Made In America: Andres Diana
Special Feature by Sergio C. Muñoz at Intelatin, LLC
I saw Marty Chavez on a mainstream news program talking about this particular era of his life as an investor. It was so at odds with the current pornomiseria of Latina/os in the United States. I felt like I was somewhere in-between.
I know I will never be as smart or as fortunate as Marty Chavez but I also felt deep empathy for those that are unfortunate and suffering as a result of this administration. But facts are facts and the Federal Reserve reports that Latina/os do not invest in the stock market. For some time now, I have been consistently attempting to make some noise about this fact but I don’t have anything to gain from this. I’m not a broker that is selling stock to the community to make a rip off of them. I am simply a banker that is interested in seeing these numbers grow.
Andres Diana
So, I called my friend Andres Diana and I asked him a few questions. When we started, I took a 60 minute conversation and edited it down to a 10 minute video that was more wide-ranging and touched on AI; Blockchain; Personal Finance. But none of my publishers know what to do with a ten minute video at human speed. So, I called my friend AC Valdez for help on how to modernize/professionalize my video. With AC’s help, I got my video down to under 2 minutes and I focused it around #Robinhood.
Here is the simplified data for who owns investments in the stock market:
White Americans own 89.1% of stocks with a total value of $28.17 trillion.
Black Americans only own 1.1% of stocks, worth $360 billion.
Hispanic Americans own 0.5% of stocks, worth $160 billion.
I asked Dr David Hayes Bautista why this was the case? Here is his response:
“We dive into that topic very deeply. Latinos do things differently. Latinos have the highest rate of labor force participation. We work more than anybody else. But we have the highest level of poverty. In policy, folks think that you have poverty because you don’t work hard enough but that’s not the case with Latinos. The answer is simple: We don’t get paid for our work. We have the middle class values more than any other group. The problem is, for the last 107 years, well we don’t even need to go back that far. If you wanted to buy a house in LA prior to 1970, there would be a restrictive covenant that disallowed Jews, Asians, Blacks and Latinos from owning a property in Los Angeles. Most houses said that. Then, to get financing in the 30s, mortgages were not available to those groups. The military. The colleges. For 107 years, we were excluding from investing-in. We are now resetting the table. When I was a kid, we were 4% of the population, now we are 40%. When I wrote my first book, I saw this change coming. And it’s happened: 90% of Latinos graduate from high school. 66% go on to college. Latino wealth has been increasing rapidly. Even during Covid. Yes, we lag in certain areas but others didn’t have to deal with restrictive covenants when we were set back in the race. We don’t need charity. As we speak, we are the best investment opportunity in this nation. We are the last best chance to drive economic growth for the United States economy in spite of 107 years of obstacles and barriers.”
I do not use the HOOD -1.02%↓ app. I do have two close friends that do and I am curious. I also think that Andres Diana is very smart so if he thinks that HOOD -1.02%↓ is capable of closing the trust gap for Latina/os, I am willing to suspend disbelief.
First, I looked at its chart; It seems positive. Then, I looked at the CEO. Bulgaria > UCLA > Stanford > NYC. Then, I looked at its investors on Crunchbase; not sure if this is good or bad but all the devils are in the room and they are really interested in lending-to and investing-in HOOD -1.02%↓ .
I imagine that HOOD -1.02%↓ does not have a specific division or person dedicated to understanding the Gen Alpha Latina/o psyche but if they did, what would they do after 107 years of obstacles and barriers to close the trust gap?
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