a collapsing system and the way to do that is to unite and work together to fix the game in your favor you know my parents lived in a generation where most people if you worked hard you could live something like a good life I come from East London I grew up it's a very Pakistani area these guys came over 30 40 years ago very poor they worked hard running shops cleaning and now they own houses you know what I mean that was possible then but we moving into a world where that's increasingly less possible and if you don't fight against that who's going to protect your kids and grandkids you know and I know people don't like to be political but what I say people is look if you don't do politics they're going to do it anyway and the system is becoming harder and harder for ordinary people as the rich are getting richer and richer we don't do anything to push back against that you know are you going to first you have to fight to be in the top 10% the top 5% the top 2% the top and then the top 1% you know eventually you'll be squeezed out it's kind of like a squid game situation here where I see all of these people from poor backgrounds struggling against each other while the game is getting harder and harder and listen I understand it because I was the same if you come to me 18 19 years old and say you need to fix the system to make it fairer I'm going to be get lost mate I'm going to take care of myself the truth is ordinary people are in a difficult situation here but they have one big Power which is that there's a lot of them and if they unite and work together they can push back to change the rules of this system so that wealth stops flowing out of the middle class to the rich and starts flowing back in other direction if they don't do that then they're fighting against the tide so I think I'm always in this kind of tricky situation where how do you convince people that the best way to protect their interest is to work together because we live in such an individualistic society and and it's hard you know people want to when you can't even take care of yourselves how are you going to take care of others but the truth is I I think the best weapon that ordinary people have in the game that's happening now is strengthen numbers and if they're unwilling to unite then it's like you're going into battle you're not using your only weapon so I'm trying to kind of move people into a space where of course take care of yourself do what you can like to take care of yourself in your family so I think I'm always trying to balance this line and we do offer some sort of financial advice and I know you're offering Financial advice on your channel this show is sponsored by better help have you ever said I wish I had more time or there's just not enough time I I used to say this constantly I felt like I was always rushing desperately trying to fit everything and everyone in trying to do 10 hours worth of work in 6 hours and feeling exhausted with no time for something that was really important myself I made a conscious decision to change to review what was actually important versus what I told myself was important it's still a work in progress but I make time to step away whether I take a walk put my phone on do not disturb for 2 hours or simply relax at at home therapy can be a great place to understand our priorities and remove the guilt we so often feel about putting ourselves first you can also learn how to set and effectively communicate your boundaries so that your me time can be uninterrupted and fulfilling however you choose to spend it I've been using better help for a while now and one of the things I found most useful is how flexible and convenient it is my schedule can be hectic so being entirely online really works you can also try different therapists to find the right fit for you I've switched therapists four times to find the right person for me give it a try and learn to make time for what makes you happy with betterhelp visit betterhelp.com slm today to get 10% off your first month that's betterhelp hp.com slm I'll put the link in the description so when you talk about the difference between a retail investor just someone investing a thousand that they have versus you a professional Trader who was one of the top in the world is the big difference controlling emotion or is it access to more data that you have is it that you're spending more time on it this is a good question so so when we had the big like Bitcoin craze crypto craze which is still existing but it's dying down now I had a few friends get sucked into it and lose quite a bit of money and I was quite worried about it and I reached out to a guy who I know who runs like a like a gambling charity like a former gambling addict and it's the sports gambling thing but I said to him you had any guys coming through with like crypto problems and he was like tons they are flying in guys are losing their money left right and Center first of all I think that's interesting because like you know those guys aren't posting on Instagram right you know the guys with the Ferrari poting Instagrams the guy losing their the guys losing their shirts and not posting and I was worried about it man because you know like a lot of my audien is the same kind of people who are doing this kind of thing he said do you want to come and give a talk you know can you come and give a talk and we can talk about it and and um I went and I gave a talk about the difference between trading and investing and what I started on was I messaged a guy a former work colleague who used I work on the City Bank trading desk with and um I said have you got any photos of me as a Trader and he sent me a photo of me wearing a hoodie next to like a cereal packet asleep on my desk I remember thinking like at that time I was City bank's best Trader in the world right and I thought this is such a great thing to show people who want to do trading because the images that you get you know there's a lot of scam channels out there we're going to teach you to trade and it's always like a flash suit guy really like handsome guy six screens and you know there was me top Trader in the world asleep on the desk and I actually thought like this is good actually because