Vital Career Advice From an Investment Expert

A career in investing can be riddled with risks and uncertainties, but it also gives people the power to shape lives and livelihoods.

It is this ability to make a meaningful difference that inspired Amy Xie Patrick to pursue investing. She proudly shares that, if she had to choose her career again, she would not hesitate to make the same choice.

Having started her career on the sales side, she quickly realised that she wanted to be an investor rather than a trader. Her journey has not been without turbulence, but through consistent hard work, learning and upskilling, she has continued to develop her career.

Today, she is Head of Income Strategies at Pendal, a global investment management business. She joined the firm in 2017 as a Fixed-Income Portfolio Manager and worked her way up.

Here are the key lessons Amy wants to share with anyone aspiring to climb the career ladder, particularly those pursuing a career in investment:

Career Advice Lesson #1: Competence Alone Doesn’t Earn You Credibility

For Amy, the early years of her career were characterised by hard work, a determination not to give up when the going got tough, and a strong desire to prove to herself and others that she could succeed.

She worked hard to become technically competent quickly and volunteered for challenging assignments, seeing them as opportunities to prove herself.

However, as she progressed in her career, she noticed an almost opposite shift in her mindset. She began to understand that competence alone does not earn you credibility. She learned how to modulate her intensity, pushing hard when necessary but letting go of certain goals and pursuits when the situation called for it.

"You can’t force strong performance to happen on a portfolio from hard work alone. And sometimes trying too hard at the wrong times can yield the exact opposite result. Knowing how to tread water waiting for the good opportunities was something I had to train into my investment behaviour", says Amy.

She also gained insight into this during a conference where she was one of the panelists discussing macroeconomics, markets and fixed income. Having prepared thoroughly, she presented a strong case and felt that she had performed well.

"But later on at the conference, someone came up to me to tell me that they thought I was by far the best speaker up on stage, but that they would still choose to invest their money with one of the other panellists", she shares.

That experience taught her a great deal about credibility as an investor: “Those who trust me with their money don’t necessarily care how much I prepared for a speaking engagement, how ready I was to defend my points, or how eloquently I could frame the macro environment.

"They were more interested in the traits of a good investor: Someone thoughtful, who doesn’t dismiss other perspectives by default, and who can be comfortable with uncertainty", she explains.

Following that experience, she made it a priority to understand what really mattered to her clients and to care just as much about those things herself.

Career Advice Lesson #2: Recognise the Behaviours That May Be Holding You Back

Amy recalls a time in her career when she felt a little “stuck”. She had a sense that she was running hard but standing still, while also feeling unsure about where she should be heading. What helped her was a book recommended by a friend: How Women Rise by Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith.

The premise of the book is that the behaviours that serve you earlier in your career may be the very things that hold you back from progressing later on.

For example, you do not want to remain stuck in the mould of the “doer” and never be seen as a leader. The book focuses on habits and behaviours that appear to be more prevalent among women than men.

“It gave me a methodical checklist of things I could consciously work on to move past my feeling of being stuck”, she recollects. She shares one example from the book: the habit of “minimising”:

This can involve starting sentences with “It’s not a big deal, but…” or saying “sorry” before expressing what you want to say. After recognising this as one of her own habits, she consciously changed the way she spoke in meetings, television interviews and presentations.

“It had ripple effects to places I didn’t expect, such as in crowded lifts, where I no longer let myself get shoved right into a back corner.

“Or on a busy street where I squared my shoulders and no longer kept stopping to let others pass. And also in my family life, where I no longer put my needs behind those of everyone else in my family”, she adds.

Career Advice Lesson #3: Take Accountability and Learn to Adapt

As a Portfolio Manager, Amy shares how periods of poor performance are always challenging. She recalls 2022 as the most difficult year of her career.

Although rampant inflation, simultaneous sell-offs in equities and bonds, and other external factors were at play, what concerned her most was that she had been too slow to come to terms with the new market environment, adapt her investment process and cut losses on underperforming positions.

Instead of evading the situation, she chose accountability. “The first thing I did, with the help of an excellent distribution team, was tell my clients what was happening, where I had gone wrong, and what I was doing about it”, she shares.

Her next step was to adapt her investment process and scrutinise the way she made decisions. She believed that although good decisions may not always end up in good outcomes, a series of good decisions made using a good decision-making framework should yield positive results.

“This bit took up a lot of late 2022 and early 2023, but it was important to take the time that was needed rather than rush into something that looked good on paper and would fall apart in practice.

“This meant deliberately dialling down the active risk-taking in my portfolios for a few months, even if it was painful to watch good opportunities pass on by”, says Amy Xie Patrick.

She also credits her team and acknowledges the importance of trusting her teammates:

“I did not single-handedly change the investment process. Far from it. There are members of my team who are far smarter and quicker at uncovering insight from data. Knowing how and when to lean on your team is important, especially when times get tough,” she adds.

