What it really takes to be a trader today

Traders who can remain disciplined, data-driven and emotionally composed are the ones most likely to succeed amid geopolitical uncertainty and market swings, says, Michael Ayres, CEO and Partner at Rostro Group, in the final episode of the podcast series. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Volatility is a double-edged sword. It's kind of unprecedented volatility initially brings a surprise, a shot. But what volatility creates is opportunities. You have to be vigilant, risk pieces kind of kick in, whether you're the customer or the broker that you're working with. But equally that's where opportunities come from. You're looking to find patterns, you're looking to find levels, you're looking to find buying opportunities where things maybe seem undervalued because there's a lot of emotion. One of the things I would say not to do is you don't sit it out. Markets tend to move in surprising ways. What we're talking about now presents people tons of opportunities over the next couple of quarters, could even be a couple of years. These markets are moving a lot more than they typically would. So you can see some extreme moves both in your favour and out of your favour. So set a stop loss, having a stop loss set is a place where you're saying, at that point, my appetite for downside is done. By putting it into the platform, you're not letting your human emotion at that point go, maybe just a little bit more. You set it and you say, okay, if I hit that, that's it, I'm out of my trade, protect my downside. I know what my loss will be. Stick to what you know, stick to what you're comfortable with, have conviction. But a lot of markets are moving, so there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of different clients all at the same time now.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Hello and welcome back to Money Reimagined Investing for the Next Generation. This is the podcast where we explore how the next generation is reshaping finance, technology, and investing. I'm Lochland Kitchen, and today the discussion focuses on what it really takes to be a trader today. Across this series, we have explored how Gen Z and millennials are changing the rules of investing, unpacked futures and options, examined the evolution of digital assets, and learned how partners are building real businesses in financial markets. In this final episode, the focus returns to the individual, the trader, not the version that's portrayed on social media, but the reality of trading in today's global markets. Joining the conversation once again, joining us, he's very comfortable here now. Michael Ayers, the CEO and partner at Rostro Group. Michael, thank you very much for joining us here for the final episodes. Thanks. I'm very excited to be back again. It is. It's good to have you back again. And we've been discussing quite a lot about trading, but when many people discuss trading today, what do you think a modern trader is like compared to that of 10 or maybe even five years ago?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

I think the perception of what used to be kind of see what you see on movies, what you see on screens of a trader, you know, big, bold characters, uh, Wall Street, that kind of image, the that that's that's very much fictional. I think today what we're seeing is that the traders, I mean, in my career, I've seen traders move from one big shift was from desktop trading to mobile trading. So you can picture 10 years ago the typical customer of Rostro would be someone sat at home in front of three, four, five screens, trying to absorb a lot of information, process that information, and then and then pick successful trades. Now what we're seeing is 70, 80% of customers are engaging from mobile. So you think tiny little screen, you know, the advancement of smartphones fantastic. Tiny little screen compared to three, four, five big desktop monitors, but it gives them the same insights. There's push notifications, there's analysis that comes through on trading apps, platforms. So one big shift has been really the the product that the trader is using. So very different. That also means that you can be out and about enjoying your life, doing normal things, and still engage in markets, check how you're getting on with a few of your positions. And has that been good for trading, or do you think it's been a distraction? Do you know probably a bit of both, to be honest? I think the the temptation, one of the things, and we touched on it before, one of the things to be careful of is overtrading. So you don't want just the fact that you can to mean that you you do. So you have a mobile on you, and we're all guilty of it, probably way much more than we would we would admit. Yeah. But at the same time, that's where opportunities, when they present it to you, are therefore at the click of a button. So you don't have to sit at home and put all this time in and effort in and be stuck behind a monitor in your in your house. You can go out, enjoy yourself, put alerts on, get push notifications, look at something, engage or not. So I think it's a mix, but generally I think it's better.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, sports coaches call it that analysis paralysis, where you're so focused on something, it can often take your mind away. Yeah, 100%. Um, looking at speed and access, they're obviously one of the big changes. You mentioned the remote access is big. Obviously, the speed upon which people use markets has changed. But I want to know about multi-asset flexibility and also global markets. How has that become probably what you'd say are non-negotiable if you're a serious trader?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, it's, I mean, you can take any moment in history and see the the the world world order is always kind of something that's constantly evolving, shifting. You can see that uh customer interest. And what I mean by that is yeah, last night we had earnings reports for Google, we had Microsoft, you have big wholesale names that people know about. However, there are opportunities that get presented in uh Asian markets, there's opportunities presented in Europe. Um right now there's a lot of interest as expected in kind of hard assets, so commodities, uh non-precious metals. So customers need to have a place where they can go and engage and interact with everything. Um, opportunities aren't just refined to when I started my career, broker I worked at, we had a couple of hundred products, and that was pretty much, and out of that 20 were probably what most people were trading. Here for us, we have thousands and thousands, 40,000 active markets that people can access. Because at any point of time, one will be the particular one that's that's going to move, have interest. Um, I just think it's it's about variety and optionality. So it's still is the old 80-20 rule that you're getting 80% of your business from 20% of the uh of the work.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