this is this is kind of breaking the myth of what a Trader does you know like I think what a lot of people are being sold is basically a roulette machine you know you go to the casino I don't gamble right but I've been to Vegas right you go to the casino what's a slot machine it's flashing lights it's moving pictures it's noise and that is what people are being sold on trading platforms right green numbers red numbers yeah Buy Buy Buy sell sell sell that is not what good Traders are doing good Traders are not doing this day trading stuff up down up down good Traders are trying to understand what the hell is happening in their market and you know I make my money as a Trader by understanding the economy not every Trader does that right some Traders they just know their spefic specific Market really well the specific things that happen in that market right but that's their Edge my Edge is is knowing the market right knowing the my Edge is knowing the economy but I think what people are being sold is like a dream of trading like a wful Wall Street dream of trading six screens all of these numbers red lights red lights up and down Buy Buy Buy sell sell sell day trading I think the the big thing for me is frequency so I was a Trader top Trader right I had the same trade on for three years and I was a short-term rates Trader and all I was betting is that rates are going to to come down for three years same trade I was I don't do this day trading stuff in out in out you know day trading is for guys who you know know the market flow like on the trading floor you know what I mean it's not for guys at home and it's not for guys like me like what I know is the economy that's medium-term stuff so I think really like anyone who is sitting at home doing high frequency day trading stop that's my opinion like high frequency stop just don't do it like what is your Edge on high frequency stuff but there's a book by is it tally full by Randomness talks about how like if you look in the clouds you'll see a face I think like if you stare at these charts for long enough you'll see something get rid of the charts put them away sensible long-term investing the the two things that are dead giveaways you're doing it wrong as like a as a nonprofessional frequency and length of time that you're holding that trade basically you should be putting things on oh on the other one is the rate of return you expect M like I was one of the top traders in the world right if I make 10% I'm doing well 10% is a good return right and if you if you if you see someone in the internet saying we're going to give you 200% turn that off because that is fraud it's con there's no way you can make 200% unless you're doing something crazy so like listen look at what's the base R is 5% right if you can beat That by a few percent you're doing well as an as an as a nonprofessional and that's what you should be targeting right you should be sensible long-term trades try and beat the base rate a little bit if people are selling you 200% or even like 50% like turn it off run no high frequency hold it for a decent period of time don't check it every day Target sensible returns for me you want to be viewing it as like gardening you're growing it slowly over time and I know that's not a sexy message and if you're coming at me with $20,000 and I'm saying look if you can make 8% you know 8% of $20,000 $1,600 a year it's not going to be lifechanging but it's better than losing all your money on bitcoin isn't it so I think for an ordinary person I would say no day trading no high frequency trading long-term sensible investment I mean would you agree with that yeah 100% yeah but it's it's listen I know listen my dad worked for Royal Mail right they deliver letters right 35 years and for that we was poor but you know we he had a house paid the mortgage off three kids he raised them I know you can't do that no more I know you can't do that no more and I know that when you put young kids in a situation where getting an ordinary job doesn't work where doing what their dad did doesn't work then they're going to look for something that works right and they know that 7% is not going to make it for them so they're looking for something crazy so they're going for Bitcoins they're buying nfts this kind of stuff I know I know I know I know but you're just you're Grist for the mill man you're just you're going to you're going to be taken advantage of and it's not a sexy message but it's true you know um and I see because I've come out and I've been quite vocal against things like Bitcoin I get the messages in my inbox from people I've lost all my money on bitcoin they're not posting pictures on Instagram they're messaging I see them and this guy that runs a gambling Channel he sees them these guys are invisible nobody nobody tolds you they lost their money all their money on bitcoin it's happening all over the world people are losing it so we live in a world of get get rich quick schemes and they're often pimped out by a lot of people on Instagram standing next to Lamborghinis and on YouTube as well yeah stay away from them what are the what have you seen that the wealthy are doing that is different from what other people are doing I mean the wealthy are not day trading their money what are they doing to preserve their wealth the wealthy tend to long-term invest in a variety of assets and Truth is they try and minimize taxation they try and avoid taxes um because that's a very safe way of you know of of increasing your returns they diversify they buy a lot of things they hold a lot of assets so they'll have property they'll have stocks and shares you know they'll probably have some bonds as well they'll try and reduce their taxes obviously I'm not telling people necessarily try and reduce your taxes but that is what they do but the thing is they they always win because we have this kind of structural setup so in my mind when inequality increases or what do ordinary people buy they buy stuff you know they buy goods and services because they need them you know they need you know they don't have much money and they need more stuff you know rich people have loads of money when they get more money they buy assets so when inequality