RAOUL PAL: You lot, Real Vision members, are bloody smart. You are on this incredible learning journey to understand the world around you and what it means for your investing. Now, we give you the best content in the world to help facilitate that.
But sometimes, there's something missing, the foundations of knowledge that you might need to become truly confident in your investment. And that's what we're going to do for you next. We're going to give you the tools and the foundation stones to give you the confidence that you need.
SAMUEL BURKE: Let's take a look at the issue from 50,000 feet for a minute. One of the interesting aspects about learning to invest in markets is that there's a massive difference between theory and the reality. In the real world, things never seem to work out the way they looked in the textbook.
Another interesting thing is that some people tend to ask hyperpersonalized questions on individual portfolios and trades. And we get it. We get why people want straight up advice. It's damn tough being an investor. Even the very best will tell you that.
But so much of investing is personal from time horizons to investment goals to risk tolerances. We all start from a different place. Only you or your advisor can fully assess your circumstances.
ASH BENNINGTON: Asking, should I trade x, y, z or should I add to a, b, c is like me going up to someone in the supermarket and randomly asking them, should I buy this can of beans? They will have no idea whether I should buy the can of beans or not. These factors are two of the reasons why the quality of financial education out there is, to be honest, complete garbage. Most of what exists is either a snake-oil scam promising to make you money overnight, or it lacks the depth, nuance, and real-world application required to make it truly useful.
SHANNON STATON: So academics aren't the answer. And spoon-fed individual advice isn't the answer. Here's another thing that isn't the answer, more content.
No one needs more content about what markets are doing. We are all drowning in that stuff. What is sorely lacking though, is nuanced, engaging, and ongoing financial education for the real world.
GEORGE STANOEV: None of this is easy. And it's not easy to find either. So we decided to do something about it. To become a good investor, you really have to learn from the world's best investors. That doesn't mean blindly copying their trades and approaches. You need to understand how they think, how they build an investment thesis, and how they execute trades and manage their positions. And then tailor that to your personal circumstances. Try, adapt, replace, evolve. Just make it your own.
DAMIEN HORNER: So how the hell do you do that? And how can we help you? Well, first of all, we've got thousands of hours of interviews with the world's top investors and analysts, I mean thousands. Second, Real Vision has acquired the Lex van Dam Trading Academy, one of the blockbuster investing courses based on the frameworks developed and refined at one of the top trading desks and hedge funds in London.
Third, we've got a rock-star team of filmmakers, learning designers, ex portfolio managers and analysts, engineers, and user experience designers all working together to craft the experience that you, our members, have asked for. Putting those three together was the foundation of a brand new experience. We call it the Real Investing Course.
RAOUL PAL: The Real Investing Course is all about giving you the tools you need to invest in the real world. It's about helping you develop the investing framework that I talk about so often. Now, there is no quick fix here. We can't make you George Soros overnight.
But what we can do is help you put the odds in your favor. And that's what this whole game is about. Once you get the odds in your favor, over time, you'll be a more successful investor.
JAMIE MCDONALD : This course is for of that want to learn from the best and discover how you could adapt these timeless principles to work for you. Now, what follows isn't soul truth. But it contains many timeless principles and battle-tested frameworks that will guide you to finding your truth.
All of you will be able to find something along this journey. Underpinning it all are four basic ideas you need to carry throughout this journey. Number one, there are a million ways to make money in markets. And they typically change with the times. But there are a few consistent ways to lose money. So learning how to not lose is equally, if not more important as learning how to win.
Number two, investing is very personal. And it's also one of the few activities where novices play side by side with professionals. You need to learn how to think and consciously build your own approach tailored to your specific circumstances, whether that means investing yourself or building an ongoing dialogue with your investment advisor.
Number three, information and analysis about the present and future is so readily available nowadays that novice investors can gain an edge simply by being able to distinguish the signal from the noise. The information itself is no longer an edge.
And fourthly, most financial and life advice out there is all "do this and don't do that." And that isn't really how any of this works. The answer to almost every question about investing is, it depends.
Markets are complex, ever-changing, and often driven by the raw emotions of investors. There is no formula to solve them. So learning how to think and apply context and judgment are usually more important than any specific trade idea.
And it's that word, judgment, that we will focus on. We want to demystify investing and show you the principles and frameworks that will allow you to think for yourself and feel empowered to navigate your financial journey
ROGER HIRST: From the get-go, let's forget about investing as one activity. Making a profitable trade or investment requires getting multiple things right, investment thesis, time horizon, security selection, entry and exit, position size, and risk management. It involves many steps that can either make or break the investment.
You might have a brilliant contrarian idea. But without a clear catalyst, you'll be fighting the market and likely to lose money. You can be right on everything but have the wrong time horizon, which result in taking profits away too early or failure to act on time, resulting in taking the round trip back to zero or even negative.
Or, and this probably is the most painful, you can get everything right but select the wrong instrument to express your idea or leverage yourself too much, which ultimately results in being right and losing money. And that's really painful.
JAMES HELLIWELL: Let me run through why Real Vision's approach to investing education is different to anything else out there. We'll take you through the entire investment process from generating an idea to putting it into your portfolio to then managing that holistically across your life. We'll then give you the building blocks and show you the diverse approaches and frameworks that the best investors use. And will help you understand yourself your motivations to invest and the investment framework that suits you.
And we'll turn learning into a multiplayer experience alongside like-minded peers. We want to build a community where we can all share our experience, ask and answer questions, debate ideas, and share our frameworks. And we'll give you the opportunity to keep growing through additional courses on the Real Vision Academy and ongoing market analysis across a Real Vision platform so you can apply that knowledge in real life and enjoy, hopefully, navigating what the market throws at us all.
MAGGIE LAKE: This journey is comprised of five parts. Part one, the game of investing where you will learn some of the unwritten rules and find out your best approach to it. Part two, the stuff that drives markets where we will look at trends across different time horizons and learn what influences them.
Part three, the art and science of charts where we will learn how to leverage charts as part of our holistic investment framework. Part four, the asset class universe where we will go through the core asset classes, review their key drivers, and learn about the relationships across them. Part five, the science and art of building a portfolio where we will put it all together and show you how to build and manage a portfolio.
I'll be there to guide you through each step. And we'll also be joined by some recognizable faces along the way. Roger Hirst spent most of his career on the biggest sales trading desks in Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, working with some of the top hedge funds.
Jamie MacDonald was a portfolio manager at Point72, both in London and New York, focused on the global insurance industry. And James Helliwell previously worked with hedge fund manager Lex van Dam and later managed portfolios across multiple asset classes.
RAOUL PAL: I think you can tell this is a big deal. We're really excited about this. This Real Investing Course and the Academy combined are something truly special. And your whole learning journey starts here today. And enjoy this course and enjoy the power gives you to make you a better investor. Let's begin.