Alpesh Patel
How to make money investing in stocks and finding tools to trust is on everyone’s mind it seems. After all some well-known stocks soar and people are worried about their jobs.
Trust is paramount when it comes to online searches for making money in stocks
The problem is there are too many websites to choose from, and too few to trust.
We had a real problem showing people which tools were worthy. How do we convey trust?
The problem is there are too many financial scams and they are very convincing. They are also very effective and the authorities have very little money to fight them.
This is how we educated people to make money investing in stocks by finding tools they could trust. We did it by educating them on looking for proof. Be like a lawyer or detective.
Company/Person To TrustNot Enough to Build Your TrustRegulated to manage money by eg FCA even if they are providing education?If either only regulated to write newsletters or worst still unregulated.Academic qualifications beyond average. You would expect them to have not just a university degree, not even a Masters, but be a Fellow at a world recognised University.
Investing is after all something which needs lifelong learning. Experience of over two decades of investing, with proof of the same.
I provide for instance investment advice from my Financial Times columns from 1999 to books to this day.What proof is there they have been investing professionally for a living for over 20 years at least? Too often their claims do not stand up to scrutiny. Back-story of track-recordIf their back story is they ‘stumbled across’ their secret formula or once used to work at a big firm, that is not good enough. Perhaps they were the janitor?Big name clientsIf their clients are members of the public then that is not enough to trust them.
Why are big name banks not using them? Where is the proof they did? Big name reviews – the reviewers have to be CEOs/Chairperson of large institution. Anyone who advertises enough can fake public reviews from made up names or just random members of the public or videos from actors. Media Appearances have to be regular, proven, unpaid or better still paid, consistent for a long-timeAny fool can put a logo of TV brands, or do one appearance thanks to a pushy PR person. You need proof the person has been used over and over and over again – ideally with their own TV show on a reputable financial brand like Bloomberg. Books from credible publishers and lots of them over a long career. GIven Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg have written books to share their knowledge, and they are billionaires, so has Richard Branson, you need a credible publisher eg Financial Times to trust the person educating you.
Without such publishers there is a gap in the due diligence. Awards from world renowned institutions eg Financial Times, Bloomberg.So many companies get ‘awards’ from companies with whom they advertise. A website will often give ‘best education site’ to an advertiser.
The simplest tool I like, and which I trust and which shows you without complexity why you should invest is this calculator.
The other tool, which is also free, is my Macmillan published investing book which you can get from here.
Alpesh Patel
Founder, CEO, Praefinium Partner and Tradermind.com and www.alpeshpatel.com
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