Six years ago the story was completely different than what it seems to be like today. Andrew Aziz was a research scientist. With his Ph.D. in electrochemical engineering, he spent five years researching and developing nanomaterials for renewable energy. Aziz had already imagined that he would spend the rest of his life developing fuel cells for electric cars.
“When I lost my job in 2015, my dreams and ego were crushed,” says Andrew.
Despite his hard-earned degree, numerous high-impact scholarly publications, and various issued patents, Aziz was still told that he was no longer needed. With nanotechnology jobs few and far between, he had to make up his mind fast.
“I went from Point A (nanomolecular engineering) to Point B (successful stock trader and author) by using what I already had, just in a new way,” explains Andrew.
Andrew Aziz never considered the five years spending on earning his degree a waste, as they helped him gain invaluable skills, which he managed to use elsewhere and to his advantage: by building his stock trading career.
Aziz is sure of the fact, that wherever a person is working, he can still utilize his skills in other jobs and industries as well. As a person’s real skill is never determined by the title they hold, but by the multiple talents that one possesses other than their degree.
“On the surface, I had been developing nanotechnology. But underneath, my real “skill” was research. Give me any topic in the world, and I could become an expert,” says Andrew.
He decided to take his severance package and began learning the ropes of the stock market. Two years were spent educating himself, and facing numerous hurdles, but he finally mastered it. He incorporated all the analytical training he had gotten during his Ph.D., and built his career as a stock market trader. Numbers, patterns, logic, reason: it all transferred over smoothly.
“Trading stocks is notoriously complicated, which keeps a lot of people from really learning to trade. I explained the process of trading in the “If A, then B” format that I learned while getting my doctorate. It was a lot like creating my dissertation. Same skill, different goal,” elaborates Aziz.
Coming back to the present, Andrew Aziz is currently a full-time financial market trader, best-selling author, and founder and CEO of a worldwide community of independent traders.