Global Investment Education
Investors in Asia and Asia Pacific are getting increasingly sophisticated in the knowledge of investment know-how, strategies and stay up to date with financial instruments. However, it is still the US and UK which begins innovating and coming up with new financial products. For example, Asia only recently introduced CFDs and carbon trading, replicating their western counterparts. Likewise, the general Asian population tends to educate themselves based on the investment instruments available to them, which often lags behind western counterparts. Asians still rely heavily on face to face learning, while in the US and UK, online learning through webinars and videos is prevalent.
Asia Investment Education
One channel which is increasingly popular in Asia is the attendance of Investment Seminars. There are numerous vendors in the cities of Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Japan who teach retail investors how to invest. Topics cover a wide range from stocks, funds, options, futures, warrants, forex, and even alternative investments such as property and wine. The downside is that such seminars are often very expensive, averaging US$2k for a 3-day seminar. Many retails investors also fall prey to get rich quick vendors as Asia Investment Education is highly unregulated. That being said, the Asian population is increasingly affluent and the demand for investment education is thriving, attracting many western trainers to set up training hubs in Asian cities. It is not uncommon to find international trainers who fly down to Asia on weekends, conducting seminars from city to city. The key hurdle for such a business in Asia is the language barrier. For example, Indonesians prefer listening to Bahasa and Taiwanese prefer Mandarin etc.
Investment Education Trends
We see more and more Asian funds, many of which are managing Western capital. This is one indicator of the education level in this realm, and a derivative of the effectiveness. Asian universities such as Fudan and Singapore Management University are attracting students to pursue education in Finance, another validation for effectiveness. With the entrance of the internet era, cross border education is made easy and while most of the online content for finance is generated by US websites, the internet has made it possible for the Asian population to leverage upon online content created by western counterparts.
Investment Education -Conclusion
Global financial markets are evolving rapidly every day; while Asia still lags behind the Western Nations in investment sophistication, the gap is also closing quickly.
