Pendal’s Elise McKay had just started high school in the 1990s when she bought a subscription to BRW Magazine and had her first experience riding the emotional rollercoaster of the sharemarket.

Her grandfather, a retired teacher who had become a self-taught trader, told McKay when she was around 14 years old that she would make a better return if she invested her $1000 in savings from pocket money into the sharemarket rather than leaving it in bank. So she did.