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Spring semester is wrapping up, and the past few weeks have been some of our busiest. Here's a look at what's been happening across the FGI community.
How We Think About This Work
Last fall, two of our cofounders, Dylan and Cole, spoke at the Bogleheads Conference in San Antonio, one of the most respected communities of evidence-based investors in the country. We've just published a full write-up and video on our blog, and it's worth reading.
The opening line: “Investing isn’t just for rich people. That's not a tagline. It's the thing we keep hearing from students after they finish our program."
The post covers why most financial education teaches the wrong things, what FGI actually does differently, and why we believe the next generation of long-term investors is sitting in high schools right now.
If you've ever wondered what drives this work at its core, this is the most direct answer we've put in writing. Read the post here.
Capstone Season: Coast to Coast
Capstone presentations are the culminating moment of each FGI semester. Students stand up, walk through the investment decisions they've made with real money, and defend their reasoning. It's one of the most tangible demonstrations of what financial literacy actually looks like in practice.
This spring, presentations happened across partner schools from coast to coast. A few highlights from schools we were able to visit: San Antonio in partnership with St. Mary's University and SAISD, New York at St. Francis College with Williamsburg Prep, New Jersey at Seton Hall University with Orange High School, Charlotte at UNCC with iMeck, and Philly with Cristo Rey.
Students Take the Stage at NYCPS FinEd Fest
On April 28, FGI was invited to present at the NYC Public Schools Financial Education Festival, hosted by the Office of Student Pathways. The room was full of personal finance teachers, math teachers, and school administrators from across the city.
Rather than just talking about what FGI does, we showed it. Three students from New Directions Secondary School presented abbreviated versions of their own Capstone projects, walking the room through their investment decisions and the reasoning behind them. Then Nazeema Baboolall, New Directions' Assistant Principal, joined us to speak about what the FGI partnership actually looks like inside a school, and what it means to run a real investment program alongside their partnership with Lehman College.
Having students lead the conversation, and having a school leader co-sign the program's value in real time, speaks for itself.
FGI’s First Brokerage Day
Opening a brokerage account sounds simple. For a high schooler doing it for the first time, it isn't.
On April 27, FGI held its first-ever Brokerage Day at Cristo Rey Philadelphia, a dedicated event to celebrate students receiving their own investment accounts. Normally, account opening happens in the background. This time, we made a day of it, with students, school staff, and a team from Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), a financial services firm that has been showing up for FGI students, including at Cristo Rey's capstone presentations earlier that week.
It was a meaningful moment. It also surfaced something useful: how complicated and friction-heavy the account opening process can be for students. Those learnings are already shaping how we approach this in the future.
This is a model we plan to bring to other cities. Cristo Rey Philadelphia was the first. It won't be the last.
JP Morgan Virtual Speaker Series
College tutors from our partner schools joined the JP Morgan Virtual Speaker Series this month, hearing directly from finance professionals about what their careers actually look like and how they got there. For many of our students, this is their first real window into the industry. Thank you to the JP Morgan team for being a consistent and meaningful partner in this work.
As we head into summer, we're grateful for the partners, educators, and supporters who make this work possible.
Thank you for being part of the FGI community.
— The FGI Team
