How Do You Teach Someone To Invest In the Stock Market?

Teaching someone investing is different from teaching someone how to invest in the stock market. The first one is a general overview of what investing is, it could be real estate, stocks or buying jewelry. While the 2nd one is more specific and will determine the character and personality of the investor.

The hardest question for me to answer is when someone asks me, how to invest in the stock market. A life insurance agent will love this opportunity to sell an insurance product that has investment and retirement plan in it, earning himself a 40% commission in the process. But I'm not a life insurance agent and I definitely won't invest my money in insurance products.

I also don't like the 1 day seminars conducted by a lot of organizations on how to invest in the stock market. I think, that is a bit misleading. It takes me weeks to find out what's the best computer laptop to buy, it takes years of accumulated knowledge to know which specification is right for my needs, yet people seem to think that attending 1 day seminars would automatically make you an expert in a field that few of us can only master... or make profitable.

I do believe that these seminars have value. And I am not entirely against them. For example, teaching someone how to navigate an online stock trading dashboard would be a good seminar for 1 day. But teaching someone how to read charts or financial statements in one day would only do more harm than good for the investor  (but more good than harm to the broker, in terms of money). Since most people would actually study that sort of stuff in university for 5 years.

And I'm also not against insurance companies selling investment products. They are actually good, given some circumstances. But the bad news about it is that when sales quota comes first, the investor's welfare is not the #1 priority. Remember that these are salesmen, and you have to think twice before investing. They have a commission, a quota and are ambitious in pursuit of money. Your returns is probably not the first thing in their mind. Its probably their own retirement.

So how do you exactly teach someone how to invest in the stock market where financial advisers are salesmen and seminars are not enough?

Hmm... that is a big question mark and I still don't know how to answer that. When someone asks me, it always leaves me speechless. Trying to think of things to say.

How did I learn to invest? Books. But given most people are afraid to read books, I don't think I have an answer for that. What if the insurance salesman wrote a book? Reading what kinds of books is another question. But its a lot easier to answer.