In the 1983 film, “Trading Places”, Eddie Murphy plays Billy Ray Valentine. A two-bit hustler who is down on his luck, Billy Ray is the subject of an experiment between two wealthy stock portfolio managers, Randolph and Mortimer Duke. Director John Landis and more specifically screenwriter Timothy Harris, have made successful careers out of depicting the behavior of normal people placed in extreme situations. In this case, a street hustler is juxtaposed with the white collar world of investment firm big shots and hedge fund managers. Amongst many other themes of the film is the fact that Billy Ray seemingly does not belong in this world of wealth and high finance. He does not own a blazer with a crest that came with graduating from Harvard. He is not a member of the private social and tennis club that Dan Aykroyd’s character Louis Winthorpe III frequents with his fiancée who happens to be niece to his bosses the Duke brothers. He is spoken to like a child when the Duke brothers explain to him how the stock market works, using the props seen in the title image for this post. He was expected to have to be walked through this complicated world of high level finance as if they speak a different language than the rest of the world. Something interesting happens when the Duke brothers explain how their business works. Billy Ray responds by saying “…sounds to me like you guys are a couple of bookies…” to which Randolph Duke responds, “I told you he’d understand”…
What is clear from this interaction is that while the world of the street hustler and high finance may be separated by layers, understanding how money and finance work is not the foreign language that it is presented to be. By the end of the movie, Billy Ray is just as well versed and savvy as anyone at the Duke firm. Among many social issues touched on in the movie, one of the most glaring is the lack of African-American presence in the world of finance. Billy Ray literally has to be conned into entering the stock market. Similarly, there is a stigma around high level investing and finance in our communities. Investing is seen a a rich people’s sport in the same ilk as polo or horse racing.
Minority inclusion in the stock market has soared in recent years. While still representing a small percentage of the total market capitalization, black investors have poured into the market in recent years. Black Americans, particularly the younger, millennial-aged, are investing at higher rates than their parents and generation before them. Young black investors are heavily involved in the emerging cryptocurrency market. Leon Howard, aka “Wall Street Trapper”, has made a name for himself explaining the stock market in a plain-speak manner that all can understand and digest. He is literally a manifestation of Billie Ray Valentine as he turned his street hustler mentality into a tool to be used for gains in the stock market. Dr. Boyce Watkins leads courses that explain how to interact with the marketplace in a step-by-step instructional fashion. The goal being to eliminate the fear and distrust that a large number of African-Americans have in regards to the world of investing. Former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal has showed us that he can do more than dribble and dunk. He has amassed a $400 million net worth with a series of smart and calculated investments, bucking the trend of former athletes squandering away millions with no regards to the future.
For years, African-Americans were excluded from many aspects of a burgeoning America. Like Jim Crow and other instruments of separation, there was no clear line for where blacks could and couldn’t go but it was understood where we did not belong and Wall Street had always been one of those places. Just as there are no more “white only” water fountains, there are no “white only” paths to generational wealth. While our parents and grandparents may have feared the stock market, the time is now for African-Americans to dispel the old notions of investing as a sport for old rich white men like golf. Let Billy Ray Valentine and Wall Street Trapper show you how to step into yet another space that we were never supposed to be in…