increases demand for Stuff goods and services goes down and demand for assets increases so as inequality increases and increases and increases asset prices just go up and up and up and up and up and this is the big shif in markets in the last 20 30 years I think any big picture analysis has to be everything's gone up you know you get some people talking about this on the internet that everything bubble but everything has gone up houses have gone up gold has gone up people talk about the housing bubble everything's gone up stocks have overperformed housing most of the world gold has out formed housing in most of the world land has out formed housing you know everything has has gone up because structurally we are making the rich richer and what do the rich want assets so everything has gone up and then you can see there's this kind of power spiral which is as the rich get richer what do they want they want the stuff rich people want well who's got the stuff rich people want the rich people so the rich get richer and richer and they end up sucking the assets away from from the middle class so it works very well for them this Diversified hold everything pay no taxes strategy it Bank bankrupts our government and it takes assets away from the middle class but it works for them the problem is you know the rich will Target something like 7 7 8% return that's now right before in a zero interest rate environment they'll be looking for 3 4 5% the r will Target like 7 8% return and that's great if you're coming at me with $5 million and you're making 8% return you know you're making $400,000 a year you can live on that you know but if you're coming as an ordinary person with $50,000 it doesn't work so this is the this is the problem you know the strategies that work for the rich work for the rich because they're rich but of course Ordinary People they they should invest sensibly but I think unless they also protect their political interests I think it's probably not going to be enough for a lot of families it's difficult because it's obvious that to get rich you need to buy more assets but as the rich are buying more assets the price of assets go up so then how is a person on an ordinary salary is supposed to buy those assets because you know we live in a very divided economy right you know and there are some people that have assets and there are a lot of people that don't have assets and you know people come to me what can I do what can I do poor people they want crazy trading strategies cuz they can't buy assets and you know people in the mid in the middle they want investment strategies but what I see is a bunch of ordinary people like fighting each other for crumbs while the rich are just making a fortune the average US billionaire doubled their wealth in one year in the UK the average we've never seen bigger faster increase in wealth of the Rich and I think if you think about it we know now that inequality increased during Co significantly if I were to ask you a question imagine we just pause the economy for a year and in that period we significantly increase inequality what do you think will happen to ordinary people's living standards when we reopen you would have to say they will fall right which is exactly what happened which is exactly what I predicted and yet very understandably Ordinary People just say well how can I protect myself how can I protect myself but if your class is being destroyed it's very difficult to protect yourself so it's it's I think there's this kind of crossover between investment and politics which is investment works for rich people because they're rich politics can work for poor people because they are many if you can convince poor to focus on investing instead of politics that's great for the rich like imagine I walk into a room and I'm 10 times as strong as everyone in the room but there's a thousand of them what do I want them to do I want them to fight me one at a time that is what I see in the world right now I see poor people convinced that they have to play this game that they can't win against people who will definitely beat them and convinced that they shouldn't play a game which they would definitely win which is to unite and to say we want wealth to flow from the rich to the many But It's Tricky and I grew up in society and I was the same when I was young all I was thinking about was me me me so I'm kind of trying to think how do we convince people it's an interesting space right because I think the most selfish thing and the most self-interested thing that the poor could do right now is to unite and to tax the rich that that is the only thing that would actually protect them but we've somehow convinced them that that's like stupid maybe because it's hard you know we live in a very individualistic Society by investing increasingly it's you know there's a bottom 50% that have no assets know what do they do you know and that 50% will become 60% and that 60% will become 70% so and you know I know you know it's good for me that channels like yours exist right because people come and say you want Financial advice I can say listen go watch Erica she'll tell you about financial advice and I can say but you need to do the Politics as well and I think this I hope people can see it I hope people can see that if you don't you know go to India and look what it's like then where you have everything is owned by 1% 2% and the vast majority live in poverty you know that is where we can go and it's it's easy to say oh well we're America we're the UK won't happen here but you know read Charles Dickens it happened here it happened here you know it happened here in the UK we lived in a country where people the vast majority of people lived in Desperate poverty and you know I go to the street I grew up on and it was always a poor Street you know it's right next to the railway small houses it used to be families of four or five now there's like 15 individual impoverished people living in those houses sharing rooms you know this is the transformation of our society away from a respectable if sometimes difficult middle class life to Broad Mass poverty I think one problem you have is these two sides they don't get to see each other so once