By Tyra Bateman

I Thought Investing Wasn't for Me. The Loud Investing Challenge Changed That

Thirty minutes a day. Seven days. £574 billion reasons it was worth it.

Tyra Bateman had every reason not to invest and every story to justify it. When etoro invited her to join the Loud Investing Challenge alongside Jill Scott and a group of women who felt exactly the same way, she said yes out of curiosity. Here is what actually happened.

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If you had asked me two months ago whether I invested, the answer would have been no, followed immediately by a list of reasons why I was not ready. I did not have enough time or knowledge, and if I am honest, I had quietly decided that investing belonged to other people: people who worked in finance, people with significant disposable income, people who understood the jargon that seemed deliberately designed to keep everyone else out.

It felt like something other people did.

The UK's gender investment gap currently stands at £574 billion (Boring Money, 2026). That is not a figure about women being unwilling to invest. According to etoro's own research, it is a figure about women feeling they do not yet know enough to begin. I am one of the many. My own investing education was virtually non-existent beyond a sixth form economics lesson in which our class invested in Domino's shares in the hope of making enough money to buy pizza by the end of the year. We did not make much, but our teacher delivered the pizza anyway. Beyond that, investing was never part of the conversation.

When I was invited to take part in etoro's Loud Investing Challenge, I was curious but cautious. The concept was simple: seven days, twenty minutes of learning and ten minutes of discussion each day, designed to help women better understand investing. My immediate question was whether thirty minutes a day could really make a difference.

“I had convinced myself that investing was all or nothing. etoro's Investing Challenge challenged almost every assumption I had brought with me.”

Day one brought together a group of women from completely different walks of life. Some had considered investing before. Others, like me, had never taken the first step. What united us was simple: none of us were investing, and all of us felt like investing was something we did not quite understand. Jill Scott joined as team captain, not something I’d ever thought I’d say or experience, but her brilliant warmth and honesty made the whole experience so much more human.

The atmosphere, generally, felt more like a conversation than a classroom, which put me immediately at ease. There was no pressure to have the right answers and no expectation that anyone should already know the basics.

What surprised me most was not how much I had to learn. It was discovering that almost everyone in the room felt exactly the same way.

Before the challenge, I had convinced myself that investing was all or nothing. Either you knew exactly what you were doing and made money, or you got it catastrophically wrong and lost everything, like walking onto a casino floor with your life savings. There did not seem to be much room in between. The sessions challenged almost every assumption I had brought with me.

“You do not need thousands of pounds sitting in your account before you begin, and you do not need to become an expert overnight.”

The real turning point came on day five, when we were asked to think about brands we use every day and assess whether we would consider investing in them. Suddenly we were talking about businesses we already knew intimately. We discussed supply and demand, competition, consumer behaviour and the factors that influence a company's long-term success. For the first time, investing felt tangible rather than theoretical. What clicked was the understanding that investing is not about making perfect decisions. It is about making informed ones. You do not need thousands of pounds sitting in your account before you begin, and you do not need to become an expert overnight.

What began as a room of strangers quickly became a group learning together. The shared experience of asking the questions we had all been too embarrassed to ask elsewhere turned out to be one of the most valuable parts of the week.

During the challenge I discovered I am what etoro describes as a blended investor: someone likely to research companies and follow trends but not yet consistently investing. For now, I can see myself building that habit over weeks and months, checking my portfolio the way I check other things that matter to me, and letting my knowledge and confidence grow together.

The biggest lesson was not about stocks or markets. It was about permission. Permission to start small. Permission to learn as I go. Permission to understand that building knowledge, like building wealth, happens gradually and that the gap between knowing nothing and knowing enough is much smaller than I had been led to believe.

£574 billion sits in that gap. I would rather be on the other side of it.