INVEST RESPONSIBLY

Working as an investment advisor for many years, I realized that much of my time has been spent educating clients about the basics of investing, trading, and all aspects of personal finance. I have realized that most of the investing public generally fall into two categories; either they are a part of a small subset of the population who have a passion or specific interest in investing or trading, or, they are the larger portion of the population who have some basic working knowledge, but often lack information and knowledge about a large number of personal finance topics. In addition, I realized that most people do not have the interest, time, or a good way to learn about many personal finance topics. Most any finance topic may be covered online, but investors have to learn the material in most cases in isolation. Finally, when most of the investing public do have questions, or learn about personal finance topics, they are learning about those things from people who are selling them something; they are being sold a financial product, a financial plan, etc. I think this puts much of the investing public at an informational disadvantage. In my opinion, most of this material is not that difficult to learn. In fact, most investors could easily learn a lot if they were taught these things in, say, high school.

I decided that the investing public needed a new way to learn about personal finance that does not put pressure on them to learn from a salesperson, website, or book, college course, or seminar. There needs to be a face-to-face learning venue available that is not sales-oriented, or a paid seminar or class. Many investors I have met with over the years have seemed unnecessarily worried and stressed about investing and so I felt like it was important to create an environment, a venue, for investors to learn where the environment is not adding to their stress. I decided that to mix investment education with a casual social environment such as having cocktails at a bar (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) would make sense. And, STOCKTAILS was born.

Finally, it seemed contrary to have an educational venue which is just a veiled sales pitch or investment seminar (also a veiled sales pitch). So, STOCKTAILS draws on peer-to-peer information exchange without that ‘agency’ problem. The fact is, most of the investing public know something about some aspect of personal finance, but their knowledge is not comprehensive. Together as a group, most STOCKTAILS events members can come up with a lot of investment information, or answer most questions of others at the meetings.

-Ted Gilbert-
Founder