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Some trading wisdom, tools and information I picked up along the way that helped me be a better trader. Maybe it can help you too.
Its a bit lengthy and I tried to condense it as much as I can. So take everything at a high level as each subject is has a lot more depth but fundamentally if you distill it down its just taking simple things and applying your experience using them to add nuance and better deploy them. There are exceptions to everything that you will learn with experience or have already learned. If you know something extra or something to add to it to implement it better or more accurately. Then great! However, my intention of this post is just a high level overview. Trading can be far too nuanced to go into in this post and would take forever to type up every exception (not to mention the traders individual personality). If you take the general information as a starting point, hopefully you will learn the edge cases long the way and learn how to use the more effectively if you end up using them. I apologize in advice for any errors or typos. Introduction After reflecting on my fun (cough) trading journey that was more akin to rolling around on broken glass and wondering if brown glass will help me predict market direction better than green glass. Buying a $100 indicator at 2 am when I was acting a fool, looking at it and going at and going "This is a piece of lagging crap, I miss out on a large part of the fundamental move and never using it for even one trade". All while struggling with massive over trading and bad habits because I would get bored watching a single well placed trade on fold for the day. Also, I wanted to get rich quick. On top all of that I had a terminal Stage 4 case of FOMO on every time the price would move up and then down then back up. Just think about all those extra pips I could have trading both directions as it moves across the chart! I can just sell right when it goes down, then buy right before it goes up again. Its so easy right? Well, turns out it was not as easy as I thought and I lost a fair chunk of change and hit my head against the wall a lot until it clicked. Which is how I came up with a mixed bag of things that I now call "Trade the Trade" which helped support how I wanted to trade so I can still trade intra day price action like a rabid money without throwing away all my bananas. Why Make This Post? - Core Topic of Discussion I wish to share a concept I came up with that helped me become a reliable trader. Support the weakness of how I like to trade. Also, explaining what I do helps reinforce my understanding of the information I share as I have to put words to it and not just use internalized processes. I came up with a method that helped me get my head straight when trading intra day. I call it "Trade the Trade" as I am making mini trades inside of a trade setup I make from analysis on a higher timeframe that would take multiple days to unfold or longer. I will share information, principles, techniques I used and learned from others I talked to on the internet (mixed bag of folks from armatures to professionals, and random internet people) that helped me form a trading style that worked for me. Even people who are not good at trading can say something that might make it click in your head so I would absorbed all the information I could get.I will share the details of how I approach the methodology and the tools in my trading belt that I picked up by filtering through many tools, indicators strategies and witchcraft. Hopefully you read something that ends up helping you be a better trader. I learned a lot from people who make community posts so I wanted to give back now that I got my ducks in a row. General Trading Advice If your struggling finding your own trading style, fixing weakness's in it, getting started, being reliably profitable or have no framework to build yourself higher with, hopefully you can use the below advice to help provide some direction or clarity to moving forward to be a better trader.
KEEP IT SIMPLE. Do not throw a million things on your chart from the get go or over analyzing what the market is doing while trying to learn the basics. Tons of stuff on your chart can actually slow your learning by distracting your focus on all your bells and whistles and not the price action.
PRICE ACTION. Learn how to read price action. Not just the common formations, but larger groups of bars that form the market structure. Those formations carry more weight the higher the time frame they form on. If struggle to understand what is going on or what your looking at, move to a higher time frame.
INDICATORS. If you do use them you should try to understand how every indicator you use calculates its values. Many indicators are lagging indicators, understanding how it calculates the values can help you learn how to identify the market structure before the indicator would trigger a signal . This will help you understand why the signal is a lagged signal. If you understand that you can easily learn to look at the price action right before the signal and learn to watch for that price action on top of it almost trigging a signal so you can get in at a better position and assume less downside risk. I recommend using no more than 1-2 indicators for simplicity, but your free to use as many as you think you think you need or works for your strategy/trading style.
PSYCOLOGY. First, FOMO is real, don't feed the beast. When you trade you should always have an entry and exit. If you miss your entry do not chase it, wait for a new entry. At its core trading is gambling and your looking for an edge against the house (the other market participants). With that in mind, treat as such. Do not risk more than you can afford to lose. If you are afraid to lose it will negatively effect your trade decisions. Finally, be honest with your self and bad trading happens. No one is going to play trade cop and keep you in line, that's your job.
TRADE DECISION MARKING: Before you enter any trade you should have an entry and exit area. As you learn price action you will get better entries and better exits. Use a larger zone and stop loss at the start while learning. Then you can tighten it up as you gain experience. If you do not have a area you wish to exit, or you are entering because "the markets looking like its gonna go up". Do not enter the trade. Have a reason for everything you do, if you cannot logically explain why then you probably should not be doing it.
ROBOTS/ALGOS: Loved by some, hated by many who lost it all to one, and surrounded by scams on the internet. If you make your own, find a legit one that works and paid for it or lost it all on a crappy one, more power to ya. I do not use robots because I do not like having a robot in control of my money. There is too many edge cases for me to be ok with it.However, the best piece of advice about algos was that the guy had a algo/robot for each market condition (trending/ranging) and would make personalized versions of each for currency pairs as each one has its own personality and can make the same type of movement along side another currency pair but the price action can look way different or the move can be lagged or leading. So whenever he does his own analysis and he sees a trend, he turns the trend trading robot on. If the trend stops, and it starts to range he turns the range trading robot on. He uses robots to trade the market types that he is bad at trading. For example, I suck at trend trading because I just suck at sitting on my hands and letting my trade do its thing.
