There are many disparities in America. One that is often overlooked is the investment knowledge disparity. Frankly, the underserved communities are exposed to limited investment education. Daymond John said "If you don't educate yourself, you'll never get out of the starting block, because you'll spend all your money-making foolish decisions."

Less than ten percent of people from underserved communities consistently invest in the stock market versus over 60 percent of Suburban Americans that actively invested in the market. That is one of many factors responsible for

America's wide wealth gap.

There are not very many individuals from underserved communities that have

been exposed to how money and investments work on a sophisticated level.

Referring to consultants and brokers representing large Wall Street firms. The few that have been, typically don't bring the financial knowledge back to the community. Dr. Claude Anderson calls it "Brain Drain". Society takes the community's best minds, educates them with book knowledge and enough psychology so they don't bring the knowledge back to their original community.

Even after the bubble in 2008 when the market took a deep drop, the only people that lost money there are the ones that sold in a panic. This leads me back to a pet peeve of mine: the herd mentality of most people. I think it's human nature in some regards, the herd mentality of most people. Here's the 64-million-dollar question. How do you make money in the investment markets?

It's not that complicated- buy low, sell high, right! Next, what are human's natural instincts? For most people, their natural instincts are to buy high and sell low. Let's just say the market is going crazy and you're hearing nothing but things like Tesla is making lots of money and other stocks are going up and up!

Everybody's just making money and their stocks are just going up, the exuberance leads the normal person into buying it too high. This is also known as (FOMO) "Fear of Missing Out."

Then suddenly the market goes down and now they're selling at the low end. Let that marinate for a while. To be blunt... it's not the smartest move! But it happens regularly. That gets to one of my most fundamental concepts: have a

plan. Going in shooting from the hip is not a plan. When you go in with a plan,

decide if you're going to be a long-term investor, or do you have other strategies?

Stick with that plan, you will be better off. It will eliminate a lot of the panic

selling, which is one of the worst things an investor can do.

Get the necessary knowledge to shift from being a consumer to becoming an

owner. When you get enough knowledge, you'll be comfortable, and you won't panic when the stock market takes a temporary dip. It's never a good idea to

make decisions under duress.

The average rate of return is nine to ten percent over time. However, it is not a straight upward line. There are support lines (when investments drop) and resistant lines (when Investments rise) and so forth, we'll get into technical charts down the road.

Compound interest is when the interest a person earns on a principal balance is reinvested and generates additional interest.

Here is an example: Assume you have one dollar, and somehow, you're able to double it every year for 20 years. The concept is called compounding.

Hopefully, this diagram illustrates why Albert Einstein described compound interest as the "eighth wonder of the world, he who understands it, earns it, he who doesn't, pays for it."

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett was asked, what's your biggest secret? He said "Compound Interest" - without skipping a beat. "I just love to watch it compound." Consistently harnessing the power of compound interest over a long period of time has made Buffett one of the most successful investors of all-time.