Why I started the Smart Money Series

My investment journey started with me thinking i was a very shrewd, cautious twenty something buying bank shares. I think one moron (sorry bank CEO) called them diamonds in your own backyard at a previous AGM. I put that loss down to learning but when a couple of years later i realised how badly my bank run pension was doing and how much i was being charged for the privilege of these morons getting such a poor return i realised i needed to wise up.

I wanted to learn as much as possible about investing, how to identify great share buys, how to manage my own portfolio, what were ETF's, and how to do the tax on all of these. As i come from an events background i thought there must be an event i could go to to learn all this in one go..

I couldn't find anything so I set up the Smart Money Series. We have run five events now. I've found useful insights from these; silver might be undervalued, the countries and regions that offer value on their stock market, what Covid might mean for the economy.

However people have said to me, OK these are really useful but what if i want to learn from the basics to finding undervalued stocks to running my own portfolio. I'd like to have someone to bounce ideas off and ask questions about my investment.

The guy in one of the big investment firms in Dublin literally laughed at me when i told him what i wanted to invest so don't expect any hand holding and advice there.

These's some useful online courses in the US, but that's not a lot of use when your wondering whether you think FBD is undervalued, how the government taxes share losses versus ETF's or what's a good platform to get started on for Irish investors.

Everyone wants to find the next Netflix, the share that goes up exponentially but how do we find them? We spend 14 years learning Irish but not one minute in school on personal finance or investing.

We work unbelievably hard to make money but don't spend a fraction of that time focusing on making that money work for us.

I want a course that shows me how to set up an investing portfolio, how to look for undervalued shares, how to pay the tax on them, how to maximise my pension, and property investing info. Peter Brown has created this course. It's for an Irish audience, it's current, it's practical and there will be opportunities at the end of each class to ask as many questions as you'd like. There won't be reams of unnecessary information and theory. The course will give you the tools and info you need but not a lecture on the Keynesian economics.

Peter will deliver this fully online course via zoom with a one hour lecture every Tuesday followed by 30 mins of questions from Tuesday July 28th. At the end of the course he will also have a one to one call with each attendee to discuss their investment strategy and to answer any questions on this.

Peter Brown knows finance, he's spent 35 years in the industry, as chief dealer and then subsequently general manager of treasury, pensions and investments where he became expert in structured finance, funding, trading, investments and risk management. Peter's career has taken him across Barclays, ACC Bank, BNP Paribas and to Ulster Bank.

He also knows how to deliver these insights on investing in a digestible understandable format as Head of Education at the Institute of Investing and Financial Trading. Peter features regularly on RTE, TV3, BBC World, RTE Radio and NewsTalk.

The course will begin with module one looking at investing principles, ETF's, timing the market followed by module two focusing on financial planning, portfolio construction, understanding assets classes and the final module will discuss property, pensions and alternatives.

This is NOT a get rich scheme, you will not get some cryptocurrency tip that 'can't lose'. However you will get solid clear investing principles to work from, an understanding of financial planning, insights to improve your tax efficiency,an invaluable overview on pensions, property and alternatives and no nonsense guidance from one of Ireland's foremost investing minds.

I will also be taking the course as I am very much a novice investor but my hope is that eventually I will have a portfolio that generates income and gives me more time to do things i enjoy because of this regular investment income.

Take control of your investing strategy and sign up here today.