Transcripts

Commentary: The Spanish Guide to Understanding Brokerage Account Statements

SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight`s commentator says amid all the furor over immigration and this week`s Hispanic boycott, one important factor is being overlooked. Here`s Myron Kandel, president of the New Hampshire Initiative for Corporate Responsibility and Investor Protection.

MYRON KANDEL, NEW HAMPSHIRE INITIATIVE FOR CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY: Amidst all the attention being focused on immigration, I`d like to talk about a related matter: the economic importance of the Hispanic community and the Hispanic investor market in particular. What brings this to mind is the publication in Spanish of a guide to understanding brokerage account statements. The Securities Industry Association and the North American Securities Administrators Association jointly published the guide some years ago. Now they`ve done it in Spanish.

We can all argue over whether the national anthem should be sung in Spanish, but there can be no denying that Spanish-speaking investors, many of them relatively new, deserve all the protection and information they can get. That`s why I applaud this publication. The guide can be an important step toward promoting investor education among this fast-growing segment of American society. Twelve percent of the nation speak Spanish. There are some two million Hispanic-owned businesses, and one estimate says Hispanic households with more than $100,000 in annual earnings are growing at twice the rate of the general population. Hispanic buying power is projected to reach $1 trillion by the end of this decade. That means a lot of investable income and as more and more Hispanics become investors, they need to know how to understand their brokerage statements. I`m Myron Kandel.