How to break into Wall Street without knowing someone
Nonprofit Wall Street Bound offers boot camp for people interested in the financial world
Troy Prince started selling shares as a teenager, but when he looked around Wall Street, he didn't see people who looked like him. He used that as inspiration to form the nonprofit organization Wall Street Bound, which discovers and trains underrepresented young adults on the world of trading.
"It was always strange to me, knowing family members, friends, that there was hunger, talent, intelligence out there, a raw IQ, but, in the front offices of Wall Street, it wasn't represented," Prince told FOX Business' Charles Payne on Monday. "There was a disconnect."
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Prince said much of that reason was that it felt like you had to know someone to get in the door. In founding Wall Street Bound, Prince took his knowledge to the streets, to teach people that they could not only understand trading but could also be traders.
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| I:DJI | DOW JONES AVERAGES | 44910.65 | +188.59 | +0.42% |
| I:COMP | NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX | 19218.16623 | +157.69 | +0.83% |
| SP500 | S&P 500 | 6032.38 | +33.64 | +0.56% |
"For a lot of the young people that I'm working with ... Wall Street is still this far-off thing," Prince said on "Making Money with Charles Payne."
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Prince said convincing not only people interested in being traders but also Wall Street firms that they should hire these young, hungry traders is still a work in progress.
"We are now intensely partnering or trying to partner, I should say, with several banks and investment banks on Wall Street," Prince said.
He said they're close, though, with teaming up with banks.
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In the meantime, his nonprofit offers a boot camp for people interested in entering the financial world.
"It started off with broad, macro-themes such as the overall look of the industry, buy side, sell side, what does the Fed do?" Prince said. "Then, we went to more hard skills, technical curriculum of actual equity analysis."
He hopes his organization will help diversify Wall Street, one young, hungry trader at a time.