The recent slump in markets is testing the army of retail investors who started trading during the pandemic.
It’s the first bear market many of them have experienced, and will require a different playbook from the “stocks only go up” mantra that worked so well for much of the past two years.
Teri Ijeoma, whose popular online courses, including “Trade and Travel,” have taught over 28,000 students the basics of day trading, says she’s predicting a recession and advising students to stay on the sidelines if they haven’t learned advanced strategies like hedging and short-selling.
Like many of her students, Ijeoma’s career didn’t follow a traditional finance path. Growing up in Dallas, she dreamed of becoming an architect until her high school enrolled her in a business program for underrepresented students and encouraged her to apply to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she majored in management science.
After a summer internship at Morgan Stanley and a stint at consulting firm Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte), she took a job at the nonprofit Teach for America, pursued a master’s degree at Dallas Theological Seminary, and worked as a charter school assistant principal.
Meanwhile, a day-trading hobby turned into a way to pay off debt and gain freedom to travel. Ijeoma, who now lives in Puerto Rico and just turned 38, says she initially developed her online class as a way to teach her friends how to trade, but booming markets supercharged demand in 2020 and 2021. Revenue from her course, which charges students about $5,000 for an eight-week program, soared to more than $1 million in the month of May alone.
Ijeoma spoke with Bloomberg News last month about her career, her business and her outlook. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q: How did you become interested in financial markets?
A: My junior year of high school, I did a program called LEAD. They took minority students who were at the top of their class and introduced us to business. I remember learning about stocks in the summer program. And then seeing Google come out [in a public offering]. I remember telling my grandmother, “Granny, we’ve got to get some.” And she was like, “Baby, we ain't got no money. And we don't know how to open an account.” So we missed that opportunity.
Q: After your internship at Morgan Stanley, why didn't you choose to work on Wall Street?