What I'm Trading - Andrew

Occupation: Business Development & Designer

Industry: Design

Age: 30

Location: Gadigal Land, Australia

Hobbies/Interesting Fact About You:

I currently work in business development within the design industry however, previously I worked overseas, played in a heavy metal band, worked as a kitchen hand, tradie, cherry picker, telecommunications salesman, sandwich artist, and graphics designer.

Stake portfolio size: US$10,000

What was your first investment on Stake?

My first investment made on Stake was Airbnb (ABNB).

In one sentence, define your investing style.

My current investing style could be described as consistent and diverse.

I recently started investing the same amount of money monthly even through difficult times and making it a part of my monthly budgeting.

These funds are then put into a range of diverse investments such as cryptocurrency, ETFs, individual stocks, and micro-investments. I’ve also noticed that through this, I’ve stopped putting my emotions into it and just simply do it as a habit now rather than overthinking it. I have faith the market will perform in the long run even through short term dips. (A little more than one sentence)

Why are you in the market?

I grew up in a family where my parents weren’t financially literate, didn’t know how to invest their money, and were heavily in debt. My siblings and I learnt from their previous experiences and from that point we all knew that we had to work hard collectively to make a better future for our family.

I wanted to learn more about the finance world so I started to read a lot and listened to podcasts to get my motivation going for my first investment. I’m still learning along the way and have slowly gained my confidence through the momentum of actions but also the generous support of the finance and investing community available on Instagram.

What’s in your Stake portfolio right now?

I am still relatively new to Stake but have currently invested in the following stocks; Airbnb (ABNB), Dropbox (DBX), Tesla (TSLA), Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN).

How are your returns so far?

Overall my high-risk stocks are down but my low-risk investments are up so across the board I’m roughly 7-8% up since I started. For me, this is the great thing with having a diversified portfolio; they balance out. I plan to keep holding onto these stocks for the long term so am not too worried about short term downturns.

Any other investments that are not on Stake?

Outside of Stake, I am currently investing in individual stocks, ETFs, micro-investments, and cryptocurrency. I had gotten into cryptocurrency years before getting into investing in stocks but I plan to keep these up as well as investing within the Stake app.

What are you watching? Why?

I’m currently watching companies that are in cyber securities, sustainability, lithium batteries, and fintech. I believe this is where the future is headed and through the lens of a designer, I think we should be striving towards it.

Do you have a trading or investing role model?

Currently, I’ve been following Canna Campbell’s (AKA Sugar Mama) $1,000 dollar project strategy of investing $1000 parcels. This methodology has helped me get into investing and I’d recommend it to anyone out there trying to start as it puts investing into bite-size pieces so that you can get your foot in the door and also allows you to progressively build up a positive saving mindset. Additionally, I try to learn where I can so I’m halfway through reading She’s On The Money by Victoria Devine and recently finished reading The Richest Man In Babylon by George Clason.

What’s a piece of advice you’d give a newbie?

If I could dial back the clock and give my younger self some pointers, they would be the following; 

• Do plenty of research on your own; read, watch and listen. Whichever medium suits you best or allows you to learn the fastest. Don’t fall for the hype that one media page can boast about a company. 
• Most importantly start somewhere and start small. Don’t get too stuck in analysis paralysis that you aren’t doing anything.
• It can be overwhelming picking and choosing your first investments but start with digestible/bite-size portions.
• Know why you’re doing it, watch your stocks but don’t be so emotionally invested that you are constantly watching your portfolio daily. If you are in for the long game then constantly watching it fluctuate over days won’t account for much. If it doesn’t matter in 5 years then it isn’t worth you worrying for 5 minutes.

What’s one mistake you’ve made and what did you learn from it?

I did the exact opposite of what I mentioned above, I came in with a big amount based on opinions from others and out of FOMO. I also was constantly checking on my stocks rather than holding, sold way too early which meant that I made a loss. It was a bad experience and I felt gutted and it did put me off investing for a few years which set me back.

I also wished I had started earlier! Being a Dollarmites kid, they tell you to save but never taught us how to invest our money. The lesson being that it’s never too late to jump in and the other being that you are in charge of your money and investments so it’s in your best interest to do your due diligence and research before starting.

If you were to buy a US stock or ETF right now, what would you buy? Why?

Currently, I’m watching the following ETFs; $HACK for global cyber securities and $ETHI for global sustainability leaders. As mentioned earlier, I believe this is where we are headed now and see it as being even more relevant in the near future.

ICYMI: make your own decisions

This is not investment advice, just my opinion. It doesn’t reflect any opinions of Stake. I’m as fresh to this as the next person off the street. Do your own research and make your own decisions.