Tom Sosnoff, co-founder of Thinkorswim, Tastytrade and Tastyworks, talked about the changes in the market, risk taking and finance during the 43rd McCord lecture on Wednesday.
The McCord Lecture is put on by the Foster College of Business and brings prominent business executives to share their insights on the professional world.
Sosnoff refers to himself as a workaholic and has lectured at college campuses for 19 years. For this speech, he said that he was asked to touch on topics that are not usually discussed about finance.
He believes that people should think outside of the box in order to be successful. Sosnoff said that success is also completely subjective.
“I hope that students take from the lecture that when they go out and they start looking for their first job … that they think differently, they think outside of the normal crowd,” Sosnoff said.
Sosnoff wanted people to engage with finance, although many might not believe it to be that interesting. This is how he came up with the idea of Tastytrade, an online financial network.
“I wanted to build a platform that people can engage with, that they can appreciate the content,” Sosnoff said. “So, I had this idea for this crazy company called Tastytrade, which is what we have today.”
Sosnoff thinks that finance is important to learn about, even if business is not what students plan to go into.
“What finance does is it gives you a vehicle for decision making and, in my opinion, those that can make decisions the quickest are going to be the most successful,” Sosnoff said. “In order to learn those decision-making skills, risk taking skills, I don’t know a better place to learn it than the world of finance.”
His lecture mentioned how fewer people are taking risks and how two generations of decision makers were lost because of that.
“We have less entrepreneurs today entering the marketplace, less millennials, less entrepreneurs, less people starting their own businesses, less people taking risks and less people that know about taking risks than we’ve ever had before,” Sasnoff said. “We’ve become a passive society.”
Sosnoff taught that taking chances is important in becoming successful, and the topic resonated with some students in attendance.
“The main takeaway I took from this was to take risk and that we’ve really had a gap in generations of taking risks,” said Brooke Brewbaker, sophomore international business and economics double major.
According to Sosnoff, one of the biggest issues facing the industry is the lack of go-getters.
“Screw all the passive, every aspect of being passive,” Sasnoff said. “Everybody should take the approach of ‘Hey, you know what, I’m going to be my own decision maker, I’m going to be active.’”
Additionally, Sosnoff touched on the topic of wealth creation. He wanted to stress that this does not necessarily involve money.
“It’s the combination of focus and individualism that is the key to wealth creation,” Sosnoff said. “Whatever it is that you want to do that makes you feel richer, that’s important … Wealth creation is whatever works for you.”
Sosnoff also spoke about the future of finance and business.
“Finance has never been in a better position than it is today,” Sosnoff said. “The world of businesses has never been in a better position because there’s more opportunity.”
