Being flexible and open minded are key to dealing with the unpredictable financial market. Accepting the new and unexpected is nothing new to Stella Lee Wai-fun, president of the foreign exchange division at Success Futures and Foreign Exchange. Lee worked as a fashion designer before entering the finance industry.
'As a designer, you are asked to break boundaries, so I have had little problem accepting new things,' she says. 'Some veterans, who have been very successful in the past, have lost money because they have set too many limits.'
Today, Lee is regularly invited to radio shows and writes columns for various media, dispensing investment advice and market analyses. Before this, however, she was just another layman.
'I was a fashion designer with my own boutique, but thought that investment was something that everyone needed to learn so I began to study some short courses,' she says. 'I was forced to close down my boutique because the landlord wanted a huge rent rise, and I became a financial consultant,' says Lee, who entered the industry in 1993.
With no experience, Lee had to learn from scratch. 'It was tough. Many of the clients were more experienced in investment than me. Business was poor, but I told myself I was there to learn, not to make money,' she says.
Now, Lee is an expert in the field with many coming to her for tips. 'I have a micro blog where I am willing to share all I know, regardless of whether people are my clients,' she says.