Entrepreneurship
Starting the Conversation on Mental Health in the Stock Market, With Jasir Jilani

When Jasir Jilani began working in finance, he did not realize how much it would cross-over with his 11 years of schooling in mental health. When he went to get his undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College, and his master’s and doctoral degree at California Southern University and Columbia University, he graduated with a focus on two things: finance and mental health. His passion in becoming a therapist/psychologist was often met with resistance by his equally compelling desire to pursue finance, but he soon began to see how well they cross with one another.
This is especially prevalent in the stock market. Jilani began with the stock market as a freshman in college, trading penny stocks at a loss. He used the money he received as a scholarship and lost it all on four or five accounts, something that taught him a lot about risk management and the mental blow that trading can give you. After four and a half years, Jilani’s stock ventures became profitable, and eventually opened up his Investing Club platform, he made it clear that he would focus on ensuring his client’s mental approach to trading and risk appetite as a whole.
It’s an aspect as prevalent as the money itself. If a trader is prone to anxiety before trading, it will affect their decisions as it does every aspect of their life—from career to personal relationships. Temperament styles, revenge trading, and the eventual demotivated affect that follows is all too common with the gamification of investing. Anxious people may be prone to making less-patient decisions because of how the stock market may affect them, and Jilani is aware of this and devoted to talking users through these decisions and ensuring them why they are the ones to make.
The stock market can negatively affect those who are not anxious as well, especially following a period of prosperity. The markets of November, December, January, and February between 2020 and 2021 were profitable ones, and many users joined Jilani’s service hoping to invest in this period. Jilani, a veteran of trading with over a decade in experience, knew it wouldn’t last forever, and knew that breaking even wouldn’t be an awful thing. In the tough weeks of March, that’s exactly what ended up happening, as the market tanked. Though breaking even isn’t the worst result, many of those users expecting large gains were sorely disappointed. These highs and lows that the market faces take a blow on traders’ mental health in this aspect, and it’s something people need to learn how to expect and handle.
Jilani focuses on crafting a unique experience for each user to ensure they are staying rational and calm in these highs and lows of trading. From personal financial meetings to advice programs to the language he uses, he ensures that he and his team of “Avengers” are creating an environment for financial success by trying to protect them from decisions that may prove financially devastating. His program offers an interactive opinion board, where users can interact and discuss what they think about current market trends and specific stocks. The format of his program is very similar to slack where callouts, market research and opportunities are discussed in great detail. He makes sure that everyone’s opinion is valued; he recognizes that the difference between asking someone to describe their point instead of shutting it down goes a long way in improving the mental health of those he interacts with.
Mental health is something we should nourish in every aspect of our lives. Finance and the stock market are no different. We need to ensure that we are making correct, rational decisions and not taking unnecessary risks or dropping away from something because of the anxiety it may create. As Jilani has said, we all want to get away from that 9 to 5 job, and investing is an incredibly smart and calculated way of doing that; if we can manage the anxiety that comes from it, we can reap its rewards while living happy lives.
To access a free trial to try the stock call outs, visitwww.discord.gg/4RA6TBP4Cb and to learn more visithttp://www.investingbasics101.com.
