How to Choose the Right Investment Style for Your Financial Goals | Summer Series

Bryce: [00:00:31] Welcome to the Get Started Investing feed summer series brought to you by superhero over six episodes, we're going to be hearing from members of both the Equity Mates and superhero community and covering some of the biggest questions for anyone starting their investing journey. And to do it, as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How's it going?

Alec: [00:00:51] I'm very good. Bryce very excited for this summer series on both Equity Mates and Get Started Investing feed. They're hosting a summer series over on the You're In Good Company podcast. Maddy and Sophie are hosting a summer series. So if you've got some time off over Christmas and New Year's and you're wondering what you should do? Well, the podcast content Train Keeps Rolling,

Bryce: [00:01:12] keeps on rolling, and it's some of our best.

Alec: [00:01:14] You know, it is. Honestly, honestly, everything has been building up to the summer series. The everything has just been a warm up. But for, for me, what I'm particularly excited about on Get Started Investing feed, it's the first time we've done a summer series on this podcast. But it's also an opportunity for us to speak to members of the Equity Mates community on Equity Mates investing podcast. It's just a self-serving exercise, and you and I are talking about stocks. That's it. But in this we get to we've spoken to what, 20 odd members of the Equity Mates community and had a chat about different aspects of their investing journey. And for me, that's really exciting.

Bryce: [00:01:52] That's it. Ren. So look, we're going to be hearing stories and experiences from investors to help us all along our journey. You know, you might feel like you're alone at times, but you'd be surprised at how many similar experiences we share when we are getting started. And I think that the theme for me after speaking to all of these people and these amazing community members through all of these episodes, Ren is that everyone is facing the same barriers. And so it's good to have this conversation and work through it all together. So in this episode, we're going to hear from Lee, Alicia and Rachael. Members of the get started investing community about their investing goals and their style. That's the big question for today. What is your investing goal and what is your style? There is no right or wrong answer here, but sometimes you know it's good just to get some inspiration as we form our own investing views. A reminder that the summer series is brought to you by a superhero who allow you to buy Aussie and US shares and ETFs with no monthly account fees. And you can now earn Qantas points with Superhero. So visit Superhero.com.au/Qantas to learn more. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions and fees and charges apply. So Ren the question we're asking everyone is do you have an investing goal or style? So how do you approach this?

Alec: [00:03:11] I didn't really have a goal when I got started. Nothing more specific than I wanted to make money for me. I think that's okay. Like, I now have a more specific goal. And I think not having one when you get started isn't the end of the world, but it's important to think about what the goal is. And the reason is, and this is something I've only learnt again through doing this podcast is there's heaps of ways to make money in the share market. When I started, I thought there was just one and there was a whole bunch of people giving me different answers, and it was my job to figure out what was the right answer. But what I've learnt is that there are a lot of right answers and there are a lot of different styles where you can make money as an investor, but it's important that you find one stall and stick to it because chopping and changing or not really doing. Yeah, if it's a bit, if it's a bit all over the place, your returns will be a bit all over the place as well. And so for me, goal and style comes together because having a clear goal then influences what's the right way for you? What's the right style for you? And for me, it's about building long term flexibility into my life, I guess not being tied to a nine to five, not being tied to a paycheque, being able to quit my safe and secure job at a big corporate and do a low probability media business. Oh, and so then my investing style reflects that goal. Yeah, nice. What about you?

Bryce: [00:04:39] Yeah, very similar. I I didn't start with the goal. Well, you

Alec: [00:04:43] started when you're like five years old, so it would have been very impressive. If you had a goal, then I

Bryce: [00:04:47] thought I had a style, which was the classic value, you know, value by low, cheap companies. But I didn't do anything to actually execute that. I wasn't sitting down doing DCA.

Alec: [00:04:59] Yeah, well, you made a joke in an interview we did on Equity Mates recently that you did four minutes research before buying lesson for the expert we were speaking to didn't get the joke.

Bryce: [00:05:11] Yeah, that's right. That's because he spends four thousand dollars an hour, 4000 hours. I think it went. I think he just yet went straight over his head. But anyway, I think you're right. I think for me, the main thing here and as as we'll hear from our guests, it's that don't feel like you have to start with. A style it's about finding your style as you go, understanding who you are as an investor and then matching your personality type to a style of investing. That means you're going to be able to, as you said, stick to a strategy. If you're trying to take, if you hate risk, you hate taking big bets and you hate being in the market day to day. But you choose day trading as an investing style that just doesn't match. You know what I mean? So you've got to think about who you are as a person and to try and find an investing style that relates to that.

