What I'm Trading - Gab

Occupation:  Operations + Customer Success, Law Student and Podcaster @ Flip Side Fluent, where a friend and I interview founders, entrepreneurs, and innovators who are doing inspiring things.
Age: 19
Location: Sydney, Australia
Stake Portfolio Size: ~US$5,000

In one sentence, define your trading style.

I like to keep it simple – I invest in what I believe to be good companies, working towards a future that I’d be keen to see… a very sleep-easy strategy.

Why are you in the market?

The market provides a massive opportunity, and I think that’s something we should all be jumping in on.

On this note, financial independence is great and something we should all feel capable of. I read the other day that only 18% of Australia’s active investors are female… I’m really grateful that I was exposed to the markets so young, and really excited for more of my female friends to jump in on the opportunities.

What’s in your portfolio on Stake right now?

Lots of tech and innovation at the moment – $AAPL, $NFLX, $MSFT, $NVDA, $ABNB. I also jumped into $ARKK, and $ARKG (praise Queen Cathie).

How are your returns so far?

At the moment I’m seeing 20% returns across my portfolio, which I’m really happy with considering the tech correction we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks.

Any investments that are not on Stake?

While I hate to admit to being part of the hype, I invested in Bitcoin late last year. With its high volatility not necessarily falling under my sleep-easy strategy, giving myself moderate exposure has shown good returns – it’s the risk-on portion of my portfolio, you know the same part that fluctuates depending on Musk’s Twitter updates.

What are you watching? Why?

With the market pulling back over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching tech to see what might be fitting to jump in on now. Specifically, I’ve been waiting to jump in on Shopify with its promising earnings and sales growth. Now may be the time.

Do you have a trading or investing role model?

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t asked most of my team here for trading advice, what they’re invested in, and what they’d invest in if they were 19 again. Being surrounded by people so well versed on the markets, I’m always keeping an ear out for their observations – one of my most successful trades when I first started was $SPCE, a company I wasn’t aware of, but researched and invested in after I overheard chatter about it in the office.

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

While I definitely don’t feel well-versed enough in the world of trading to be providing any advice, I do think I’ve saved myself from some unnecessary stress by avoiding being awake during market hours. For this same reason, I sometimes even avoid checking my portfolios more than once every two to three days. Obviously, this wouldn’t suit everyone’s trading style, but it definitely eliminates the potential for emotion-based decisions. The market will always be fluctuating, but if you’re investing in what you believe to be good companies, you should be able to sleep easily.

To people slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of jumping into it, I’d say start small and start now. I started with $50 in my account and put $10 into 5 companies I liked. Get comfortable and build your way up from there.

How did you first get into trading?

In early 2020 I joined the Stake team, so I started trading in hopes of learning the Stake product and contextualising a bit of the office banter. At that point, making sense of it all seemed pretty out of reach. I read up, got into some podcast content (Get Started Investing by EquityMates is a great start) and began to view the market as far more than numbers moving irrationally. As a bit of a humanities nerd, I became really interested in the way the market is a reflection of human reaction to what is happening in the world. Unfortunately, I think the jargon, and technicalities, and microanalysis of charts make trading seem so unnecessarily daunting to those of us who didn’t grow up with our heads in finance textbooks.

I now view the market as a reflection of current global happenings, a place of opportunity, and a tool that allows us to invest in the future we want… that’s definitely something I want to be a part of.

What was your first trade on Stake?

My first trade was $TSLA – and just $10 of it.

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

There’s no denying that Cathie Wood is the future, so I’d be jumping in on more ARKK.

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.