Rabi Al Yassin, business development and general manager at Axi: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Rabi Al Yassin (LinkedIn), business development and general manager at Axi. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I’m Rabi Al Yassin, and I'm the general manager of Axi’s Dubai office. I've been with Axi for the past 15 years, and in the industry for more than 20 years, and I'm now managing the Dubai sales team and leading Axi’s growth in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Axi has been an online broker since 2007. We’re regulated with the Dubai Financial Services Authority, Australia’s ASIC, and the Financial Conduct Authority in London. Our platform offers trading in products like contract for differences (CFDs), metals like gold and silver, commodities like crude oil and natural gas, currencies, and stocks as well. We’ve been adding DFM stocks recently, like Salik, Dewa, and Emaar, so some of the most tradable products in the Dubai financial market.

We’ve been around for a long time. I remember when we used to participate in expos, we were one of perhaps 40 or 50 brokers present — now it’s always over 200 brokers at any event. Competition is always great, so we see that as a positive.

The Securities and Commodities Authority’s easing of regulation, along with the ease of setting up, has really helped to propel the industry and registrations of global brokerages. The government has created a very supportive and attractive environment for them to come and set up shop here.

In addition to that, the increasing population and the status of the UAE as a financial hub and safe place for high-net-worth individuals’ investments, also makes it a great time for brokerages in the UAE.

People are really watching volatility in markets and following that, so we’ve seen big moves recently in gold, for example. When it comes to CFDs, people are looking for a short-term investment, so there’s a bit more speculation than when it comes to long-term investments.

Online platforms and trading have also meant that investors are getting less patient — they don’t spend too long with market analysis and studying the charts like in the past. Now we’re seeing a lot of our clients recently rely on AI for their analysis. We’ve created our own solutions to help clients with that, allowing them to integrate their AI advisors into our platform.

The problem with that is the analysis you get is always only as good as your input, so investors won’t always get the most accurate analysis or the most profitable — they have to refine their own prompts and data that they’ve input for their AI advisors to get better results.

I’m definitely a morning person. I wake up early and go to the gym, and then I go to the office and check the local and international news, and look at the numbers from the previous day and months. If there’s any urgent client-related requests, I do those, and then I start going to meetings for strategy and planning. And then I usually end the day the same way I start it, by looking at numbers.

One thing that never changes is taking care of my team and making sure they’re energized and excited. I like to also make sure the environment in the office is healthy and supportive for them to perform well. I’m a strong believer that human beings are the main driver behind any success, and taking care of the team and making sure they are comfortable will always reflect well for our clients and their interactions with them.

I'm married and have three boys, so after my workday’s done, spending time with the family is the best way to disconnect for me. I also enjoy history a lot, and I think to know the future and to be ready for it, you have to learn from the past. In our industry, looking at charts is basically history. We can analyze how price movement in the past has looked and based on that, be able to more accurately predict how things might change in the future.

One piece of advice I have is to always learn from your mistakes and from others’ mistakes, and always focus on learning.

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