What topic could you give a thirty-minute presentation on (to a large group of people) without any preparation?
A thirty-minute presentation is a pretty long time actually, and from my perspective (which others can disagree), I am confident that I can talk more than thirty minutes about finance related stuff.
Most of my financial knowledge were self taught. For a start, I didn't have much exposure to Finance in school or university. I studied Statistics and there was probably just one or two models relating to financial models. However, over the years, I realised I have a keen interest in finance related stuff, and I guess the main motivation or starting point would be having to manage my own finances when I became an adult and starting working. Having a monthly income, and having bills to pay (starting from my university tuition fee loans), I realised I had to pick up budgeting skills, learn about how credit cards work, or even find out which bank accounts offer the better interest rates.
Personal finance aside, insurance was another area which I needed to be familiar with. I probably am not the expert in this area since I don't have the necessary certifications, but I do understand the various types of policies available, be it endowments, life insurance, term insurance, or unit trusts investments.
Moving on, my personal favourite area would be investments, i.e. putting money to work. I have to admit that I was extremely late compared to my peers because I just didn't know how to go about doing it. I bought my first stock when I was 26 years old (some of my friends started dabbling in the stock market as soon as they turned 21). I quickly had to learn how to read balance sheets, what's P/B ratio, what's P/E ratio, what's dividend yield, what's CD and XD dates, etc. Thankfully, there's a wide range of information online and I am also grateful that I do have knowledgeable people to reach out to whenever I had queries.
Of course, there's more to just the stock markets. There's the bond market, the options market, and of course, in recent years the crypto markets. Aside from that, there are many external factors such as geopolitics, or even Fed meetings, that could shape the market movements. This meant having to follow the news, understand the implications of events, and make better decisions.
There's always something to learn and improve upon on this journey. Finance stuff excites me because there's something to learn, something to share, something to improve upon. A good example is my past 3 years over here on Hive, I have learnt so much about how Hive works, how crypto can shape a social medium platform, and how fascinating things like Hive Power, staking, delegation works. These are not stuff that they probably would teach in schools, but we have so many knowledgeable people who are so willing to share and discuss these things.
So back to my presentation, I think I would share my personal journey and hopefully, (I wouldn't say inspire), it would give some food for thought to people. To think about how they are managing their finances. To think about bitcoin as an interesting new asset class. To think about ways that money could work harder for them in this inflationary environment.
And there you have it! Ending off with a photo from one of my solo weekend sessions, where I would get a nice tea or coffee over at a decent cafe, and ponder about things such as life/finances/investments in general, and come out with a clearer mind after a personal reflection.
