As Dr. Brian Jager began his medical career, he noticed that the field of anesthesiology was underserved. The ability to diagnose, create and execute a treatment plan, and enable people to improve intrigued Dr. Jager. At the start, he served patients in both the operating room managing anesthesia and in private practice providing pain management.
“When I initially started, I did both. I did operating room anesthesia and also was in the office, in the pain clinic. Just over time, the need and the busyness of the clinic overtook the other part of the practice, and I couldn’t continue that,” Dr. Jager said. “I had to focus on one or the other, which started me moving in the direction where I am today.”
While caring for patients at a thriving medical practice in Orlando remains Dr. Jager’s full-time job, his instinctive curiosity made building additional wealth through market investments a natural fit for him and his goals. And when it comes to selecting the markets where he is interested in investing, the sky’s the limit.
“We try to be part of almost every market, generally,” Dr. Jager shared. “You look at all different asset classes: stocks, bonds, real estate, private equity, and so there are different types of things that we’ve been involved with. My goal is to diversify our holdings as much as possible to try to minimize any bad happenings.”
Dr. Jager believes that markets as a whole are competitive and self-education is a critical piece of making wise investments you feel confident fit your personal and financial goals.
“Being a person that never really did finance or never did economics in college, I’m very interested in it, so I work hard to educate myself. I listen to different podcasts and read books that possibly could help me. I have a financial advisor who I talk with. So it’s not just me doing everything myself,” Dr. Jager said. “I try to be as educated as I possibly can to try to allocate my capital in responsible ways that are going to generate wealth for an extended period of time.”
Dr. Jager attributes his ability to quickly advance his knowledge on various investing concepts to educational resources including YouTube videos and podcasts. But all digital learning, especially that’s given for free, should be taken with cautious optimism.
“As far as resources go, it’s amazing what you can learn with just a computer. You can go on YouTube, look up videos, and you can learn anything you want,” Dr. Jager remarked. “Now, of course, you have to take things with a grain of salt. People trying to sell you things. But that has helped significantly open up more markets to things that I can do personally, to help not only hedge my situation but also generate some yield and income.”
Regardless of how much education one has about markets, Dr. Jager feels that the biggest question for all those managing investments in various marketplaces comes down to one component: risk management.
“I think that you have to look at the fundamentals of each market and where they are. There are certainly bad markets and emerging markets that you have to be very careful in. The risk levels are much higher,” Dr. Jager said. “Sure, if I leveraged myself more, we could probably do better at times, but you’re also exposing yourself and your family to the times where it could be terrible. When people talk about the market, it goes up the escalator, but it goes down the elevator.”
About the Author:
Leslie Chunta is a marketing consultant with nearly 15 years of experience in creating dynamic marketing programs and building brands for startups to enterprise organizations. She has worked agency- and client-side with high-growth companies that include Silicon Valley Bank, JPMorgan Chase, SailPoint, EMC, Spanning Cloud Apps, Ashcroft Capital, Netspend, and Universal Studios. www.thelabcollective.com
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action.