Financial Education
Let’s talk financial education. Few days ago, I went to the library to borrow and return some books. I was looking for some books by/about successful individual such as Donald Trump, Ted Turner and Sam Walton etc. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, so almost like a reflex, I found myself at the aisle where the financial books were. In the end, I found a book by Robert Shiller titled “Irrational Exuberance”. Robert’s one of the nobel prize winner I mentioned in the Random Walk Theory article. While looking through that book, I heard the announcement in the library saying that there’ll be a free talk about financial education in 20mins time. The financial education talk was by SGX. I thought it might be interesting so I continued browsing through some other books while waiting for the time to arrive.
20 minutes passed, so I borrowed the books I wanted and went to the auditorium.
There didn’t seem to be many people outside, probably they are seated already. At registration, I asked the person what the topic was going to be. He told me it was it was going to be about “building an investment portfolio”. HMMMM! In my mind I had a different thinking about financial education. I didn’t expect this kind of financial education. The old school diversified, X% stocks, X% bonds, X% commodities, X% this and that kind of diversified portfolio financial education. I wasn’t interested (who would buy bonds when interest rates are at all time low? Read here where I roughly touched on Bond Convexity) so I kindly declined registration to enter and left.
The Problem
When I got home, I happen to see an SGX post on my facebook newsfeed. So I went to their page and found:
This
And this.
HMMMM!
First of all, I have to applaud SGX for its initiative in financial education. Props to them. But really? Compounding interest and dollar cost averaging? Didn’t we already learn about compounding in school in our early teens and wasn’t dollar cost averaging so outdated?
I didn’t dig deep into this initiative, but it seems to me it’s some financial education tied in together with some Regular Share Savings (RSS) product. I shook my head.
SGX has been around for as long as my memory serves. Maybe teaching financial education is something new, maybe not, but after so long, we are still at compounding and dollar cost averaging? In the short few months span on my website, I have already went through options basics, volatility and random walk hypothesis and these people are still at compounding and dollar cost averaging?! What are we? Forever beginners? I am all of a one man team withzero budget while SGX is a big organization with many employees and a big pocket, surely they can do better! Seriously!
Conclusion
I am not trying to be cute or arrogant. The point is to show where the underlying problem is for the lack of financial education in the society. Right at the top! This is only one of the problems. I don’t want to go to all the conspiracy theory stuff, but this is only one of the problems.
Maybe it’s too early to judge, because like I said, I don’t know if this is them just starting with their financial education. To be fair, let’s see the kind of content they put out in a year’s time and see if we, as a smart nation of educated individuals, are still being fed with this kind of bullsh*t.
I am but a small voice in a big crowd trying to change things. If you are with me on this whole lack of financial education problem, you have the responsibility to help raise the awareness. Perhaps start by sharing this article or my website with your friends and family. We are smarter than that!
Sorry for the rant, just really disappointed about the lack of financial education in the society.
Please help share this around!
Have a nice weekend!
Trader Pok
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