What Students Get Wrong About Investing: A Tutor’s Perspective

This Financial Literacy Month, we reached out to educators and mentors in the FGI community to share their perspectives on why investing education matters. Jack Davis is a lead tutor with FGI from the University of Notre Dame. In two years of working with high school students through FGI's program, he's developed a clear sense of where students struggle, what makes concepts click, and why this work matters. We asked him three questions about tutoring, investing, and student impact.

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What do students typically misunderstand about investing at first?

One of the largest hurdles that I’ve seen students struggle to grapple with is that stocks are forward-looking instruments, meaning their prices should efficiently bake-in all future expectations for a company’s financial performance. I recently had a student ask why she shouldn’t just buy Walmart stock around the holidays because sales will be higher, and this sparked a great conversation about what type of information is already “priced-in” by the market. I’ve found that when a student struggles to understand a key concept like this, the tutor must brainstorm a creative and relatable way to simplify it and clear up any confusion.

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What moment or concept tends to “click” for students once they begin learning about investing?

In my two years with FGI, students have always grasped the concept of diversification well. This is a testament to their critical thinking skills, but I also think FGI’s diversification lesson plan is one of the best and most concise decks from the whole course.

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What have you found most rewarding about mentoring students as they learn about money and investing?

I’ve been very fortunate to work with FGI, and I’m proud of the mission that the organization aims to accomplish. Particularly, I’ve been most impacted by moments where students voluntarily share how their investment or budgeting plans will help them afford college tuition, car payments, or anything else that will lead to tangible improvements in their lives. FGI does an excellent job of giving hardworking students the tools that will help them build positive financial habits from a very young age.

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