Alec: [00:06:00] Yeah, and it's yeah, like what life you want to lead as well. Lucky, if you're incredibly busy in your job and you know you're working on weekends and you just like under the pump, constantly don't pick a style that is requires a lot of attention because there are ways to make money and be an investor that require very little attention. Yeah, or zero attention in some cases. Yeah, just dollar cost averaging to an index fund. Yeah, I'm with you. I think it's not about having the right answer from day one. And if anything, I would say most people don't have the right answer from day one because you don't know what it's like until you're actually doing it, but it's about thinking about it because it's important to think about.

Bryce: [00:06:39] Absolutely. Well, feels like a great opportunity to now jump across and have a listen to what the key investing goals and styles for some of our community members are. So let's get stuck in. So Leigh is joining us as a community member who started investing at a very young age trading Eminem's at school. He now invests for a living and is going to share his investing style and goals with us, as well as some of his not so sexy stocks that are that are delivering sexy returns. Very keen for that, and we're excited to have Leigh join us on Get Started Investing feed. Welcome.

Leigh Gant: [00:07:21] Thanks, guys. Wonderful to be here.

Bryce: [00:07:23] So as we know, this episode is about investing goals and investing styles. So let's start with your investing goals. Lee, what have you set out to try and achieve when it comes to your investing journey?

Leigh Gant: [00:07:34] The overall destination I'm trying to reach is just total independence and security, so the way I think about it long term is I just want to have the freedom to do whatever I want when I want with whoever I wish to do it. But by achieving that, I don't really want to take any wild risks or overreach, and that helps the security side of things.

Alec: [00:08:04] I love that goal. I think it's a goal that we all aspire to achieve that that absolute financial freedom in terms of the style that you choose to invest to get there. You know, there's plenty of ways to make money in the stock market. What style works for you? And I guess, well, I'll try. How did it come to the conclusion

Leigh Gant: [00:08:22] that all your investing style I've had that experience where you think you stumbling upon the quick way to riches, and that's not the way to do it. You really want to be very honest about what kind of game you're equipped to play. I think I had that kind of self-assessment. You know, not too long ago after trying many different things, and what works for me is something very systematic. So looking at businesses that I understand and following a checklist to identify what they're worth, I'm not really well equipped to find the next 10 bagger growth company where, you know, there's probably higher risk, but higher rewards. I'm quite satisfied with identifying quality businesses that are undervalued at the time and will re rate over time as the management do their job and and that earnings continue growing.

Bryce: [00:09:24] We said in the intro that there was some not so sexy stocks that are delivering some sexy returns. So in that process that you've gone through and a bit of self-reflection and finding the style, what sort of stocks are you? Are you landing on or that are taking your interest at the moment?

Leigh Gant: [00:09:40] Some of them internationally, insurance stocks. So businesses like Markelle in the US is not something that maybe many people are aware of, but something that just has, you know, decades of growth experience. It could be locked into something like Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, where you know, they take the profits and the money from insurance premiums and then invest it really well to grow the company. It's been undervalued and it's just growing and growing and doesn't get a lot of attention. So I'm quite happy to just keep watching it. Do it? Think perhaps more likely there's businesses that people may see every day that do a really good job and aren't very exciting, like beacon lighting has returns quite well for me over the last six months.

Bryce: [00:10:30] I love lamps, so I should probably check that one out.

Alec: [00:10:36] I love lamp. Bryce really loves the lamp.

Bryce: [00:10:38] Or you just saying it because you saw it? I love Lamp.

Leigh Gant: [00:10:41] I really love lamps now. Thank you very much for taking light, but evidently so do lots of other people because you know the returns are great.

Bryce: [00:10:50] You mentioned that you've tried a lot of different investing styles, and you've probably got more experience in the markets than perhaps a lot of the beginner investors. What sort of advice would you give to someone who doesn't feel like they know what their investing style is yet?

Leigh Gant: [00:11:07] Yeah, I'm fortunate that I think over time I do find financial literacy, but there was no way I was anywhere close to where I'm at now. You know, five years ago and 10 years ago, et cetera. So and that's totally fine. You don't need to have that kind of literacy to do really well or avoid catastrophe, but take advantage of super. Keep adding to the pot, you know, keep your portfolio expenses down and buy ETFs like you're going to do really well if you just keep doing that over the long run. But then just be really honest, if you want to start finding individual companies to invest in where your strengths and weaknesses lie. So I don't really understand what a lot of tech companies do and where their growth is going to come from. Like, perhaps on a surface level, sure. But I can't see the future like that and I've tried. And you know, it's cost me some losses. Sure, like, we've all made mistakes like that, but that's a great way to sort of go, Okay, I'm going to eliminate that strategy because it's not working for me. You know, if you're not sleeping well at night because you're worried about the growth story of some business they're invested in. Chances are you shouldn't invest like that.

