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.

In this episode, we break down some key tips & trips to excel with such a short time horizon.

In this episode you will learn:

• How Chris Brycki won the ASX Sharemarket game 3 times - and what you can learn from that

• What to do if your stock starts falling

• Why timing is more important than being right

• How you can look for events that will drive price changes during the competition

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.

In this episode you will learn:

• 3 ways to find stocks:

• Let the numbers do the talking

• Follow the leader

• Use your environment

Stocks and resources discussed:

• Equity Mates Investing Glossary

• Next Top Trader Videos

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.

Night 1 of the competition is done. 29 trading days to go until one lucky competitor is on a flight to New York.

If you haven't made a trade, or haven't signed up yet, don't worry. There is no deadline to sign up or trade, it is simply about who can make the most money in the trading period. So head over to the competition website and sign up today - www.nexttoptrader.com.au

In this episode, we are going to recap the competition rules so every competitor knows exactly what they need to do to win the trip to New York. If you have further questions about the rules or the competition in general - email us at [email protected].

What do you need to know?

• Competition period: 11 March - 20 April

• How to sign up: Register on NextTopTrader.com.au and then sign up and fund your Stake account

• Competition winner: Highest % increase over the trading period, based on the sum of daily performance

• To win the competition, you must be a university student

• Competition prize: Trip to New York

• Further T's & C's at NextTopTrader.com.au

Stocks and resources discussed:

• Weekly email - If you've signed up for the competition, you're automatically signed up to this mailing list

• Thought Starters

• Instagram - @EquityMates_InvestingPodcast

• Email - [email protected]

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.

What you need to know:

• Join the competition here, if you haven't already!

• US Markets are open in Australia from 12:30am - 7am AEST Tuesday morning - Saturday morning

• You can place a trade at any time, and it will be executed during the opening hours

• You need to make sure you fund your account to start playing

In this episode you will learn:

• Matt's view on the current climate of the US markets - weak or strong?

• One industry to keep an eye on

• One industry that may be running out of gas

• How the use of leveraged ETFs could spring you to the top of the leaderboard (buyer beware!)

Stocks and resources discussed:

• The Weed Industry

• The Gas Industry & Commodities

• Cronos Group (CRON)

• Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR)

• ProShares UltraPro QQQ ETF (TQQQ)

• ProShares UltraPro Short QQQ (SQQQ)

• Top 10 Investing Books Of All Time

When we sat down to chat with Brandon, who hosts the YouTube channel Aussie Wealth Creation, one of the first things he said was, "you never know the emotion of trading until you actually do it". We couldn't agree more with this statement. It's one of the most important messages we have for beginner investors. The biggest lessons you will learn are by doing.

We connected with Brandon because we both share the same ethos. We started out not really knowing much about investing and decided to record our journey as we learnt to invest, in the hope that it would inspire others to join too. Brandon has a deep focus on value investing and has been working on his strategy for a few years now.

In this episode you will learn:

• What the hardest thing was for Brandon when buying his first stock

• Where he found inspiration for his first purchase

• His 'must-read' book that now forms the basis for his investing strategy

• How understanding meaning, moats, management and margin of safety are integral to picking stocks and;

• An example of how to apply these to Facebook

• What a margin of safety is, and how Brandon applies it to his investing

• The different passive and active approaches used

Stocks and resources discussed:

• Australian Foundation Investment Co. Ltd (ASX: AFI)

• Rule #1 - Phil Town

• Payback Time - Phil Town

• Invested - Phil Town

Due to the number of questions we wanted to answer, we had to split February's Ask Us Anything over 2 episodes. So here is part 2 - where we answer some of the best questions we've received over the last month.

In this episode you will learn:

• What are 3 major things to look out for when selecting a Financial Advisor

• How you can go about discovering and then monitoring stocks in the US

• How to track multiple strategies through the same brokerage account

• How we think about crowdfunding equity platforms and anything investors should be wary of if they're thinking about investing

• What are progressive dividend policies and are they still a concept followed by public companies?

• How should investors think about the price war for brokerage at the moment? And is the same price war raging for larger investors as well?

• How options trading works and the difference between covered and naked options

• How to think about investing in Uranium

Stocks and Resources Discussed:

• Two Financial Advisor Search Platforms - Financial Planning Association and Association of Financial Advisors

• Explainer article on Options trading

• Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins

• Vanguard - VTSAX, VTI & VTS

Last episode of the month means we answer all of your questions. We've received so many, that we're going to split this Ask Us Anything over two eps. So part 1 is out today, part 2 will be out tomorrow.

As always, you can ask us any question via email or social media. If we don't get to answering your question on the show, we'll endeavour to reply in writing.

In this episode you will learn:

• What has happened to the lithium markets recently, and in particular AVZ Minerals?

• Who the boys are backing - A2 Milk or Bellamy's

• What the process is for a reverse merger?

• Should you be looking at stock picking subscription services?

• How do investors that buy the same stock at different times (and at different prices) determine which shares they're selling when selling part of their holding?

• What is meant by the term 'ETF Decay' and what should investors understand about it?

• What we think about about Raiz (formerly Acorns)

Stocks and Resources Discussed:

• AVZ Minerals (ASX: AVZ)

• A2 Milk (ASX: A2M)

• Bellamy's (ASX: BAL)

• Article on ETF Decay

• Episode 21 and Episode 61 - Two interviews with George Lucas (CEO of Raiz).

It's that time of year again when the report cards of companies are released to eagerly-waiting investors, for them to scrutinise. We're talking about Reporting Season.

Here in Australia, publicly listed companies are releasing their FY19 Half Year results. For those of you who are new to the markets, there is a requirement that all publicly listed companies report their earnings and performance half-way through the Financial Year, and also at the end. It's a time of year where investors reward, or punish, companies for their performance. In the case of one of the companies we discuss in this episode, a downgrade in growth expectations by the company resulted in investors dumping the stock, sending it plummeting 50% in one day!

In the US, companies are reporting their Fourth Quarter results, as well as their Year End 2018, results. The likes of Amazon, Facebook and Alphabet have all reported. One of the companies we look at has reported revenue of $515 billion. Yes, billion!

We have chosen 2 domestic stocks, and 2 international stocks each, and highlight a few of the key takeaways from their report card.

Stocks discussed:

• Telstra

• Cleanaway

• Bingo

• Baby Bunting

• Walmart

• Johnson & Johnson

• Ellie Mae

• Allianz

It's not often you get to talk to a trading expert, a best-selling author, a trading mentor, a keynote speaker, and a Queen of Candlesticks, but in this episode, we were lucky enough to speak to all of them, at once!

Louise Bedford is all of the above, plus a passionate educator, and we sat down on a Saturday morning to dive into all things trading (vs our longer-term approach). Trading, in its purest sense, is something that we haven't put into practice a lot, and with our search for Australia's Next Top Trader in March 2019, we thought it would be a great idea to get Louise on to give us a few trading tips, and insights into the power of candlestick charts.

In this episode you will learn:

• Louise's distinction between trading and investing

• Why Louise believes every trader and investor should understand and use candlestick charts

• Why candlestick charts are superior to line and bar charts

• How 100 men in Japan started the very first real-time price updates

• The pros and cons of using leverage

• That Ren and Louise agree to disagree on investing time horizons

• That having a chart archetype and sticking to it is the most important lesson a trader can learn

• About Louise's Trading Game mentorship program

Stocks and resources discussed:

• The Trading Game

• Talking Trading Podcast

• The Four Tendencies - Gretchen Rubin

• Deep Work - Cal Newport

• Atomic Habits - James Clear

Louise is generously offering all Equity Mates access to her Candlestick Pattern Summary - normally a resource you need to pay for, but for a limited time, it's free for the Equity Mates community. So be sure to check it out!

Over the past 6 months as more and more Equity Mates have joined us on this journey, we've thought it may be time to do a reset episode. To explain how this podcast started and all that we've learnt over the past two years. Given we're about to tick over to episode #100 - we thought this was the perfect time.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why Bryce and Alec started Equity Mates

• Two key things Alec has learnt over the last 99 episodes.

• The major lesson Bryce has taken away from the last two years.

• How Alec and Bryce think about investing today

• Why they look for companies with moats (long-term competitive advantages) and an ability to reinvest their profits

• How thinking for the long-term gives you an advantage over professional investors

• Why Seth Klarman's distinction between investing and speculating has been particularly helpful

• What the boys think about the choice between picking stocks or taking the market average return