Investing in the future.

So this new movie "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps," tells about a new wizkid (Shia LaBeouf) that is just starting in the world of finance and is taken under the wing of an old timer (Michael Douglas) that teaches him the ropes. I haven't seen the movie so I can't give you a perfect description of the events, but what has interested me in the movie was how a certain young actor prepared for the role. Shia LaBeouf, risked $20,000 of his own money and within months he has earned $489,000 with his initial investment. Now in order to prepare for the role, he was put into meetings with big time investors in New York, including the well known Donald Trump. Now the money that he made was a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of dollars that he earned making movies like Transformers, but for average people that are just trying to get into finance it is very risky to put down 20,000 with no experience.

This begs the question of if an average person had all the resources that Shia had for the training of the movie, could they have made that much money or even more? Certainly talking to Trump would be an eye opening experience to any newbie of the business world and definitely be far more valuable than playing the markets randomly. I do believe that the privileged in this world have all the resources to keep them in power for themselves as well as their children. Most of us do not have the luxury of growing up around wealthy people and learning their secrets and putting them in practice once we were older, nor are most people able to have the time nessesary to dedicate to studying the market intensively besides in business majors. Now of course there are those who have been successful playing the markets as a hobby, but the vast majority of the public do not particapate in our "capitalist economy" or are uninformed about how to properly create wealth in our society.

The reason for my topic is that I have been wanting to start investing as a side hobby for some time now. It is something that many have told me is very important to know once I have a stable income. Many of the IRA's and retirement funds that I will be putting my money in will rely on the information from the markets. I do not want my life savings to be wiped out because of some companies bad business decisions, as many have during the last recession. There is also the aspect of being financally free that entices me the most. The ability to not be in debt and being able to buy without worry. With my busy work schedule it is hard to put in time and research the markets as much as I would like. It is a slow process learning the ropes of the business industry and not very exciting as the movie presents it. The payouts can be astronomical or you can lose your entire life savings playing the stock market. I will tread lightly on this subject for now.