Martin Shkreli Finance Lesson Part 16 (Archive cut)

**Martin Shkreli** (0:00)
This is Lesson on RealPage amongst other things. So before we get to RealPage, I've actually updated the PowerPoint that I use called Investing Basics. And I've sort of slowly added to this over the course of about five months. And I've added some new pieces to it. So I'll upload this after the lesson is done, but we're up to 50 slides. And I intend for this to be kind of a large document that I put a lot of my sort of learnings into.
And you can review. So it's sort of structured right now in three or four segments. So the first is just sort of personal planning and career development, things like that. And I added a few slides there and we'll go through those. Then there's kind of the meat of it, which is about investing. And most of it's about investing in equities. Excuse me, I have a cold here. I have allergies. I just got a new cat, so I'm very allergic to her. So anyway, most of it's about equities and how to analyze equities. I'm going to add a section about bonds, bring it into corporate bonds and sovereign bonds and things like that, municipal bonds, talk all about that. And then there's about 10 slides on markets, bonds and portfolios, portfolio construction, things like that. Then there's an introduction to Wall Street, and then a bibliography that I encourage you to read. So anyway, I've gone over a bunch of these slides once or twice, but one of the things that I want to add is this slide. And it's sort of supplemented with another slide. But basically, my theory is that, and this might sound a little ironic, but I think people, everyone just sort of has a natural tendency to want to participate in investing. The reality is that most people should never invest their own money. And the reason for this is that it is a zero-sum game. And there's an old adage when it comes to poker that if you can't spot the sucker at the table, then you're the sucker at the table. And the concept applies here as well. I think that the idea that individual investors can invest in the stock market and expect any return at all, including, you know, especially a positive one, I think is a little silly because it is a zero-sum game. It's a very difficult game to succeed at, and you'll most likely lose. So that doesn't mean that you should despair, be depressed or sad about that. The reality is that you should focus on creating wealth and what you're good at and not try to be good at investing. If you're in real estate, you can become a billionaire doing real estate. Look at Donald Trump. There's no need for you to become a great investor. It's sort of like when Michael Jordan, who is an incredible athlete, tried to play baseball. He was really good at basketball, and the difference between baseball and basketball isn't that great. I guarantee you that the difference between whatever you're doing for a living and investing is far greater than baseball and basketball. And even then, one of the greatest athletes ever couldn't even make it into Major League Baseball. So I think that if you focus on what you're good at and make wealth that way, you could do great. I mean, even musicians can become very wealthy. Directors, any line of work, if you excel and become the best at it, you can become very wealthy. There's no need for you to try and waste your time investing. You can give your money to a successful investor. And again, maybe someday I'll talk about what to look for in an investor. But the idea that one would want to be a professional investor, I think, is something you got to think long and hard about. And this series is sort of geared towards people who want to invest for a living. They want that to be their day job. So just keep that in mind. This is a template of a slide that I'm going to eventually do about psychology and sort of the things that you have to keep in mind as you pursue your career. And that will be, I think, a pretty interesting side when I eventually get to it. So we'll describe that when we're there. All right. So I added a few slides here. Let me find them.
Ah, here we go. So this is slide 27 And I mentioned here that watching the news cycle for, or all the news for the companies that you invest in or want to invest in your so-called universe is pretty difficult and very important to do. So Google Alerts is a pretty cool tool that allows you to use this so-called as-it-happens alerts, which you can set up for your whole universe. And just be aware that you're going to get a lot of emails. And that's part of investing research. It's difficult, just a lot of work. You just got to do it. But that's sort of one of the ways to keep abreast. The other obvious way that's just simply a must is you have to sign up for the company's alerts on their website. So I'm going to show you how to do that right now.