Global Trader has embarked on a national campaign to educate South Africans about their finances…

With the recession being an unwelcome reality globally, the 'What's Stopping You' (WSY) campaign encourages South Africans to take charge in the moulding of their financial futures. Through teaching how to step away from financial advisors and take a more active role in your personal financial health, this initiative is bound to make many South Africans stretch their rands even further.

The campaign, entitled 'What’s Stopping You?' (WSY), encourages individuals to place less trust in financial advisers and instead focus on educating themselves to overcome their fears and take care of their financial futures.

The company has offered its services, through the WSY programme, to help train interested South Africans in alternative investment options, including trading.

Global Trader has also challenged media and various celebrities to take up the challenge, with a R50 000 charity prize for the winner.

The website www.wsy.co.za contains a quiz that determines the extent of each individual’s financial knowledge through a process of self-evaluation.

Upon completion of the quiz, the candidate will receive a full personalised feedback report that determines her or his financial maturity on four different levels, namely: product knowledge, risk appetite, experience and trader personality — all key roles in self-directed, risk-managed trading success.

Charles Savage, chief executive officer of Global Trader, says, "WSY is an empowering initiative that will redefine South African’s attitude to self-directed investing. I believe that the credit crisis has provided the perfect opportunity for us to talk to investors about taking a greater level of interest and control over their own investment.

"As banks, brokers and other financial houses find themselves immersed and focused on internal debate, we are focusing on enabling investors."

The campaign, so far, has been running for over a month and the interest has been significant.

There have been over 6000 unique visits to the WSY website and over 4000 click-throughs from the viral campaigns. This has converted to over 600 WSY reports being personalised and presented to investors.

The campaign is beginning to gain real momentum through all viral initiatives.

"Research has indicated that the level of technical skill in the South African financial markets is largely deficient," continues Savage. "Our tertiary education is not practically oriented to deal with the foundations of finance on a theoretical basis. To compound this problem, many financial institutions constrain their staff in particular markets (or sub-markets) that provide little opportunity for development of broad market knowledge," he says.

Article continues on page two...

Do you trust financial advisors or do you go it alone? Leave a comment below...

44 ways to make more cash It's not easy to make extra money, but it can be done if you're creative. Here's how...

What will you regret? Advice to a reader who wants to know if he should accept the promotion he's been offered...

How to ditch all debt Do you have credit card debt? Do you want to pay off your home loan more quickly?