Photo courtesy of Ivan Hernandez
By Ashley Cline
The idea of stock market investing may conjure up images of executives in stiff suits and the constant hustle and bustle of Wall Street. Investing is not, however, exclusive to seasoned professionals with a finance degree — all it takes is a brokerage account and some spare dollars to get started.
Ivan Hernandez, a junior at the University of South Florida and president of the Investment Club, had his first encounter with the stock market during the COVID-19 pandemic while trying to find a productive way to spend his time confined indoors.
“During COVID I was stuck in my room. I had pretty much nothing to do, so I was trying to find ways to make money online and I started to learn about day trading. I saw that people are making money from it,” Hernandez said. “I tried it myself, lost a lot of money, but nevertheless the passion started, so I picked up finance after that and haven’t regretted it ever since.”
Investment Club Co-Chair Lan Phan, a senior, grew up with his sights set on becoming a pilot like his father, but had to pivot due to the high cost of attending flight school in the United States as an international student. He considered several possible career paths before landing on Finance.
“I decided that, if it’s not aviation, then I have to find something else,” Phan said. “It was really by chance that I came across finance, because I was looking through YouTube and scrolling through mindlessly and saw this video, ‘this is how you make money with the stock market,’ and that’s when it all got started.”
After learning and experiencing the process himself, Phan’s outlook on investing shifted greatly, and he now sees the value in taking calculated risks to reap the rewards later.
“My parents taught me very early on that investing is gambling, so I never came close to it, but I’d say that investing is making [an] educated guess, and I think it’s true for everything in life that it’s very hard to get what you want without taking risks,” Phan said.
Hernandez’s first pieces of advice for those wanting to try their hand at investing are to be patient, stay informed and nail down the basics.
“First off, be responsible because investing is not a get rich quick scheme, right? Like it takes a lot of fundamental understanding,” Hernandez said. “You have to know what’s happening in the world. So, it’s not as easy as you know clicking and choosing, so you know just be patient with it and try to learn the fundamentals.”
Finding resources and tutorials, whether they be YouTube videos, books or news outlets, is key to getting started and continuing to develop your knowledge of investing. In light of recent market volatility brought on by the Trump administration’s tariff measures, it is especially important to stay informed on current events and how they can influence market patterns.
Phan said that his research led him down the path of value investing — buying and holding shares long-term — as opposed to riskier and more time-consuming strategies.
“I was really fortunate to have found books and literature that oriented myself very early on about value investing — long-term holding as opposed to the day trading that we’ve seen floating around nowadays,” Phan said.
Picking the right stocks to purchase can be an overwhelming task, so getting started with exchange traded funds (ETFs) — investment funds that hold a variety of different companies and assets — is highly recommended for beginners and those looking for a more hands-off approach to investing.
Hernandez said that it is difficult, even for professionals, to outperform market indexes such as the S&P 500 — which consists of 500 of the U.S.’s largest public companies — by selecting individual stocks.
“There’s a lot of firms that dedicate their whole firms towards trying to beat the S&P 500 and only 10 percent of them beat the S&P 500 a year,” Hernandez said. “And these are investment professionals that have been in the industry for decades, and they cannot even beat the S&P 500.”
Hernandez said that young adults shouldn’t underestimate the importance of getting started as early as possible. While the idea of saving for retirement and building an investment portfolio seems like something to consider later in life, Hernandez said the power of compound interest multiplying your dollars over several decades “can make a whole lot of difference.”
“If you talk to older folks, a lot of them are going to tell you ‘I wish I started early,’ and it’s not a coincidence that all of them are saying it. It’s because it’s the truth,” Hernandez said.
USF’s Investment Club offers an additional opportunity for students to develop their investment acumen, with several divisions dedicated to different functions related to investing and finance.
“We think of Investment Club as a place where people can be vulnerable about something that they’re super interested in, but might not have the skills necessary to succeed,” Phan said. “So, we try to break investing down to the nuts and bolts where people could really easily understand and then build upon.”
Faculty Advisor Yuting DiGiovanni encouraged those interested in investing to attend as many events as possible and take advantage of the resources the club provides to its members.
“We invite industry professionals as guest speakers in some events and they are a great resource to students who want to set foot in [the] finance industry,” DiGiovanni said. “The club also sends out periodic investment reports that are carefully crafted by various teams within the club. These reports provide valuable insights for students who are new to investment or don’t have access to financial data.”
A common misconception about investing is that one must save several thousands of dollars before they can get started. This is not the case, however — today many brokerages offer the option to purchase fractions of shares at attainable price points, which Phan said has “broken down the barriers to entry to a point where literally everyone can enter.”
“Investment doesn’t have to start big, because a lot of people think that they have to save up 20, 30, 40 thousand dollars just to get started,” Phan said. “I think that no one in the investment club has started that way and we’ve gotten to a spot where we’re proud of the investments that we’ve made personally and that’s all done through having part time jobs.”
Hernandez recognized that it can be a difficult task to commit to saving and investing money in college but said that the small efforts made early on will end up being hugely important down the line.
“It’s hard because a lot of times people, especially in college — college is expensive, you don’t have the time to work a full-time job — so most likely you’re not going to have significant money to save,” Hernandez said. “But I’d say that if you’re able to just have a little bit more money every month, cut some unnecessary expenses and start investing those dollars, no matter how small they are. It’s going to make a difference.”