You've worked with traders um at various stages of their career, some of the most experienced people from people just starting out as well. And obviously that might change. You're probably seeing a change. Like people are in most sectors, that generation that comes through from university, every five years there tends to be a you know, a bit of a cultural shift on what the next generation is like. But to give your advice and looking back at your career, what habits do you think that if you're just starting out early, what are the habits that you need to drive success? But also, what are some of the habits that you think are holding people back?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

I think this discipline's a big part. I think it's you shouldn't expect to have consistent performance that kind of from one day to the next like mirrors. You'll have periods of good performance, periods of bad performance, trading. It's normal. It's markets are unpredictable. You think there are there are millions and millions of competing factors that are out there, people buying, selling all day long. You can't possibly always be right. So you have to have discipline in terms of understanding and accepting that at points you will not be on a winning streak. Emotion, which we touched on when we spoke before, you know, that that's something you have to have to remove. I think the things that the good qualities that you have to be competent with data, you have to be able to look at things, charts, price action, read reports, make your own opinion. You know, there's so much information out there, but ultimately, I think to my first point, if you're going to invest in something, if you're going to trade and you will lose money, you need to be comfortable in a that happening, but b also why it's happened. I was talking to someone this morning who we were talking about particular stocks to pick. And the fact that if you pick a stock in a company and you don't really understand what that company does, and the stock drops 10%, the feeling is going to be different than if you pick a company that you do understand, and you might just look and think, oh, I you know, I get it. I heard this thing about what they've done last quarter. I believe they're you know they're fundamentally going to perform well over long term. You have a much different opinion. You don't panic, sell, and then when it moves higher, you don't panic, buy. So because then essentially you're gaming the market, aren't you? 100%, yeah. You don't you don't want to get into a habit of overtrading, top and tailing. So good competencies in in data and understanding. If you can see patterns, like you almost like a bonus point, you can step back, look at things that have happened. You know, Ray Ray Dalio talks a lot about studying history and the consistent recurring themes that happen with monetary policy, with economic downturns. There's a lot that happens that's already happened. So you're able to look at history, you're able to look at charts, you're able to look at price action and see and understand patterns, you'll have a huge advantage.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

So so much of it is still, whilst there's a science to it, a lot of it is what's between the ears, how you can handle those setbacks. But on that point, I've been lucky enough to speak to a lot of people when that when they speak about how you go through difficult times and challenges. And they often talk about gut feel. Um, but is that a risk if people are intrinsically going with their gut as opposed to purely looking at the data?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

I think it is if you're the combination of two is probably the right place to be. You know, we we're we we have internal feel for a lot of things in life. You know, we're programmed biologically to sense danger, you know, as human beings. So if you're about to do something and something doesn't feel right, and that could be that the position size you're putting on is greater than your appetite, but for some reason you're about to click a button. Or as I said, you're investing in something that you ultimately don't really understand. So, to your point earlier around uh the variety of product range that's offered, that's because customer A versus customer B will have different understandings and comfort in certain markets and products. If you understand and have a feel for oil markets, trade that product. If you also feel um, say person B, you feel like actually I tend to favor US equities, followed them for a while, I'm obsessed with technology, I'm tracking what these guys are doing in AI, etc. Stick, stick to that. Stick to your strengths.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah, stick to your strengths. Yeah, and you'll probably build confidence that way and the resilience. Michael, looking at the last I guess two or three months, uh there's been a lot of volatility, obviously, the conflict in the in the Middle East. When there is that volatility in the markets, how does that affect traders? Is it good or is it bad for trading?

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Generally, it's good. It's um volatility is a is a double-edged sword. It's kind of unprecedented volatility initially brings a surprise, a shock. But what volatility creates is opportunities. So we've seen in metals markets, in energy markets, single-day moves that exceed the maximum amount we've seen in, say, 25, 50, even 100 years. So you have to be vigilant, risk pieces kind of kick in, whether you're the customer or the broker that you're working with, but equally that's where opportunities come from. You know, you're you're looking to find patterns, you're looking to find levels, you're looking to find buying opportunities where things maybe seem undervalued because there's a lot of emotion. So typically they're goods, yeah, they provide good opportunities for traders.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

And is this kind of separates the like the average traders from the best traders when they're in these sort of situations?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Massively, yeah, massively. I think one of the things I would say not to do is you don't sit it out. You know, there are markets tend to move in surprising ways. We've seen uh stock markets hitting all-time highs. Uh, we'll see uh Google, for example, record earnings last night in the midst of everything that's going on. Oil markets, we're now pushing back up to kind of 120, probably further in what we're seeing in kind of uh energies. You know, the supply constraints that will feed off the back of that will have knock-on effects to uh fertilizer, that will have knock-on effects to wheat. Things are all everything's interconnected. But what we're talking about now presents people with tons of opportunities over the next couple of quarters, could even be a couple of years.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, and I guess that really then changes perhaps the culture of a lot of investing. You know, uh, how much of it is purely data? And how much of it when you're in these volatile situations is sometimes just assessing people's habits and the way people are changing how they live their lives as an insight into the way the markets may operate.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

This is interesting. The the second point around kind of just behavioral aspects that kicks in a lot when you see these unprecedented points of time. The reason for that is because by nature it's not been something that's not been expected to happen, and that has a knock-on effect to human emotion, the surprise element, essentially. So you can you can analyze, you can see patterns, behaviors, charts, there's a predictable piece that kind of sits in there, and then something happens that wasn't part of the plan, and all of a sudden, one market moves that affects another market. So you could have gold move that affects the dollar, you could have oil move that now affects the expectation on interest rates. So last time we spoke, oil and uh sorry, gold last year pushing on all-time highs, and then now you've got this competing factor, which is oh, potentially we might start seeing interest rates. They were expected to start getting cut consistently. Now they may be held, they could even go higher to curb inflation, stagflation. So now you've seen gold start to come off a little bit, and that's the opportunity. You know, people saw something that they thought was going to happen, and maybe the trade was done. Now the opposite is happening, gold started to come off, oil's pushed higher. Oil historically has some element of kind of control within a range. But for me, going back to the point around traders, this is now why it's an interesting time to trade because the opportunity to have you know returns that maybe exceed what you thought was possible, that only comes when the price is on the chart. Energy drives so much. Yeah, there's a lot of initiatives depending on where you are in the world, in terms of um moving to more sustainable sources and different sources, but fundamentally, what we've seen in the last two month two months is kind of proof that that it's not that it's not had that big a shift yet, let's say, and that the energy markets dictate so much.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

So, given that volatility that we're seeing, and it's not specific to one region, what advice would you give to young traders when they're looking to kind of they're suddenly getting in and they're hit with a once-in-a-generation volatility?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

I think there's a few things. You've got from a risk management standpoint, you've got things like stop losses. So set set your appetite. These markets are moving a lot more than they typically would. So you can see some extreme moves both in your favor and out of your favor. So set a stop loss. This is a good, we spoke about discipline. Having a stop loss set is a place where you're saying at that point, my appetite for downside is done. By putting it into the platform, you're not letting your human emotion at that point go maybe just a little bit more. So you set it and you say, Okay, if I hit that, that's it. I'm out of my trade. I protect my downside. I know, I know what my loss will be. So that's sensible when there's so much kind of unprecedented volatility, market ranges are extreme. I would say, don't overtrade is probably even more important now. You are gonna see a lot more up $5, down $5 type of moves happening. You're not gonna catch everyone right. You know, you're looking for opportunities and you're looking to generate income. You don't need to go in and try and find every perfect opportunity back to back. I think, particularly when I talk about stocks, the stock market, there's a phrase, you know, time in the market rather than timing the market is the way to go. If you're already invested, like don't panic. You know, people things will move to all-time highs, there'll be corrections. If your horizon is a volatile market, it's a volatile market.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

It's often uh it goes back to that discipline of knowing when to just be kind to yourself and realize you're not going to get every win with every trade.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

And and and just be patient. Yeah, just be patient with it. Don't don't have a panic on a Monday morning if you see something that's happened and it's in the red. Have your plan, stick to it. Just maintain that discipline that we spoke about before. There are more opportunities now, so yeah, go looking for them, but still stick to the products that you trade. If you don't like and you don't understand the oil, but it's moving, don't get tempted. Like, don't go in and decide because it's moving, I will now understand. Why does that mean you'll understand it better? It doesn't. But for someone that has traded that product before, looks at it and thinks, I understand what's going on here. Now's the time. So again, stick to what you know, stick to what you're comfortable with, have conviction. Uh, but a lot of markets are moving, so there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of different clients all at the same time now.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

You touched on before the image about uh movies and TV shows about Wall Street uh over the years. Social media is probably not helping that cause when you're speaking to people that are looking to get into the trading market. How different is it between what is portrayed, or is it perhaps not even what's not portrayed? It's that people assume that you're having wild, outrageous parties on a Tuesday night. I mean, how different is it really to what's portrayed in the media?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah, I've I've got some strong views about some of this type of stuff. It's uh it's vastly different, almost, almost kind of polar opposite, to be perfectly honest. It's the the industry now is yeah, anecdotally, we have a team of quants, they sit behind their screens, super smart guys, they're programming, they're using mass amounts of data. We tend to have you know smart, numerically competent people within our team. Gone are the days where, like you see on movies, people are out partying and entertaining and doing all that type of stuff. And then I think from a customer and a trader perspective, for sure, social media has created, I think, illusions of success that exist out there. Some exist, yeah, definitely, but I think quiet success tends to exist more so. People can buy cars, people can go enjoy their time, and good luck to anyone that that does. But I think the creation of a lot of kind of false, uh almost like characters rather than actually what people are like putting out all this content. Do you care to name names? Do you want to I'll be honest, I don't follow any of them, so I probably couldn't even name them, but they're they're out there. And look, I I good luck. You know, I think I think there's uh for me, I I like competition, I believe it pushes me, pushes the company to be better. So I want to see others succeed and strive and perform. It makes us all get better at what we do, but there is a lot, you just have to be careful. That's all I would say, is to be careful to not get sucked into a almost like a story that's being told to you in terms of success. Genuinely, people that I've seen produce solid results over the long term, it a, it's long term, and B, they've paid the kind of hard yards to get there, and a lot of them are enjoying quiet success.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

I look, I think that's actually um a salient point for any quote-unquote glamorous industry that there's a bit of that coming from the radio backgrounds. People thought, oh, what is it like? Is it rock stars coming in at 2 a.m.? Is it full parties? And you know what? There probably was a period in the 80s and 90s where it was like that, but now it's just as corporate as you could imagine. And I'm I'm yeah, I'm hearing the same sort of scenario, perhaps, that maybe there was a period where it was as glamorous as what seemed, but that's far from what uh you enjoy now. Um, business moves quickly, markets move quickly. Um, you touched on how important discipline is and controlling those emotions. Looking at the strategies that people might have, they might have their set rules that they trade the markets that they know that they're comfortable with. But is it still discipline that is going to drive you more than just pure strategy when it comes to trading in terms of your setbacks and your success?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

My personal view is yes. You know, it's it's it's let's look at it in say a different context. If you're someone, if you're practicing to learn a musical instrument or you're looking to be successful in certain sports, discipline, consistency, kind of showing up on days where you you don't have the motivation, these are these are known kind of factors, the whole kind of 10,000 hour to master any sort of skill um uh message. I think for me, strategy is important, but if your discipline goes out the window, that strategy will fail. It will fail. It might have been right on paper. Um, that goes to the individual trader, and the same as us, the other side of it as a company. You know, we have risk controls, parameters, governance in place. They're there so that when we go through kind of different periods of performances on a at a business level, you've got measured understandings of what could happen, how you respond. A trader has to have the same. Yeah, you know, they did they just have to. You'll you'll have over overperforming and underperforming moments, and that probably is part of your strategy design. You won't like to see drawdowns, but discipline will make a 3% drawdown not turn into a 10% drawdown, which then takes you six months rather than one month to recover. And all of that feeds into ultimately performance.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah, being able to understand and get out when you can, which leads me into talking about how the importance of the infrastructure that traders uh use. And maybe it's somewhat underestimated, I think about in terms of which platform you're using, the data you've got, how you execute it. Where do you think the importance is underestimated in in some of the infrastructure that's critical to trading?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

