Graduates, I’m going to tell you something right now that most people at this podium won’t say.

That valedictorian sitting up front? I mean it — outstanding. Truly. But I have spent thirty years on Wall Street interviewing the most powerful people on earth. Presidents. CEOs. Billionaires. Nobel laureates. And I can tell you from experience — the valedictorian of high school is not the valedictorian of life.

I grew up in Brooklyn. My family ran a restaurant. Nobody in my world was talking about Wall Street or television careers or interviewing the most powerful people on the planet. I wasn’t the most polished person in the room when I started. I wasn’t the most connected. But I was willing to outwork everyone else in the building. And I paid attention. Every single day.

That’s how I got the job. That’s how I kept it. And that’s how I built a career that has taken me from Brooklyn to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to the most important boardrooms in America.

Here’s what thirty years of watching markets taught me about life.

Markets are brutally honest.

They don’t care about your GPA. They don’t care about your class rank. They don’t care about what your teachers thought of you or what college accepted you. Markets care about one thing only — can you perform when it matters?

That’s the exam you’re walking into right now. And there is no curve.

I have sat across from people who failed out of school and built billion dollar companies. I have sat across from Ivy League graduates who never figured out how to create value for anyone but themselves. The difference was never the diploma. The difference was always the hunger. The willingness to do the work nobody else wanted to do. The ability to get knocked down and come back smarter.

I’ve been told no more times than I can count. Doors were closed in my face. I was underestimated — regularly — in rooms full of people who assumed I didn’t belong there. You know what I did? I prepared harder than anyone else in the room. I showed up earlier. I asked better questions. And I let the work speak.

That strategy has never failed me.

You are entering the most dynamic economy in American history. Artificial intelligence is reshaping entire industries in real time. The trades are producing millionaires. Juan Hernandez got hired as a welder at SpaceX in 2015. They offered him $10,000 in company stock. He almost didn’t think twice about it. Last week SpaceX went public in the largest IPO in history. Juan Hernandez is now a millionaire.

The rules have changed. The opportunity has never been bigger.

But here is what has not changed and never will:

The people who win are the people who create value for others. Whether you become a master electrician, a surgeon, an entrepreneur, or a journalist — your success will be determined by how much you improve the lives of the people around you. That principle is as old as capitalism itself. And it works every single time.

Let me tell you what the market remembers — because the market forgets almost everything except this.

It does not remember your SAT score. It does not remember your GPA. It does not remember how many AP classes you took or what awards are on this program tonight.

What it remembers is whether you showed up when things were hard. Whether you kept your word. Whether the people around you could count on you at 2 in the morning when everything was going sideways. Whether you had the courage to back your own conviction when everyone else said fold.

Character is the only asset that compounds forever.

I want to say one more thing — and I want you to hear it clearly.

America’s greatest story has never been written by the people who played it safe. It has been written by the people who bet on themselves when the outcome wasn’t guaranteed. Immigrants who came here with nothing. First generation kids who refused to accept the ceiling their circumstances suggested. Trade workers who built the skylines and pipelines and power grids that make everything else possible.

That story is yours now.

Your zip code is not your destiny. Your GPA is not your ceiling. Your circumstances are not your conclusion.

The future is not something that happens to you.

It is something you build.

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

Now stop waiting for the right moment.

The right moment is today.