926 gold mining shares up 80%, holding 20 ETFs & investing like a 17yo plumber with Owen Rask

**Glen James** (0:06)
Today on the show, we're talking your investing Qs. We'll provide some A's, and today I'm joined by Owen Raskiewicz. Is that how I pronounce it?

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (0:16)
Perfect. That's actually really well done.

**Glen James** (0:18)
Well, you're welcome. We are recording from Owen's studio.
Owen has the Australian Finance Podcast, and we'll talk about you a little bit later, but Anonymous asks, how do you know what to invest in without losing dollar dollar dollar sign? It still feels risky.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (0:37)
Well, I think the first thing is to know why you're investing would be a good step because I think the definition of investing is that it's risky. If it doesn't have risk, then I would classify that as savings.

**Glen James** (0:52)
What about, like to a non, I would probably say is it seems it feels risky.
Risks can be lowered with experience and information. I'm not opposed to a crap analogy.
A lot of the time, like if you're flying and there's turbulence and it's bad, you're like, oh, this is scary. Oh my gosh, this is risky. We're on the flight deck. The captains are probably like with their cup of tea during the same amount of turbulence. Oh, so how's that backhand slice going with you lately? Like it's a business as usual for them.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (1:31)
Absolutely.

**Glen James** (1:32)
How do you tell your listeners to get comfortable with taking risks?

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (1:37)
I think what you're talking about there is just like the knowledge gap. And so I think one of the things that happens with investing in particular is that it's unpredictable in the short term and the longer term it seems more predictable. Like it doesn't, it's not like a perfect replica of what happened in the past is going to happen in the future. But we do tend to see history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. And so you kind of get a feel for it. It's like you get a feel for when you go to the gym, what it should feel like and what it shouldn't, like what's an injury and what's not. And I think for investing it's much the same. You kind of just get a feel for it. The way I think about it and investing writ large is that it's an apprenticeship, it's not a degree. I think this is important for people to understand is because in an apprenticeship you learn by doing. In a degree, you learn the theory most of the time, some applied learning, some free labor out there for sure through these uni courses. But for the most part, it's a thing that you learn by doing. And I think the longer you do it, the more you will realize that these types of things happen.
You don't know exactly what comes next, but you have a feel for it.
And there's a famous saying that stock markets climb a wall of worry. There's always something to worry about, but the stock market has somehow kept going up. So it's climbed up this giant wall of worry.

**Glen James** (2:53)
Yeah, I like to say walking a yo-yo up a hill.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (2:56)
Yeah, perfect.

**Glen James** (2:57)
Yeah, yeah.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (2:58)
The other one is like a random, random walk with the dog on a leash. It's kind of going a little different directions, but you kind of know where you're going.

**Glen James** (3:03)
But Anonymous, what I would do is, I would open a micro-investing account, whatever an app is, like a, what do we got? Shares is a superhero, a beta shares direct.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (3:14)
Raise even.

**Glen James** (3:15)
Raise, just some fractional. Look at it, even VAS, Vanguard Australian Share Fund. Understand that that's 300 of the top Australian companies.
Throw 50 or 100 bucks in there. Just see how it feels. Like this is not an all or nothing thing. Let's walk into the water.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (3:37)
Do you remember paper trading?

**Glen James** (3:40)
Yes.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (3:41)
So this is like before we had these types of platforms that you just mentioned.

**Glen James** (3:44)
Like the ASX stock game?

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (3:46)
Yeah, kind of like that. But even before the internet, believe it or not, that was the time.

**Glen James** (3:50)
I'm not that old, Owen.

**Owen Raszkiewicz** (3:52)
But when I remembered growing up and thinking about this sort of stuff, you used to get like the AFR or any of the big business papers, and in there they'd have all the stock prices and stuff. And grandparents, to simulate what investing was like, is they would effectively say to the kids, all right, you get 5,000 fake dollars and we're going to track the prices.