you go and I worked in the city you worked in law I didn't work with anyone who knew that what that poverty was happening and you know I go to the streets they don't know these guys are making $2 million a year so the poor don't know that the rich are taking everything and the rich don't see that the poor are struggling to eat you know in this country the UK more than 50% of the country struggled to feed and Heat their families last winter this is in the UK 50% if we don't do anything about it that will get worse and you know you can try and get into the top 30% top 20% the top 10% you know how do you feel lucky you know if you don't protect the distribution if you don't protect there is no middle class where do you you know we're not all going to be in the top 1% so yeah I don't know where you sit with that you know the way I see it is I take what I need and I give what I can so everybody I'm never going to turn around to a poor person and be like listen come support my YouTube channel because we need we need help you do what you need to do to protect yourself to protect your family and I would do the same but if you have some time and you have some energy be willing to look and and share messages like mine and educate yourself and your friends and your family because this fight ain't going away you know I think ordinary people can see things are getting worse and worse and worse look I understand that systems need to be changed I get that but at the same time I really I think about you know when a plane goes down put your mask on First and then help others it's not the other way around right so systemic changes are going to take a while and a long time if if they ever change like and so I find myself frustrated that we don't have a solution like for me I think one thing that you can do is be very clear about what you're asking for so what I ask for is is a reduction in wealth inequality ownership of assets so this is about who is getting richer and who is getting poorer in terms of asset ownership so in the last 20 years we can pretty clearly see what's happening which is ordinary families are having less ownership of assets the government is getting much poorer it's falling into debt and the rich are getting richer we need to put that in Reverse we need to put that in reverse and the best way to measure that is in asset ownership of ordinary people so we need to demand that Ordinary People accumulate more assets so in a way it's very aligned with with what you're doing right because you have an investment channel right you talk about how the Ordinary People accumulate assets but your if you exist in a tide where ordinary people in general are losing their assets it is very difficult as an ordinary person to accumulate assets because the you know the TI's going on way off you're trying to fight Upstream we know the current system most people will get poor asset terms year after year generation after generation I think generationally is the way to look at it because people tend to get rich over the course of their life but then their kids are poorer than them we need to demand that assets flow towards ordinary families so in a sense it's about the house in crisis you know houses are not disappearing you know London gets bigger and bigger every year you go to my hometown now it's 10 stories high it's much bigger than it used to be when I was a kid the assets are there but ordinary people not getting them they have to be owned by somebody they're owned by the rich we need to we need to demand reductions in wealth inequality so I think the first thing you can have is a clear demand but I totally understand what you're saying this is not going to happen tomorrow this is not going to happen tomorrow and this is why you know my message is sometimes hard to deliver because in the short term this gets worse in the short term this gets worse and the message that I send to people is number one is build those connections of community build those connections with people around you because we're all struggling and I think if we all struggle as individuals you know it's hard you know people don't like to come out and say you know financially I'm struggling but increasingly more and more people are struggling you know one message that I really want to send and I think that is really important to send is if you are financially struggling at the moment you're making the right choices you're trying not to overspend you're trying to save you're trying to invest trying to get a good job and you're still strugging this is not your fault this is a systemic problem many many people are struggling so get rid of those sense of embarrassment and shame because I come from a poor background right and I went and I've studied at Oxford I've studied at LC I've worked in the city I've worked in media there are kids I grew up with who are every bit as smart and hardworking and diligent as those guys at Oxford and those guys in the city and they're struggling to pay the mortgage right and I see why that is is because this this a systemic issue you right so get rid of that guilt get rid of that shame because that stops you from pushing back we need to start accepting that life is hard life is hard life is difficult and you need to do what you can to protect yourselves but don't feel guilty don't feel shameful but don't beat yourself up you know work hard be there for your friends be there for your family it's a really it's a really powerful message you talk about how it's going to get much worse before it gets better what do you think is that inflection point that's going to cause it to get better so I think people often say like people often expect to see like another like crash like a 2008 star crash or a housing crash you know you know I'm 36 now and I've probably read 100 housing crash predictions none of which have come true in the newspapers I don't think it goes like that I think the way that the economy is now with inequality increasing increasing increasing whenever asset prices fall interest rates fall and that brings asset prices back up asset prices seem like basically bulletproof you know nothing can bring them down I think I think that will continue of course shortterm you