Evolution of a Financial Enthusiast

By Matthew Gutierrez · July 28, 2024

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Phew. July flew by. This week, the calendar flips to August and the heart of earnings season. We’re also just three months from the U.S. presidential election.

Amid the busy news cycle, we like to sit back, zoom out, and talk markets.

So, today, we're sharing our interview with our very own Shawn O’Malley, who discusses markets, investing, and learning from the very best in the business.

All this, and more, in just 6 minutes to read.

— Matthew

Quote of the Day

"My job is essentially just corralling more and more and more facts and information, and occasionally seeing whether that leads to some action.”

— Warren Buffett

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What Else We’re Into

?? WATCH: How American CEOs became so rich

?? LISTEN: How to understand a business like a pro with Kyle Grieve

?? READ: The risks we miss from Jonathan Clements

Trivia

With housing prices at record highs, what is the national median home price in the U.S.?

• $400,250
• $426,900
• $488,700
• $530,340

Studying Markets With Shawn O’Malley

Always learning

In 2020, Shawn O’Malley made a rational but bold bet that Russian stocks offered good value, particularly in the oil and gas space. Two years later, he got a lesson in the risks you can’t always see: His position was wiped out when sanctions made it illegal to own Russian assets after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

For O’Malley, the wipeout functioned as an invaluable lesson about investing.

“My initial thesis to be bullish on oil and gas and that Russian stocks offered a good value at the time was sound, but I failed to continue doing the necessary diligence on the investments as I kept holding them,” O’Malley recalls. “I blindly dismissed the geopolitical risks and failed to truly understand what I owned — it never really dawned on me that I didn’t have the same legal protections in owning Russian stocks as with, say, owning American stocks. I treated stocks as all being the same, with little care for how risks can vary from country to country.”

The mistake helped O’Malley become a more sound investor, and it goes down as another educational moment in a life spent studying and learning about the details of how financial markets work.

That interest led O’Malley to Elon University, where he graduated magna cum laude in finance and entrepreneurship. He also obtained Level 1 of the CFA certification from the CFA Institute, then landed a job at S&P Global before joining The Investor’s Podcast Network in early 2022.

Over the past two years, he’s been a writer, editor, and podcast host with us. In this Q&A, O’Malley discusses his early influences, his fascination with markets, lessons learned, and more. Enjoy!

Where did you grow up, and when did you first become interested in financial markets?

Growing up in Northern Virginia, I was much closer to the federal government than I was to Wall Street. It felt like most people’s jobs were directly or indirectly tied to D.C. in some way — either working for a government agency or working for a contractor supporting the government or military. So, finance wasn’t obviously on my radar, but I remember distinctly thinking as a kid that if I could just understand how to manage money well, I’d never have to worry about it.

As in, being financially literate and knowing how to budget and invest across a lifetime would hopefully ensure that I could live comfortably without needing a top-1% income.

So with that idea in my head, as I’d scroll through the channel guide watching cable TV at around 12 or 13 years old, CNBC caught my interest. I was quickly entranced by the whole thing — fast-paced flashing numbers, sophisticated commentators, the promise of riches. It also wasn’t lost on me that stock investing was something adults did, but if I could start early and understand it, that would give me real advantages in life.

And from there, for at least a year probably, I spent everyday watching CNBC before school, after school, on the weekends, and read a handful of books on investing, too. I found all of it really exciting and committed myself to mastering all the jargon, because there really is a lot of it, even on more mainstream programming like CNBC.

A part of me probably thought I was absorbing exclusive insights from Wall Street, and that if I watched enough of these shows, I could find enough ideas to get rich on.

I became set on building my “portfolio,” and with some help, I set up a custodial stock investing account. I’d sit around reading about stocks and waiting for them to get mentioned on TV, as if that was how I’d get the secret sauce of investing — waiting for it to be revealed on daytime television.

I remember buying into Fitbit shortly after its IPO, and watching the stock run up enough such that I’d made something like $500, which felt like an incredible amount to me at the time. With a mix of wanting to protect those gains and also a feeling that there was just too much hype around the stock, I sold out 10 minutes ahead of the company reporting its quarterly earnings. I spent that whole day laboring over the decision, trying to figure out what was likely to happen and what the market’s response would be.

I probably just wanted to not have to think about it anymore, but I felt like a genius when I locked in my profit before the stock promptly plummeted a few minutes later on an earnings miss.

From there, I...