Professional Trader Andrew Baxter Shares His Best Advice For New Investors Looking For Longevity In The Market

Being in control over your financial future has never been more accessible, but it's up to you to go out and seize it! So many people have been able to create a life of financial security and success through taking the time to become knowledgeable and resilient investors thanks to professional traders such as Andrew Baxter. Finding success through the stock markets, Andrew is now sharing his vast knowledge to help others around him.

Andrew founded the Australian Investment Education platform to fight back against the idea that finance trading isn't accessible to the average person, and has helped thousands of motivated Australians become the next generation financially literate investors. On his mission to empower more people to find their own financial freedom, Andrew created the 'Money and Investing' podcast, and has shared some key learnings here, based on his 30 years of experience with trading.

Stay on top.

I think the most important thing for new and experienced traders alike is to upskill and expand your knowledge base as much and as often as you can. Unassisted, the stock market is not a safe or fun place to navigate, and these days we have so many resources available to us, with online courses and dedicated coaching services that make learning about investing more accessible than it has ever been. You don't have to pester someone on the floor to mentor you, or travel far to meet in person or be overwhelmed by being in a busy classroom of people all fighting for the attention of the teacher. You can focus on learning about exactly what aspect you want to improve on from the comfort of your own home. If you've got a few strategies down, look at expanding your repertoire, if you have a bunch of inconsistent strategies, maybe scale that back and focus on mastering a couple strategies that you can generate consistent wins with.

You eat what you kill.

When it comes to investing, there's a sort of Darwinian element to it that I believe really shapes the kind of person you'll be in the sector and how much success you'll find. On the trading floors you'd see people working with 8 figures rubbing shoulders with people trading with pennies, and in today's markets people’s account balances are all over the place, but it's the mindset that truly differentiates the best investors, rather than the volume they trade with.

If you're good at what you do, your income can be extremely lucrative - uncapped, and if you're bad at it, then you're going to struggle, there's no safety net. But if you've got the hunger and drive to succeed, you won't be struggling for long and you'll forge yourself into a resilient, profitable investor. As someone who came into investing with an outsider's perspective, the difference in drive, longevity and success between the traders who felt they 'deserved' to be there compared to the ones who were grateful to be there was absolutely huge.

You need to crawl before you can walk.

Developing and honing world class basics doesn't sound very exciting, and I understand the desire for people to want to operate and trade at a more advanced level, but jumping ahead can be a poison chalice in that if you haven't taken the time to build on your basics properly, you're operating on a very wobbly platform to say the least.

Strong fundamentals will serve you well, 99% of the time compared to advanced strategies that require so many more conditions to be identified and set in your favour to succeed. Learn to understand why a downtrend is occurring and don't just blindly buy in without it showing some level of support. You can throw 56 indicators on a chart and gear it up with some sort of derivative instrument with 10x leverage, but you're building a very fragile business that will end in tears unless you're lucky. I've never based an investment strategy around luck, but that's something that unfortunately a lot of people are finding out after the madness of last year and moving into this year who have been relying on luck more so than skill.

If you want to build the financially free future you've been dreaming of, connect with Andrew Baxter and his team at Australian Investment Education through their website, or their Instagram and Facebook social media pages. You can also visit Andrew's YouTube channel or subscribe to his podcast to access a wealth of free investing content he creates weekly, and learn more about how you empower your finance journey.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes