Topic: Investing Basics

"Rule number 1: Never lose money. Rule number 2: Never forget rule number 1" - Warren Buffett Managing risk is critical to long term investing success.

This episode is a cracker - a must-not-miss! One of the original reasons we started Equity Mates was to track the journey of other beginners, as we all learnt to invest together.

The RBA made history last week. For the first time in nearly three years they moved interest rates. Notably, the moved interests rates down, cutting the cash rate to historic lows - just 1.25%. For context, at the depth of the Global Financial Crisis - rates were 3%.

Superannuation - something everyone has and very few people pay attention to. Most people are aware of the importance of making the right Super decisions, but a lot of the time it gets put into the 'too hard' basket.

We're now about to launch into the 4th week of Australia's Next Top Trader, meaning we are at the halfway mark! A lot of traders are in the green, which is great news.

When placing an order to buy or sell your stocks, you may have noticed there are a few options you can choose from - market order, limit order or a stop order.

Knowing when to buy and sell may be the difference between making a lot of money in this competition, and actually winning the trip to New York.

No, we're not talking about the volume of your speakers. We're talking about the volume of trades. Volume, or the amount of a stock traded each day, is a key metric many investors use to help them make buying and selling decisions.

At this point, you're a week into the competition and hopefully have started to make some money. As we enter Week 2, it is important you understand all the different options out there.

With the second week of trading behind us, it's time to recap the week that was, and look forward to what's coming this week! The markets finished the week down, with a very bumpy ride on Friday night.

The investing universe is massive. From individual companies to gold, from real estate to government debt - the options available to investors these days is unprecedented.

This is the final episode of our short 'pardon the jargon' series, and we're focusing on an individual company level.

Part 2 of our 3 part Pardon the Jargon series. If you're a week into the competition and feeling a little unsure of yourself - this is a great place to start. Don't get put off by the terms you haven't heard before and are struggling to understand - we're heard to break them all down.

As a podcast, we hate jargon. We think it is one of the main reasons people never start investing, and we want to help people break through this barrier.

We've made it to the end of the first week of competition, and with American markets opening again 12:30am Tuesday morning, it's time for us to do a wrap-up of the first week.

We've been receiving a few questions from competitors about using Stake, so we wanted to spend an episode explaining two features. Hopefully this helps you with the competition, and gets you one step closer to New York.

Next Top Trader is a 6-week competition. That means 30 trading days to win your way to New York. With a short time horizon, you need to ensure your strategy is suitable.

Finding the right trade is one of the hardest part about getting started. Every time you find a trade, you can find a way to talk yourself out of it. So in this episode, we cover some of the ways you can find trading ideas, and hopefully set you on the path to finding that competition winning trade.

With Australia's Next Top Trader now in full swing, we want to reitterate the rules, as well as all the ways in which we'll be delivering lessons, updates and market tips to you over the next 6 weeks.

Welcome to Australia's Next Top Trader! You're quite possibly feeling a bit overwhelmed right now, and very unsure on a lot of things, particularly what on earth you might buy for this competition! Have no fear though, we have some fresh ideas coming your way! To kick-off the competition we have Matt Leibowitz, the co-founder and CEO of Stake, joining us to give his insights on the current market conditions and to share a few stocks that are currently on his watchlist.

In this episode we break down how we manage and sift through information and list some of our go-to sources. One of the best and worst things about investing in the 21st century: there is never a shortage of information. You can find more facts and opinions on a company than you'll never need, but it also means you can get lost in this sea of conflicting opinions.

85 episodes in, who would have thought?! We've learnt a lot over the past 18 months, and the Equity Mates community has grown significantly, along the way.

With our live shows done, we wanted to discuss a theme that came up over and over again in our listener Q&A and conversations afterwards.

There are so many great investing and business books out there that sometimes it's hard to know where to start, and often, finding the time to finish them is equally as challenging