will get ups and downs but because of this new sort of economic management where rates get slashed quickly it tends to take the pressure off of the asset market and it heaps the pressure onto the backs of ordinary families essentially that's kind of what you're seeing you know everything 2008 covid very very different problems the end result was increased pressure on working families and the flip side of that relatively extreme enriching of the very richest I don't see that changing there's a group of like 5% at the top especially 1% at the top that are absolutely creaming it they're like' never been richer they they think this is great I can't I can't help but remember when I was at Oxford so I recently did a master at Oxford like in the last I think was 17 to 19 saying to the professors you know why are you not talking about what's happening in the real world and they turn around to me and they said what do you mean like things are getting better right we were sitting there literally wearing bow ties in like a wood paneled Hall and he just thought you know I realized you know there were these two words missing like things are getting better for us and you know for me I'm a rich person I get richer every year it works for this system works very well for me and works for them doesn't work for ordinary people there's no automatic fix here the pressure is on the people and it it will basically happen when the people demand it the people have to demand it but what people demand will depend on what they believe and the stories they're being told I'm trying to tell a story here which is your life is getting worse because inequality increased massively the rich are getting much richer and their lives are getting much better what is positive about that message is that's a fixable problem we can reverse that flow of wealth we can get wealth flowing back to ordinary families we can make ordinary families Rich again we can make ordinary working people be able to buy homes like they could 30 40 50 years ago we could do that back then we can do it now we will definitely get changed because the pressure will be turned up on the people the people will end up getting the kind of change they demand but the kind of change they demand will depend on who wins the Battle of stories I would like to caution people against the naivity of assuming that things definitely get better you know look at the 20th century look at how that ended up and things did get better but they got a hell of a lot worse first all things get better for ordinary people because of the blood and sweat of ordinary people working together if we do that and we push in the right direction things can get b but if we get spread apart and we get we accept negative messages history tells you really bad things can happen so now one of the things that you said that I think is very right is people should not be naive whether it is about the economic situation or I think the most empowering thing is financial literacy that is the easiest way to level the playing field immediately is become financially literate learn what terms like assets mean how do I acquire assets how do I invest for the long term yeah 8% may not seem sexy but compounded it's a lot sexier than doing nothing my understanding is powerful man one of the First videos I made on my channel is called what is wealth and it's just me like walking down my local area saying like you know who owns these skyscrapers who owns these shops you know asset ownership because if you come from a poor background like me you don't know people that own assets you know especially you know in the US there's a bit more of a culture of like owning stocks and shares we don't really have that in in this country so people only really own their property and increasingly especially if you're from very poor backgrounds people don't own their own property so it's about thinking about listen who owns these assets just understanding something as simple as that can help you on both fronts number one it can help you understand what Financial Security is about like owning assets is a form of security that you know I don't need to work because I own assets if you can understand that that's powerful but it also teaches you about how the world Works which is you go to the supermarket you know you go to Walmart somebody owns that Walmart you know what I mean you go the office building you work and somebody owns it the restaurant you eat in everything in the High Street is own so I think understanding is powerful um it can be a bit upsetting when you realize that it means the situation is bad but for me the way I believe it understanding is always empowering where is empowering and I think it not only does it help us protect ourselves but it builds us as people it can help us to build our communities because we can spread that as well I think understanding I mean that's why I do what I do I think if I think if everybody understood the way things were they wouldn't accept them so I think more than persuading people what I see myself as doing is helping people to understand I think if I do that well enough the rest will fix itself when we talk about assets what is Gary's playbook for assets what should normal people do to start accumulating assets is the first step investing or is the first step a owning their own house like where do you see that I mean level Step One is managing your income and expenditure step one right you need to try and simple stuff you need to try and get the best job you can and try and not spend money on things you don't need I don't really like saying these things because I'm aware that I'm a wealthy person and these are things that I don't have to worry about but for an ordinary person this is step one income more than expenditure as much as possible and I say that in full awareness of how difficult that is for a lot of people once you do that then you can start trying to accumulate and you know here in the UK you can open a small taxfree savings account and you can start building up stocks and shares what do you buy I mean this is probably something you're more experienced say than me personally at the moment I have quite a lot of gold I think gold will do well