The big one for me is uh speed, speed of pricing and execution. I mean, it's it's you could you could spend, I mean, we could we could do hours and hours, if not back-to-back days on this topic, because I spoke earlier about mobile being the kind of place of place of choice for customers to trade. So you're walking around with your mobile in your pocket, internet picking up on pricing. But if you're if the broker has not invested in sufficient infrastructure behind the app that you see, so that goes down to your data centers, it's bridge connectivity. There's a ton of stuff that we do underneath the hood that means that down to kind of milliseconds, you're getting accurate pricing that reflects the market. And when you execute your trade, you're getting a confirmation within a timely manner. And I promise you that customers won't appreciate how important that is to their performance. If you work with a broker that hasn't invested in their infrastructure, over time, what happens is every single transaction, so there's like a slow bleeding effect where you're losing out on these incremental price differences. And over a month, a year, five, ten years, it can be the difference between positive and negative returns.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

And to put it simply, what you're trying to say, Michael, really it's a case of you can have the world's best driver, but if your car is simply not as fast as the other guys, it don't even think about finishing on it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, that's a great analogy. You put you put the guy behind the wheel, but ultimately these small differences that matter to win a race, and that's what we're talking about. These are millisecond differences. You know, we've got servers in London, eight in Singapore, New York, based on where customers are around the world, they'll connect to different data centers. And these are things we're tracking 24-7 to ensure that customers aren't falling behind the market and basically not having a fair price when they trade. So with us, that's what you're going to get. Do you think that's uh understood by people when they're first getting into trading? Definitely not. Yeah. No, definitely not. I think I think it's something that you know painfully I think customers learn over time because it can get to a point with a certain type of broker where that that could be something that you could even see kind of visibly. So it's something that that you don't understand when you start. You think everything is fair price, everything's equal, but it's not. And I mean, to use ourselves as an example, one one good way to probably understand and assess whether a broker values their kind of technology is we have an institutional arm, we have a retail arm. Our retail customer base, which is your average trader, your new entry participant, they're gonna get the benefit of the fact that we've got an institutional business where these guys understand, they're tracking it. We can't be off. They'll tell us, they'll move their business, we won't see, we won't see our customer engagement here. We're picking up tons of business here because of the fact we've invested in infrastructure, great pricing, connectivity. And all these customers get the benefit. So if you can see that with your broker, we have scope, we have scope prime, it's a good sign. It's something that you should take as a kind of tick box. Um, and also ask, you know, don't be afraid to ask companies and see what type of response you get. You know, put put us on the spot and see how we tell you what what we've done and what we've set up.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Apply the speed blowtorch. How often are you having to just reassess that? Because that's another element of technology that's going to continuously change. You might invest a huge part of your budget into the latest technology, but within 18 months, um, you you might be playing catch-up. How quickly, how often are you having to reassess and update those programs?

SPEAKER_00 25:03

I think realistically, you're always paying attention. I mean, we have from a monitoring surveillance perspective, it's it's a it's a real-time constant piece of work. Yeah. Um, as we're sat here having a chat, we have alerts, monitoring systems, tracking, price latency, frequency of trade, any issues, uptime. You want 100% uptime of your platform, your service, all that good stuff's happening behind the scenes, real time. We tend to look quarterly. We don't really we made a significant change as a company about uh just over a year ago to move from looking at things on an annual basis, budget, strategy accordingly. So markets are fast, things change, opportunities are there, customer needs shift. So we listen kind of on a recurring non-stop basis. But rather than go, well, we're an annual business, we follow an annual calendar, we now do four chunks of work effectively through the year. I think, especially with the introduction of AI, it's become even more important for a business to go, things can move faster than us. So we need to pay attention and go and look at it and ask the question and not think you've you've built something that's there forever. It's a constant evolving piece, as you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah, AI isn't is a fascinating one because you you touched on the idea of remote access, and a lot of traders can now operate alone, uh, which can work for some, may not be good for others, that they're out of your watchful eye. So when it comes down to sort of mentorship and and looking to kind of structure guidance, how valuable is that when people are starting out that they may be, if they're left alone, they might get down an AI rabbit hole, they may get down certain issues that are conflicting with noise in the head. How important is mentoring?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