Bryce: [00:12:25] Lee, we thank you for your time, and we will now hear from our next community member. Alisha is a member of the Equity Mates community, and we've previously had her on the Get Started Investing podcast, so we highly recommend going back and listening to that episode. It was a lot of fun. But Alisha has built a substantial following of her own through reality TV and hosting the 10 Speaks Cocktails and Roses with Osher podcast and in the House in the Senate podcast as well. But exciting news. After finding love on The Bachelor in Paradise, Alisha and Glen are now engaged and a huge congratulations and a welcome to get started. Investing is in order, Alicia. We're so excited to have you.

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:13:09] Thank you so much, boys. I'm so excited to be back.

Bryce: [00:13:13] So today we're going to be discussing investing goals and investing styles. So let's start with, do you have an investing goal?

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:13:22] Yeah, I absolutely do. And it's sort of like two strands to this. Like so many people, and we did speak about this before in my first appearance on Get Started Investing. Like a lot of people, my partner and I are madly saving for a house deposit. We're very lucky. I used to live in Sydney and now I'm in Perth, and just that location shift, I feel like has made housing so much more attainable, which is awful. But but it does feel much more attainable in Perth at the moment. So we are just madly, madly pumping money into a savings account to try and reach some sort of critical mass that will allow us to go out and start doing all that fun stuff like home opens and really starting to knuckle down on learning about property. But I am also I made a very conscious effort. Like any good member of the Equity Mates community, we have a satellite and a core approach. I'm just trying to build that because I follow lots of different blogs. I mean, the Equity Mates community do lots of reading on Reddit. I have particularly recently, I've seen people who speak really openly about the amount of money they've got, in particular investments, and I saw this one. There was just one example that I stumbled across, and the guy was basically it was dividend day. And he was he basically was really open about the fact that he had like two hundred k in sort of like a 200 eater, and it was providing him like two thousand dollars passive income each quarter. And I was like, Wow, OK, if it's just really face the fact that it's time in the market and you've just got to keep keep pushing along because that's what I want my future to look like.

Bryce: [00:15:18] How does a wedding impact all of that?

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:15:20] Oh my god, I know I was going to say, like during the intro I was looking down at my ring and I'm like, Do diamonds appreciate in value? I'm not. So, you know, we talk about having a diversified portfolio, so I'm just going to think I'm going to sell it to Glen in that way. Like, Babe, you're just you're getting started investing.

Alec: [00:15:53] But it's a whole other type of investment.

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:15:55] Yeah, an investment in love and relationship. Happy wife. Happy life. Yeah. So we've got the we've got the wedding to look after as well. But I like to think that like we're just adjusting our strategies and you know how we split our money each fortnight slightly. And hopefully you hope in this situation, we're giving ourselves like quite a long runway until we have to start booking stuff in. And I'm hoping that, you know, just through careful consideration and segmentation, we will slowly but surely get to a point where it's not this like burdensome thing, where it's like, Oh, we have to choose having a wedding over there.

Alec: [00:16:37] You know, you've got all these goals, home ownership, having that big dividend, having the wedding that you want. What style of investing and what strategy do you put in place when you're trying to balance all of these competing goals and I guess, still grow your wealth?