in um the economic weakness that we're coming into but also own stocks and shares I'm a bit light stocks and shares I also own a fair bit of property you should be Diversified but I think an ordinary person I would say build up a diversified portfolio in your account looking towards the medium-term goal of trying to buy property because you got to live somewhere you know what I mean and that's the first thing to take off the Box until you have that and of course if you're somebody who's young and you're still moving about it might not work if you're at your specific time in life I think that is the first thing until you have that property you're insecure so I would say that's that's your first thing to get if you can it's funny because like here I can already I can see the thumbnail for the YouTube video it's like listen now we are doomed or something and of course that's going to get more clicks that's going to get people to watch but then like the optimistic side of me is like wait we have to we have to end this on a positive note like this is very depressing to be like inequality is only going to grow and grow but then maybe it's a problem that here I am trying to spin a very depressing but real message into a positive way I find myself very conflicted right now I think this is fixable this is a fixable problem I do what I do because I think it's fixable I wrote this book that I wrote Because I think this problem is fixable I think that but the first step to fixing a problem is realizing you have a problem you know what I mean you know my dad worked for 35 years and was able to support a family on a low income we could have that now and we listen since that time we've invented the Internet things could be so much better than they are and I think what gives me hope is that so many people today you know and I have people watching my channel older people younger people they want things to be better and they're willing they're willing to make sacrifices to push things in a better Direction so I think if we if we accept the path that we're on then we can change the path we can change the path and that that's why I do what I do you know that's why I wrote the book that's why I make my videos so I think we need to have a realistic assess of where we are where we are things are bad but they can get better but only if we accept it so I understand your kind of conflict which is like you don't want to spin it too positive because people need to understand the situation if they want to fix it listen tough times make strong people you know we got a lot of tough times ahead but we in this together we are in this together you know we have things like social media people who are from place from where I'm from and it doesn't need to be in the UK it could be in the US it could be in Europe it could be in Japan anywhere people from poor backgrounds who are struggling can see what I'm saying they can see what you're saying we can build these communities which can which which can push back and um and also which we can support each other you know what sometimes I get down about things but no I think that through understanding and through hard work we can make things better we don't we don't do that then we we'll get what we get but we can push things forward for some reason I feel like this is a talk where I'm going to have to sit for a few hours and process it I don't quite know how I feel because what your doing is very macro in my mind you are thinking about big picture solutions for a mass number of people what I do is micro I want to help individuals now become empowered with their finances become financially literate learn how to invest learn how to save more and I think both are ultimately needed like we need people fighting for each individual PE person the way I feel like I'm called to do but we also need people like you who are thinking very big picture about where the world is going maybe I'm just not yeah I think like I think we we need to accept as people that you know we are complete people and we can be both both like selfish and altruistic at the same time I don't think there's any conflict at all I think that we as people have to take care of ourselves we have to take care of our finances we have to take care of our health we have to take care of our families and we have to take care of each other I think that we as people are big enough to do both things and I believe that we can and I think that if we do that then we can definitely move towards a better future when you talk about everyone gathering together and fighting against the system to demand systemic change what are you advocating that people demand demand a reduction in wealth inequality demand that Ordinary People increase their wealth year after year demand that the average American 50th percentile man woman in the middle is increasing their wealth generation after generation that home ownership is increasing that levels of indebtedness are decreasing that things like stock and share ownership is increasing in ordinary masses because that's what we're losing that's what we've lost we've lost asset ownership for ordinary families what we're increasingly losing one thing it's a weird thing in a way that that gives me hope is crazy brexit situation in the UK the reason it gives me hope is that at the beginning both major political parties were super anti brexit but enough people in the country wanted it that both political parties had to turn on it even if it was something they didn't want to do I think enough Ordinary People start demanding clearly we want wealth transferring to the ordinary people we want the ordinary people getting rich year after year we want wealth to start flowing in that direction after Decades of flowing in the other direction if people demand that specific thing clearly enough I think the politicians will have to give it when you quit your job as a Trader is this what you expected you'd be doing years later that's a big qu this is something I talk about a lot in the book because it it would be super easy for me to say look I saw terrible things were going to happen and that's why I quit my job the truth is like it's complicated why I quit my job I had this stuff in