It's a big thing. Yeah, it's a big thing. I think the word sometimes takes people to a certain place. You know, you could you can think of a mentor as it's you know a certain level of person, experience, part, maybe point of life. For me, I have indirectly had and informally had people mentor me at points of my career. I think that from a trading perspective, I think finding sense in kind of community mentorship is hugely valuable. There are also places, products that companies, brokers offer that will help. So if you're someone that thinks I want to get into the space, but I'm not 100% sure what I want to do, there's copy trading. So you can come in and say, I want to just learn from and replicate someone else's trading performance because they look like they've got more experience, they've got a good track record performance, and then you can just observe. So you're not you're not the one that's picking the buying and selling and the moments of trading. You're letting someone else that's done this for longer with experience kind of almost take you off on the start of your journey. You can detach, you can stay with them, you can run a second account. So there's places where you can you can get information from people, but also you can just absorb and follow effectively trading, uh trading performance from people that have got a bit more, yeah, a bit more experience. So definitely it's uh it's an important part.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Follow someone who's successful and just kind of copy and shadow them. And yeah, you sort of lose a bit these days. I think across all sectors of you know, every time I speak to someone who's out of university, they only want to take a job where they're working remotely. And uh, I don't know whether I'm getting a bit old, Michael, but that would that were some of the best lessons of just shadow as an intern, or you know, when you're at uni, just just watching and learning how the best behave and operate.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

We've had this conversation on and off, and probably will because for for for as long as we go, because since since COVID, the concept of remote working really kind of by by force, but had kind of pushed on. And we talk about you know, we have a hybrid flexible structure within the company across the globe. However, those people that first job, the kind of foot on the ladder, you're if you're at home, you're not going to pick up on no the conversation happening over there that just gives you a little bit of an insight into something you've never heard about before because you're at home working from your screen. So we encourage we're typically in kind of four days a week in the office. And if you start with us, and we we we're often every quarter, we're adding probably two or three people globally. First job, just want to foot in the door. It's a massive thing for us. Like we I started in this industry as an 18-year-old. So for me, it's quite a it's close to my heart. Yeah, you can see yourself in the year that we see people get the same opportunity and chance, but those guys and girls, they have to be in a room absorbing from them the guys and girls that have got decades of experience. So remote's great, there's a place for it. I still think just like me, you are sat here today having a face-to-face chat, you know, if we were doing this on Zoom, it wouldn't be the same. No. So yeah, you need to get people together and yeah, in a room.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Just yeah, in in the tea room, having quick chats, exactly finding out more. Uh, there's uh strong growth in a lot of markets, not just the major markets, across us in the the GCC, there's APAC, Africa, a lot of markets are booming. What do you think's driving these, what would have perhaps been secondary markets as now major trading hubs?

SPEAKER_00 30:00

I think it goes a lot to previously accessibility just hadn't existed, and progressively that's got kind of better for people in these emerging market territories. So you go back a few decades, some of the, I mean, for example, we're locally licensed in both South Africa and in Kenya. And if I take Kenya as an example, 10 years ago there was no regulatory framework for broker dealers. So if you were an individual in that country, interest to kind of put your money to work, you may go to a local bank, you may get but fees are high, you don't have access, it's clunky, the experience. So I think the fact that regulators have put the right, which is the right thing, these frameworks in place, but they're catching up and they're adding and then more brokers are coming. The technology piece, just simple things, local internet service providers. You know, we're working from mobiles, as I said earlier, these customers, they're walking around. You kind of you take for granted if you're based somewhere where just having an internet connection is just something that every morning you wake up exists and it's there for you. So these kind of core infrastructure, regulatory framework, uh, internet connectivity, those existing. And then I would include us and some of our competition, just good brokers going in, sending the right message with their marketing, giving a good customer experience. This is what's building up that trust, that confidence locally to go open an account, interact with the market.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah, those pillars are there, and suddenly it's suddenly becoming a more mature market with experienced people and experienced options. And I guess that is one of the best things that you do at Rostro. You do have this global footprint. You've got multiple regions, different asset classes. How do you think that helps traders that are seeking that access that you've got at Rostro the global footprint?