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:16:52] Okay. So before we go into strategy, I just want to throw something to you, boys, that I don't think you are expecting this morning and that is that I met. I love FIRE. Oh, nice. That is totally fine. And listen to your episode with Aussie firebug where there was a lot of jostling around. I feel like I feel like what I took from it is that you have both taken a more positive journey towards like, I think that more and more in the personal finance space and in investing. I understand that there was this sort of like tension between people who were interested in investing at. People thinking that people who are interested in fire like crazy, what did it take? So, you know, as you spoke about in the podcast Live off Beans and Rice and just, you know, noting that we were on Get Started Investing feed for anyone that doesn't have is familiar with fire, it stands for financial independence, retire early. So it's basically like building up a critical mass like I mentioned earlier. So you can sort of live off your dividends, live off. You have streams of passive income. You're trying to basically like, get yourself to a point with investing that potentially it brings your retirement age down closer a little bit from light. To be honest, and this goes to, you know, why, why I sort of like the philosophy is I see my mom, who's in her 60s and she's basically like for a lot of our life, has lived paycheque to paycheque. I get really worried about particularly older women who are basically writing for their pension because they don't have strong superannuation because they haven't had this education around investing. That sort of led me to be interested in fire. I would call up my partner, Glen, and I are doing as light, very light at the fire, meaning I don't track anything. And this goes to like to get into more of the practical side of investing style and what we're doing at the moment. I'd say that we take sort of like a general bucketing approach, but we don't get down to the sort of like line item level that is probably the next step. Like, when our paycheques come in, a particular amount goes into the joint account and then a particular amount goes into home deposit and an account. I've labelled that big happiness, which is like five hundred bucks goes that in their fortnight and that goes towards holiday or furniture or whatever bigger item. Probably, probably a bit towards the wedding. Now, at the moment, we're not doing any. Probably our investing is quite in terms of like the stock market and shares. Our investing is quite separate at the moment. We work together on that home deposit and I've got my traditional nine to five. But then I also j influencing on the side, which gives me another nice jingle in my pocket. And so basically anything that I make on Instagram that lands into my account, I split off 50 percent tik-tok because I'm scared and the other half goes into into self-help and I buy shares with that. That's basically where we're at the moment. I say light the fire because, yeah, we're not. My next step is to you guys also did a recent episode where you thought you were talking about tracking your shares and we were talking about like shares vs. a spreadsheet. And that's where I've got to go. I need to set up a spreadsheet, and I'm intrigued to ask you guys because I didn't really ascertain it from the episode. Like, obviously, you can be like I bought 20 units of gas for this amount on this day. Do you then have another level where you're looking at what is making up that ETF's? No. Oh, okay, good. Yeah, I was tripping me out.

Bryce: [00:20:52] You mean what? Actually, what companies go into the ATM? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, at a very high level, you know, Ren and I will review our portfolio quarterly to have a think about it and look at like what exposure we're getting and, you know, countries and that sort of stuff. But, you know, in terms of breaking down every component, every company that goes into those ETFs, that's.

Alec: [00:21:14] No, no, no, no. Totally. Yeah, yeah. And I think just the thing to on this is kind of defeats the point of the ETF. Like that the most big index ETFs. You're not making the bet on these individual companies doing well. You're making the bet on like the American stock

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:21:32] segments like the American

Alec: [00:21:33] stock market, the Australian stock market continuing to get more productive. And you know, the some of the companies in that ETF are going to do poorly. Like you go in with your eyes wide open that not all 200 companies in the ASX 200 are going to do well. It's just that overall they'll do well. So yeah, don't feel like you need to go deep on every company and in an ETF.

Alisha Aitken-Radburn: [00:21:55] And I think to take it back to investing style, I almost think like I do acknowledge that I do need to at least get to the spreadsheet level where I might, and I've known this for some time. I've been investing for just over a year now and I've done really well, but that's the one step that I've missed, and I think I'm seeing it as kind of like, not bad in, but it's a big piece of life, I mean, to do to go back into my self wealth and, you know, document when I bought stuff and how much and to take it back to investing style and speaking to, you know, not going to overly deep and stressing yourself out. I think. Everything needs to match in your sort of investing style like I like to think I use the word lazy fire earlier because I don't like it, right? But I like to think that we talk about we're investing for the long term. So I want I also like I don't think it's a bad thing that most of my behaviour matches that. But like, I'm just putting I'm building up enough money so I can buy a bundle of what I like of a particular ETF that is relatively I'm not going to say low risk, but like it's I'm investing for the long term. I think maybe it's OK, but I'm just like bundling that money in there. And as long as I'm doing some due diligence, it's just going to sit there and that's OK.

Bryce: [00:23:18] Yeah, perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with that. Well, they show there's no doubt that you say you are lazy faire, but it sounds like you have certainly thought through all of this and have it together. So we thank you for your time. Before we hear from our next guest, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we'll be right back into it. So, Rachel is a 24 year old from Sydney who has been investing for a couple of years, and we're going to be chatting about her investing goal or style. So firstly, Rachel, welcome to Get Started Investing feed.

Rachel Tucker: [00:23:50] Hi, thanks for having me.

Bryce: [00:23:52] So as we know, this episode is all about investing goals and style. So let's start with the goal side of things you've been investing for a couple of years. What was the motivation? What you know? What are you trying to achieve a particular goal or is this for something later in life?