my mind and it didn't sit right with me but I didn't really no like I remember having a conversation which which I've spoken about in the book with another another Trad on the floor which is just like do you think we should do something he was like what do you mean you think we should do something and I was like you know about like things getting worse forever and ever you think we'd do something and he was like you know we did we we did that trade and I was like yeah not to trade you know do you think we should do something and he was like what are you talking about like what what do you mean I was like do you think we should do something about like the collapse of our societies and he was like we did the trade and I was trying to get through to him and he was like look you can't stop this you can't stop this you know it's beyond your power as an individual to stop this and I think that I think that we all have this kind of head this voice in our heads that says that is this conversation that says look we see there are problems and you should do something but then we have this other voice that says oh but you can't stop it so you can't so so don't worry about it and that's kind of how we deal with it ourselves and I think I kind of gradually slowly came to this realization that maybe I as an individual it doesn't work like that it's not Gary Stevenson doesn't come and save Society of you know I'm not Superman you know Society will get better if enough of us do it so you know it's about putting that little bit of energy you have on the right side of the scales and it's about it's about finding you know what works for you you know for me like I decided to make a YouTube channel you know before that I was writing articles and I thought no I want to talk directly to the people but you know you might think that if you want to do something the best way for you is going to be a different way and the people watching might might find that for them something else is a different is a different way I think it's I guess for me really it was kind of a journey of rediscovering this idea of community and Society having grown up in a culture of poverty which kind of forced me into an individualistic mindset I always this is one random story in the book so I know you you lived in Japan before so I also lived in Japan 2012 to 2014 and karaoke is a big thing in Japan and um I I'm quite a good singer actually ohce but um I hated karaoke I got very self-conscious I went to karaoke with a bunch of guys like some westerners some Japanese guys and I sang My Song and I look very uncomfortable Japan old Japanese man his name was Hiroshi he sent me down and he said what you need to understand about karaoke is it doesn't matter whether you sing well or sing badly what matters is that your guests have a good time and this was just it's just a small conversation but I'd never thought of the world in this way like I I was raised in a very competitive place in a very competitive environment it was very Doggy Dogg it was very harsh I went into Trading and then here's somebody saying just act to make other people happy and it was kind of like just a new thing to me that and and I think I've kind of been on an on a journey myself of understanding that you know no man is a island you know and you can be as successful as you want and I was very successful and I was very rich but it didn't make me happy and I think I think part of being a complete human is is is to give and to find find your way of giving and finding your way of helping others and and that doesn't mean that you totally let go of yourself I still trade I still make money you know I haven't given everything away way you can do both you can live a good life for yourself and you can also give to others I don't think there's any any conflict that's very true about K yeah I'm my mom is Japanese and my dad's American so it's always a tug-of war where the Japanese side of me wants to put everyone else first and think about how others feel and think about how others would want me to behave and the American side of me is like oh it's all about it's like two opposite extremes of this and and I don't think you know I love Japan and it taught me a lot but for me personally the level of like self-sacrifice that is involved and even things like simple social interactions is for me too much but I think the level of like selfishness that for example like experience some place like the trading floor is also too much and I think that I guess as someone who is half American half Japanese you've probably battled with these kinds of questions yourself you know how much do we give and how much do we take and I think you can do both and you just have to find your space find your space but I thinkal yeah to be in my mind to be a complete person you have to do a bit of both and some days you're going to have more to give some days you're going to have have to to take care of yourself the podcast is called Erica taught me but today is all about Gary taught me so what do you want people to walk away being able to say Gary taught me this I want people to understand that we have a structural problem in our society inequality is getting bigger and that is impoverishing ordinary families um if we don't stop it it will get worse but we have the power because most of us are ordinary families to unite push back and demand change demand enriching of the middle class demand ordinary people getting richer generation after generation if we unite we can do that you know I've got the videos out there for people to understand to educate I would love people to come and watch them on Gary's economics learn spread I would love people to to read the book which explains my whole story of coming from a poor background to making this money and understanding the problems with the world yeah i' allow people to share my experience share my journey and um and then help me making the future better for ordinary people and ordinary families thank you so much thank you if you've enjoyed the episode please take a moment to a review it really helps support what we're doing thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next Tuesday on a brand new episode of Erica taught me