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Oh, massively. It's we we touched on earlier the the fact that opportunities are so fast. And I'll pick a moment now in terms of the oil markets. It's if you're if you're looking to trade something that you've read about, heard about, but the broker you're working with doesn't offer that product, what's your choice? Open with another two, three, four. You then have to manage multiple apps, multiple platforms. It's not it's not friendly, it's not easy. You might miss the opportunity. You know, that that's that's typically what can happen. With us, the fact that you can get everything in one place, whether you're based in Africa, Asia, Middle East, globally regulated, you know, we have 10 licenses across our group, the connectivity that we spoke about earlier, 40,000 active markets. Really, it's you know your sport for choice. So I'll be confident in saying that wherever you are in the world, you know, you want to you want to place a trade, you know, Rostro is the place to be.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah, it's been fascinating getting to know so much about your story and the story of the business I found inspiring. But if you were looking to inspire someone who is a bit like that 18-year-old Michael that wants to get into trading, what are your three main tips or three main pieces of advice you'd want to give someone that's that's looking to start their journey?

SPEAKER_00 33:03

That's an interesting one. I think the I was I'll start with something to to to not to leave at the door or not not bring with you on your journey. Ego. Okay. I think that ego at the door. Ego at the door. Yeah, don't don't think you know everything. There's always something else to know, to learn, to understand. Um, so be inquisitive, be open to being wrong, uh, learn as you go. But but leaving the ego at the door and not having one, for the most part, if you can do that, is a massive help. Yeah. Surround yourself with good people. You know, that that goes to 18-year-old me learning from good people, absorbing, being around good characters, and and looking for that. To when I then progress up the company uh to where I am now, it's the same thing for me now. The team I have under me that's supporting me, really, it's I that's supporting them and then getting good people to do to do the the work that we do. So good people. And I think one one that's maybe more specific that I would say is is more linked to where you want to go in terms of maybe the specific field that you want to work in or the department or the area of the business. Have some direction. Yeah, have some direction, yeah. Follow your passion to some degree. Like I I found you know, one of when I was 18, one of the things I I knew from when I was at school was I enjoyed working with numbers. I just I just find numbers comfortable. Yeah, uh, I can look at spreadsheets, look at charts, look at patterns, I can look at financial reports, and I find it interesting. I don't look at it and kind of freeze and not enjoy that. So I found fortunately a career where what we're doing has numbers flashing in front of screens and there's the analysis, and you have to understand what's going on in lots of parts of the business all at once. So it was fitting for me to kind of work through something that gave me that. So I think that if you leave your ego at the door, you're around good people progressively through your career, and you find the part of the company, the career that you enjoy, could like to go and engage with customers, you could enjoy working with data like I did, getting your hands dirty with technology, fixing things, whatever. Tuesday night parties, whatever you want. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but find it and don't apologize for knowing what it is, and then just go after it. I mean, you'll enjoy your Sunday night thinking about Monday morning a whole lot more, and you you for sure will progress and perform a whole lot better if you find the passion.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Thank you very much for coming on and being generous with your time and sharing your journey. And well done with all of your great work that you're doing with the Rostro Group. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Once again, thank you very much to Michael for closing out this series with some fascinating insights, particularly about the volatile situation and the advice for young first-time traders. Across all five episodes, it's certainly become clear that the future of finance is not just about chasing trends, it's about access, education, and building strong foundations. This series has aimed to provide a new way of thinking about money, markets, and opportunity. So wherever the journey continues, the key is to trade smart, stay disciplined, and as always, keep learning. To learn more about Rostro and how it is redefining access to global markets, visit the website rostro.com. And don't forget to tune into golfnews.com forward slash podcasts for more insightful conversations. I'm Laughlin Kitchen. Thank you very much for joining us on this series. To visit any of the previous episodes, head to that website again, golfnews.com forward slash podcasts, and we'll see you on the next Golf News Podcast.