EasyEquities has teamed up with skateboarding wonder-kid and 2020 Olympic hopeful Brandon Valjalo. I had the opportunity to chat with Brandon about how he sees the world of finance mixing with professional skating. The obvious links are that you can invest in some of the brands that consistently support pro-skating, such as Monster Beverage Corp, which are listed in the States and can be bought on our platform. The share, not the energy drink itself. The less apparent link between the skating and investing is the principle of risk and reward.
"Risk and reward is EVERYTHING in my world. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little in order to gain a lot!" Brandon exclaims. Here's some context for the uninitiated. Saving money is often seen as the best form of generating money in the long-run as opposed to investing that money. To boot, there's an ugly perception that investing in the stock markets is hard, and a gamble.
What it really is, is putting money away in the now, for returns in the future. The risk for many is not knowing exactly how much you will receive over a certain period of time, unlike savings, despite history showing that stock market investments beat all other forms over a 5 year period and beyond. You can read all about the difference between saving and investing here, but I digress.
In Brandon's eyes a shift in perception and a bit of commitment takes the negative sense of risk out of adventure, and reward sets in. "To get to the level I am at now in my skateboarding career, it was inevitable that I would have to put my body on the line. At the time it didn't seem worth it but now looking back I can tell you that all the risks were worth the reward."
Right there is where I found similarities between Brandon's and my own journey as an investor's. Very few of us make a sudden transition from spending extra cash to suddenly investing it. Potential investors start by reading about platforms like EasyEquities to make sure it's legit before registering an account online and playing around with the demo account that comes with the shiny new account. But this is where too many investor hopefuls stop because they're not losing anything. The other side of the coin is that they're not really gaining anything material either.
That is why many active clients on EasyEquities started small. Depositing and investing R5, before gaining the confidence to up the ante. Before you know it, your investments become a top priority and you end up skimping on other things that used to consume your money just because you want to spend more time in the markets, and growing your wealth.
Something that people may not know about Brandon is that he grew up in a financial markets household, with an asset manager for a pops. We hope to be there with Brandon when his story comes full circle and he's an investment wizard, competing with his dad.