On August 31st, 2000, General Electric share price peaked at $56 a share.

Just two years later, the stock price was down by more than 50%.

And by the end of 2018, the stock was trading at $7 a share, an 85% drop from its all-time high.

In 2018 alone, $140 billion of investors' money had vanished.

By comparison, that's twice the amount lost when Enron collapsed in 2001. It's also twice the

combined market cap erased by the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and General Motors during the

0809 crisis.

While some of those affected were just investors and speculators, many were dedicated employees of the company who never planned on needing to go back to work after putting

in 40 hard years of service.

Those who were hit hardest by GE's collapse were company retirees, including former factory

workers who took advantage

of the equity compensation packages to save for retirement.

And that's what we're going to be talking about for the next two weeks here.

Equity compensation.

Equity compensation is typically used by a company as an incentive to its employees, with

the most common forms being employee stock purchase plans or ESP's,

restricted stock units or RSUs, and stock options like ISOs and NSOs. To help us talk through

equity compensation plans and the most prudent way to manage the company's stock you might

acquire during your career, I asked fellow financial planner

Odaro Isweeney to join us today.

Odaro is a first-generation, Nigerian-American, who grew up in Texas and currently works

as a financial planner at PlanCorp in St. Louis, Missouri.

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