Rachel Tucker: [00:24:09] Yeah. So I think, you know my goal, I'm sure a lot of young investors go is is for long term growth. I want to retire very comfortably and I can't necessarily do that with an advertising salary. So I do like to bolster that with a little bit of opportunistic investing. So I think majority of the assets that I hold, I intend to hold for at least another 30 years and those that I don't intend to hold for 30 years. They're very opportunistic investments where we're likely to see a feeling of growth over the next five years. So I'll be probably cashing them out around then and having some fun with that.

Bryce: [00:24:48] Nice. And what was the like tipping point to get you started investing a couple of years ago?

Rachel Tucker: [00:24:54] Probably the same with a lot of other investors. It was my dad. He prompted me to put that hard earned money to work, essentially, and he suggested that I start with some very basic, very low risk investments, which I think is the best way to go for a lot of new start-ups, particularly younger investors who might think that investing is a little bit tricky or difficult or risky. It's absolutely not, especially if you have guidance of someone who is much more experienced than you are also an advisor, which I luckily very gratefully have access to.

Bryce: [00:25:28] Well, let's talk about that. So you're investing for the long term you want to retire comfortably. Sounds like you've got to sort of mix of assets that are going to be out of cash out in them in the next five years and some in the next 30 to 40 years. So what's the process or the style of investing and how does that work in with your financial advisor?

Rachel Tucker: [00:25:47] The way that I invest is quite opportunistic, so I'm a creative strategist for my job, so I do a lot of cultural analysis and trend forecasting, so I kind of apply those learning to my investing as well. So what I do usually luckily, I have access to an advisor. So what I do is I bring ideas to my advisor for him to kind of double check the numbers on and check whether these are viable options for me. But also what I do, which I think is really important and really kind of makes you feel more passionate about the types of investments that you do have is I invest 85 per cent with my head and 15 per cent with my heart. So 85 percent of my investments are based on research and trends, you know, solid growth opportunities. And then the other 15 percent are based on passion or things that I'm really interested in passionate about. So whether it's fitness or travel or dating, and I kind of invest a small proportion of my funds into those potentially lower growth opportunities.

Bryce: [00:26:44] Yeah, nice. I like the idea of certainly investing in things that are interesting and exciting to you, because that's going to keep you interested in investing in general. Are you? I like the idea of using your work and, you know, identifying cultural trends and the medicks as a way of then moving that across to the investing world. Do you have like an example that you could share?

Rachel Tucker: [00:27:05] Yeah, for sure. So one of my key holdings is Athon, which is an AI company, and at the moment, they're not doing too well because they're based in the base in the US and then they're not doing too well. But they do have really huge clients which will be, you know, needing AI and be, you know, continuing their partnership with Appen in probably the next 10 years. So I would say that as an opportunistic and trend forecasting type of by another example would be a pharma. So Asana is a workplace software company. I invested in Astana at IPO, which was, I think, last March, and that was just as lockdown was about to happen. Or maybe it was during lockdown that you can imagine that a lot of people will be needing, you know, remote work software, cloud technology so that they can basically keep working even though we're separated and apart during lockdown. So that had gone absolutely gangbusters. I've seen almost three hundred and fifty per cent increase on that stock, which has been awesome. Wow. So yeah, I think that's kind of a really good example of if you see a trend happening and we take advantage of it, then you can see some serious growth in your investments, which is awesome.

Bryce: [00:28:22] That's awesome. Well done. It's always great hearing stories from our community. As we said, no one's in it alone. There is no right or wrong, but sometimes we do just need some inspiration to help us on our way. So we've got five more episodes coming up where we are hearing from community members. We're asking things around biggest investing mistakes, we're going to be talking about things that they wish you knew when you started, there's plenty more stories to be had. So a reminder that you can win a thousand dollars in a superhero world if you go across and listen to the Equity Mates investing podcast. So listen to those episodes to go into the chance to win a $1000 superhero wallet. Yeah, get your investing journey started!

Alec: [00:29:05] And if you want more of the basics for your summer, if you really if you've decided 2021 2022 is the summer of investing, forget the summer of love. Forget Hot Boy Summer. It's the summer of investing this year. Maddy and SoFi over on You Are In Good Company are also distilling some of the biggest and most important lessons that they've learnt. After doing, you're in good company for about a year, and so that's also a great one to really hit the ground running as a investor in 2022. That's it.