That diligence paid off, with 2023, 2024 and 2025 becoming the strongest years of her performance since undertaking that work:

“It’s never easy to look at your own poor performance, let alone take ownership for your part in it. But mistakes create the opportunity for learning and improvement. So if we don’t use these opportunities, how do we expect to improve as investors?”, she asks.

Career Advice Lesson #4: Lead Without Permission

Amy’s advice to women who are aspiring to move into leadership roles is to practice leadership habits and behaviours without waiting for someone to give them an official leadership title.

She explains that everyone has opportunities to lead, regardless of their role. For example, a junior employee on a sell-side trading desk may have a defined list of responsibilities and deliverables, which they can complete in a mechanical way.

Although that may technically mean the job is done, it can also lead colleagues to assign them more tasks without giving them opportunities to demonstrate leadership. Instead, Amy suggests that employees should show they are capable of making more consequential decisions:

“On top of the tasks you are given and outside of the risk budget you are officially allowed, why not set up a paper portfolio including a wider range of assets and instruments than is currently in your remit?

“Ask for time with the head of the trading desk to sit down and talk through the thinking behind your trading decisions, implicitly asking for coaching to be a better trader.

“Notice that your colleagues have repetitive and manual post-trading workflows and build a system around it to improve efficiency and lower error rates. Saving time in these workflows will free up more time for you to learn from traders around you”, she shares.

Some of the leadership qualities that she admires include:

• Good leaders are very clear about what they’re trying to achieve
• They make sure their objectives align with their team / organisation’s goals
• They know how to mobilise the right skills, either within themselves or their team, to get closer to the outcomes they want to achieve

Amy admires how good leaders understand early on what they are working towards and why. Whenever they see opportunities to demonstrate those qualities, they do not hesitate to take them.

“For some, it’s the love of learning and having the forum to constantly test their learnings in practice. For others, it might be the love of winning.

“For me, it was realising that well designed portfolios and good investment decisions have the power to affect financial realities for real people who have entrusted me with their capital”, she adds.

Career Advice Lesson #5: Don’t Let Stereotypes Stop You

Amy has noticed that there is a stereotype associated with being an investor: someone who is highly confident, perhaps even aggressive, enjoys arguing and likes to make bold predictions.

According to her, this is simply the loudest and most visible type of investment personality and not the only one:

“Rather than personality types, it’s the collection of behaviours that matter more to what makes a good investor. You have to be naturally curious, and not settle for the first or easiest explanation for why something is a certain way.

“You have to be intellectually honest, which means being prepared to look like the dumbest person in a room to ask the questions you need to. You have to be comfortable with uncertainty, and with being wrong.

“You need to be able to change your mind when new information arrives that challenges your existing view, but still proceed with confidence”, she shares.

For Amy, active investing is ultimately a series of decisions, and strong decision making skills are indispensable. Being able to separate any judgement about who you are from the outcome of a particular decision can help prevent early burnout in an investment career, she adds.

Career Advice Lesson #6: Confront Hard Things Face On

People often tell women that they simply need to “back themselves”, but Amy finds that advice frustrating.

“Confidence is not something we can summon on command. For me, it has been built through repeated evidence: facing something difficult, having no idea where to begin, working out what I need to learn and eventually finding that I can do it”, she adds.

Her move to Australia from London was one such experience. In late 2016, Amy and her husband moved to Australia with their two children, without either of them having a job lined up.

To find a job, she leaned on every contact she had. One of the biggest challenges she faced was that fixed income was a small industry in Australia, and her experience in emerging markets and high yield was not directly relevant.

The pool of local candidates was also highly competitive. She became increasingly deflated and desperate, and questioned their decision to move to Australia many times.

However, with luck on her side, she found a Fixed-Income Portfolio Manager role with BTIM, which was then known as Pendal, in early 2017.

“The role threw me into the unfamiliar world of macro fixed income, and I had a lot to learn. For several months, that meant very long days: arriving at work at 7am, rushing home at 6pm to help with bath and bedtime, and then logging back on from 8 until 11pm to learn about macro trading from friends and former colleagues in London”, she shares.

“A few months later, I realised that it had become easier. Macro fixed income no longer felt like a foreign language. The concepts had become intuitive, and I could see that many of my existing skills were still relevant. As my contribution to the portfolios grew, my confidence grew with it”, she adds.

This experience taught Amy that real confidence does not come from being told to believe in ourselves. Instead, it comes from learning through lived experience that we are capable of more than we initially thought.

About Amy Xie Patrick

Amy Xie Patrick is Head of Income Strategies at Pendal, where she leads a suite of active income portfolios designed to generate stable returns for investors. Having begun her career on the sales side, she soon realised that her ambition lay in investing rather than trading. She joined Pendal in 2017 as a Fixed-Income Portfolio Manager and has since progressed into a leadership role.

Drawing on her experience across fixed income, emerging markets, high yield and macro investing, Amy has developed a career shaped by continuous learning, adaptability and accountability.

Her journey, including her move from London to Australia and her experience navigating challenging market conditions, has given her a practical perspective on what it takes to build confidence, lead effectively and make sound decisions in uncertain environments.

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