A Great Job Becomes No Job

In 2015, Andrew Aziz was quite sure that he had found his dream job. The young honors graduate with a Ph.D. in clean technology was working on the development of hydrogen fuel energy and had been recognized for his high-impact journal publications and patents.

His career goal was to help the automotive industry to move away from fossil fuel by adopting a clean, no-pollution alternative. It was something he could see himself doing for many more years

Then his employer unexpectedly decided to stop pursuing that area of research. Aziz and his colleagues were given severance packages and laid off. After 23 years of study and research in his chosen field, he knew that nanotechnology jobs were hard to find, and he was emotionally devastated. “When I lost my job, my dreams and ego were crushed,” he says.

A Hobby Becomes a Career

​ Hoping for something that would restore his enthusiasm and self-respect, he decided to try making a career out of something he had already been doing as a hobby – day trading on the financial market. The idea started badly. Within the first few months, all of his savings and the severance package were gone. He had lost over $10,000.

But Aziz was not deterred.  “I have a Ph.D. and have plenty of experience in research,” he told himself, “so I will just work hard to learn everything I can about trading. Research and learning – that’s what my Ph.D. is all about.” He found a day job to cover his living expenses and focused on learning how to trade. He started waking up at 5 a.m. and practiced hands-on trading from 6:30 to 8:00, when he had to leave for work.  Almost of his evening and weekend time was devoted to reading books and periodicals and scouring the Internet to find out as much as he could about trading.

Learning about the complexities of the stock market was not quick or easy. He spent two years on this self-assigned mission, utilizing the analytical training he had received in his doctoral program to transform himself from a professional engineer to a professional stock trader. There were certainly some rough patches along that road, but as time went on, he was pleased to see that his belief in the portability of skills was bearing fruit, and that reason, logic, patterns, and numbers were part of a type of universal language.

Today Andrew Aziz is a Canadian trader, proprietary fund manager of Peak Capital Trading with net worth assets of $20 million, a successful investor and #1 best-selling author. He has ranked as one of the top 100 authors in the “Business and Finance” category for over four consecutive years (2016 to present). Aziz recently published his fifth book: Mastering Trading Psychology, and it quickly became a best seller on Amazon. His previous books have been translated into eight languages and have sold over 250,000 copies worldwide. Andrew Aziz is the CEO and founder of the multimillion dollar companies Peak Capital Trading and Bear Bull Traders, and a valued mentor to thousands of other traders.

Working Hard To Learn How to Work Smart

The main lesson that Aziz learned from these experiences was that, as much as he really wanted to work smart, he first had to work hard in two areas. One was to learn how to trade, a process that took hundreds of hours of reading and practicing, both in simulated situations and in the real market. The second area was that he had to clearly understand was what working smart means for traders.

READ ALSO: Buhari approves re-appointment of NIMC boss for second term

Day trading is a solitary effort that involves sitting alone in a room very early in the morning (depending on your time zone) and making decisions, sometimes in just a second or two. It also requires spending a lot of time in planning and preparation and review. What look like split-second decisions are actually based on very precise plans on exactly how to act in hundreds of potential scenarios, so those quick decisions are actually based on many hours of careful deliberation.

The impression that trading is a reclusive activity overlooks the fact that most independent traders are part of a community of colleagues who share strategies and information and, although they are competitors in some ways, provide mutual emotional support when needed.

Aziz is convinced that working smart is an essential aspect of success, but he emphasizes that people first need to work hard in order to reach that stage. He explains that trading for a living is smart and that it does not require long hours to make a living, but he stresses that it is not easy work. He worked hard on learning everything he could about trading so he would have the skills, the mindset, and the psychological awareness to trade smart. And, of course, he views ongoing learning as an important element of smart trading.

Surrounding Yourself with Like-Minded People

Andrew Aziz believes that it’s smart to associate with like-minded people and with people you want to emulate. It’s far too easy to surround yourself with people who do not add any value to your life, and it is can be a challenge to enter a circle of highly-motivated people. But these are people who can save you a lot of time and useless effort. They have been there, they have made mistakes, and they might be willing to tell you about their failures as well as their successes. If you’re lucky enough to find people who will tell you about the lessons they have learned on the paths they have traveled, you could benefit from those lessons without having to walk those paths.

Smart Is Where You Find It

Aziz explains that working smart in trading involves planning and preparation and working co-operatively with colleagues that he might never meet in person or even see or talk to online or on the phone. Many other kinds of work do not prioritize either of these. Each job or profession has its own criteria for working smart.

Some of his friends who are not traders envy his ability to work for a few hours on weekday mornings and then to do whatever he wants in the afternoons and evenings and on weekends. Aziz loves climbing, and there are many enticing mountains just a short drive from where he lives in Vancouver. What these friends sometimes overlook is the non-trading time he spends on planning and preparation in advance and analyzing every aspect of the trades he has made, good and bad, in retrospect. And, he adds, what they also overlook is that there are times when situations arise when he has to spend hundreds of extra hours on courses, studying, and other trading-related activities. This means that periods of mainly working smart are sometimes temporarily displaced by periods of working both smart and hard.

Not an “Either/Or”

Andrew Aziz doesn’t believe that working hard and working smart are mutually exclusive approaches. To argue that one is more important or useful than the other ignores the possibility that they are co-dependent. To downplay one is to devalue the other.

Similarly, to suggest that one or the other of these alternatives is “better” is to ignore that the tool that is needed depends on the job that has to be done. Each approach has its strengths, and sometimes more than one tool is required in order to do the job right.

Vanguard News Nigeria