Duolingo, but make it finance

Yellowcake: a type of powdered uranium concentrate obtained from leach solutions in the processing of uranium ores. It has a melting point of 2880 degrees Celsius and looks exactly as it sounds.

An interesting fact, but, dear reader, you may be wondering why it is opening this wire. What does yellowcake have to do with anything?

Finding out what yellowcake is and that you can invest in its manufacture sums up my first wild week in the world of financial markets because, before some furious googling, I thought yellowcake was something you would find in a male urinal.

Somehow, this 40-something-year-old has managed to convince Livewire to hire me, despite having no investing experience (aside from an amateur interest borne of frustration from the increased cost of living, and a career working in an industry that took “passion” as a license not to pay appropriate wages, ahem, the Australian arts industry). Tired of working for cowboys, I decided to pursue an entirely different path. I somewhat naively thought I checked all the boxes when I clicked on the advertisement to apply for a junior investment content editor role, one of the key attributes being “enthusiasm”.

After a series of intense interviews that brought out a competitive streak I never knew I had, Livewire offered me the role (is this how Olympic gold medallists feel?) and we have put our thoughts and prayers into believing that I will learn about financial markets with enough motivation, immersion and time. Forewarned, if not forearmed, I turned up on my first day in fresh corporate attire - something I’ve never had to wear before - and a clean notebook. 

Seven pages of illegible scrawl later, before the dregs of my first coffee had even cooled, I looked up each word I didn’t understand. Humbled, I read about multiples, illiquidity, core-satellite holdings, market-cap weighted indices, small-mid-large-caps (nothing to do with takeaway coffee orders, I found out), valuations, fundamentals...it went on and on. My new colleagues patiently explained them all to me and, to their credit, without a single knowing chuckle.

A week later, what I have found remarkable isn’t just how much I feel I have already learned (and a growing existential awareness of everything I don’t know) but rather just how much of the world of investing and financial markets feels hidden from the regular Australian - a problem I imagine is similar in all corners of the world. The jargon is both frightening and frightful. While family and friends made the expected jokes about The Wolf of Wall Street, Bernie Madoff and entering my finance-bro era, it does beg the question as to why so many people feel like the world of markets is a closed fortress with secrets privy to only a few, or as the worst stories for Hollywood to adapt for the screen.

People are weird about money. They find it hard to speak about in a frank way, whether it’s confronting their debts, asking for a pay rise, or talking about it with their partners. No one needs hard data to see that it is one of the biggest causes of conflict in intimate relationships. And when the language around money feels hard to comprehend, it’s all too easy to brush the entire conversation under the carpet.

When you combine this with increased interest rates, the doom and gloom around housing, the cost of living, and the seemingly ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the average Australian is compelled to wonder - how can I support myself, my loved ones, my kids and their future? And hot take - I don’t think those high-interest savings accounts will have you rolling around in cash, shooting money guns.

Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I am a humanist and believe most people want what’s best for their loved ones and to be financially comfortable.

If you break it down to something as simple as "Do you have super?" then you are an investor - that is one simple chink in the fortress gates. So much evidence points to the benefits of early education in money management, with papers written by both very smart people and people who have the power to change the status quo. And that is absolutely not me, so never fear.

 

Here’s my investing journey thus far: Holding a single stock in my 20s (Westfield, if you’re interested), an ill-advised and spontaneous foray into crypto in 2016 and more recently and sensibly, a venture into ETFs.

While there is nothing like living in another country to immerse yourself and learn a new language - in my case, that country is Livewire - I think much of the mystery could be swept away if only the industry spoke in plain English, rather than gobbledegook. I’ve worked in an advertising agency, and the jargon used in finance can be as perplexing as marketing speak is buzzword cringe.

That said, with front-row access to the top finance and investing experts in the country, my learning curve will undoubtedly be steep, but I’m up for the challenge. As you see me more regularly across Livewire content, I hope to be able to provide a bit more of a beginner’s lens - and a gateway for those, like me, at the start of their investment journeys.

In the meantime, my bemused friends are giving me a follow on Livewire. Follow along if you want to learn with me or feel like having a laugh.