time when many investment firms were starting to look into developing some training programmes and they hired Mr. Hall, an engaging personality, to do the job.

Mr. Hall, who now teaches the Street's secrets to aspiring brokers and investment bankers, soon got caught up in the milieu and speed of the stock markets and was hooked.

"I didn't expect to find it that interesting,'' Mr. Hall said yesterday while relaxing at Monty's Restaurant in Hamilton where he was taking a break from teaching a three-day stockbroking training course hosted by the Bermuda Stock Exchange.

"I found Wall Street much more exciting than I first thought about it,'' he said. "In those days there was a broader variety of people. Not everybody had come out of a business school. They had clunky degrees -- in history, philosophy. They had much more of a broader knowledge base and would share it with you. I learned a lot about the Street the old fashioned way.'' Mr. Hall has parlayed that knowledge and his teaching ability into a career.

He is the former executive director of the New York Institute of Finance where he remains a faculty member.

He now lectures around the world to stock exchanges and securities firms.

After the Bermuda stint he was off to Australia and Hong Kong. He has hosted a series of investor shows on BBC2 and is the author of several financial training manuals.

"I have done very well,'' he answers in response to a question about his investing ability. "Everyone always thinks there that someone who teaches doesn't have the practical knowledge.'' He calls himself an investor, preferring to hold no more than ten stocks at any one time. He distinguishes between a trader, an analyst and an investor.

Everyone wants to be a trader but most people only have the time to be an investor.

"To be a trader you have to like the game,'' he said. "And the winning and the money must be the prime motivation for you. You also can't be reflective.

You have to function on the plane of action, not on the plane of reflection.

People tend to confuse investing with trading.'' A trend today, sparked off by the Internet, is more and more people are doing their own picking of securities themselves, bypassing brokers and investment advisors. They have become suspicious of intermediaries because of scandals in the market.

"People are surprised that I have held some stocks for five or six years,'' Mr. Hall said. "I'm an investor. I don't want to get out there every day of my life sitting in front of the screen watching CNN doing trades like some people are doing. The shift is happening. A lot of people are subscribing to those services and doing day to day trading. The number of people trading on the Internet has skyrocketed. People want to be traders.'' His advice is don't be a trader, be an investor. Too often people get caught up in the buying and selling and ignore the advice to pick a reasonable time frame to hold investments.

"The average guy on the street should be looking at the markets from an investing standpoint,'' he said. "They don't have the time or the information on all these stocks. They need to focus. They need to look at companies that have long term growth prospects. People just don't seem to understand that part of investing. If you are going to go for the hot stock today, chances are by the time you get the information, you're way down that the chain. It's gone through the A list, the B list, the C list down to the dog list. And guess who's the dead dog. You.'' Investors need to give themselves a reasonable time horizon and review their choices now and then. Don't jump in and out with the up swings and down turns.

"For example everybody is buying Internet stocks,'' he said. "I don't hold any Internet stocks because many of them will not survive the ultimate wash out. Yes, you can make good short term money. But I don't want to have to sit there every day and think about that.

"Sometimes I like to go to Machu Picchu and just watch the sun rise over those Inca ruins and I just don't want to have to worry about picking up the cell phone to find out what the markets are doing.'' People have also become more cost conscious and look for the cheapest way to buy securities. A lot of them are looking at index funds because they realise that the majority of money managers don't beat the major indexes. Enter the Internet and the rise of on-line trading.

"The public feels empowered to make these decisions,'' he said. "Because the market has gone up for so long they feel comfortable and the level and the degree of risk people believe they can accept is much higher than it should be. People who do it on their own, need to think `Why am I doing this and what is my time horizon?' They should put that sign on top of their computer.'' The stock markets have now become a form of entertainment for many people, and they follow it assiduously, but it's one that could bite back.

"People need to prepare for the time when the market turns down,'' he said.

"Follow the people who have done well for a long time. Buy quality and hold it. You can have some money in the fun stuff. It's the fun stuff that will teach you the big lessons in the market. But don't view all of the market as a big gambling ship in the middle of the Atlantic. There's a saying the market will betray everybody. And it does.'' He advises those thinking of making a career in the investment business to look first at becoming an analyst and not jump into trading.

"In class you can look at a personality and see who will be a trader,'' he said. "It's a combination of things -- body language, attention span, the way they try to summarise a question. It's a reductionist way of thinking about things. There are some people who want to be traders that are far too thoughtful. They should be analysts. They have time to reflect. They can put it together. They can see the logic behind the trading to be able to explain it to someone else. Traders can never get out of the jargon mode. Most people are somewhere between the two personality types.''