Trade the Trade - The Methodology
Base Principles These are the base principles I use behind "Trade the Trade". Its called that because you are technically trading inside your larger high time frame trade as it hopefully goes as you have analyzed with the trade setup. It allows you to scratch that intraday trading itch, while not being blind to the bigger market at play. It can help make sense of why the price respects, rejects or flat out ignores support/resistance/pivots.
Trade Setup: Find a trade setup using high level time frames (daily, 4hr, or 1hr time frames). The trade setup will be used as a base for starting to figure out a bias for the markets direction for that day.
Indicator Data: Check any indicators you use (I use Stochastic RSI and Relative Vigor Index) for any useful information on higher timeframes.
Support Resistance: See if any support/resistance/pivot points are in currently being tested/resisted by the price. Also check for any that are within reach so they might become in play through out the day throughout the day (which can influence your bias at least until the price reaches it if it was already moving that direction from previous days/weeks price action).
Currency Strength/Weakness: I use the TradeVision currency strength/weakness dashboard to see if the strength/weakness supports the narrative of my trade and as an early indicator when to keep a closer eye for signs of the price reversing.Without the tool, the same concept can be someone accomplished with fundamentals and checking for higher level trends and checking cross currency pairs for trends as well to indicate strength/weakness, ranging (and where it is in that range) or try to get some general bias from a higher level chart that may help you out. However, it wont help you intra day unless your monitoring the currency's index or a bunch of charts related to the currency.
Watch For Trading Opportunities: Personally I make a mental short list and alerts on TradingView of currency pairs that are close to key levels and so I get a notification if it reaches there so I can check it out. I am not against trading both directions, I just try to trade my bias before the market tries to commit to a direction. Then if I get out of that trade I will scalp against the trend of the day and hold trades longer that are with it.Then when you see a opportunity assume the directional bias you made up earlier (unless the market solidly confirms with price action the direction while waiting for an entry) by trying to look for additional confirmation via indicators, price action on support/resistances etc on the low level time frame or higher level ones like hourly/4hr as the day goes on when the price reaches key areas or makes new market structures to get a good spot to enter a trade in the direction of your bias.Then enter your trade and use the market structures to determine how much of a stop you need. Once your in the trade just monitor it and watch the price action/indicators/tools you use to see if its at risk of going against you. If you really believe the market wont reach your TP and looks like its going to turn against you, then close the trade. Don't just hold on to it for principle and let it draw down on principle or the hope it does not hit your stop loss.
Trade Duration Hold your trades as long or little as you want that fits your personality and trading style/trade analysis. Personally I do not hold trades past the end of the day (I do in some cases when a strong trend folds) and I do not hold trades over the weekends. My TP targets are always places I think it can reach within the day. Typically I try to be flat before I sleep and trade intra day price movements only. Just depends on the higher level outlook, I have to get in at really good prices for me to want to hold a trade and it has to be going strong. Then I will set a slightly aggressive stop on it before I leave. I do know several people that swing trade and hold trades for a long period of time. That is just not a trading style that works for me.
Enhance Your Success Rate Below is information I picked up over the years that helped me enhance my success rate with not only guessing intra day market bias (even if it has not broken into the trend for the day yet (aka pre London open when the end of Asia likes to act funny sometimes), but also with trading price action intra day. People always say "When you enter a trade have an entry and exits. I am of the belief that most people do not have problem with the entry, its the exit. They either hold too long, or don't hold long enough. With the below tools, drawings, or instruments, hopefully you can increase your individual probability of a successful trade. **P.S.*\* Your mileage will vary depending on your ability to correctly draw, implement and interpret the below items. They take time and practice to implement with a high degree of proficiency. If you have any questions about how to do that with anything listed, comment below and I will reply as I can. I don't want to answer the same question a million times in a pm. Tools and Methods Used This is just a high level overview of what I use. Each one of the actions I could go way more in-depth on but I would be here for a week typing something up of I did that. So take the information as a base level understanding of how I use the method or tool. There is always nuance and edge cases that you learn from experience.
Fundamentals
I keep a general high level Macro outlook for currencies. I dont get too deep into Fundamentals and just keep an eye out for news. If I am already in a trade I will hold it if its far enough away from my entry. However, I wont enter right before/during news as it can invalidate your setup.
Price Action
I started with the basics of learning the standard price action formations/patterns and candles. You can find tons of free info on that online, google is your friend. Then I stared at charts and said "why did the price do that or do this etc" then after a while I started to understand what's happening without having to think about it and I can see the market structure without having to look as closely as I did in the past.
After many many hours of staring at 5 min charts for 15 hours a day 5 days a week I learned how to look at 5 min charts and be like "Oh that's a hammer on the 15 min etc. If you keep track of time you can do the same for hourly candles as well and you will start to see market structure naturally. However I typically trade in a two chart panel window so I have a 15 min and 5 min chart up when trading intra day so I dont have to think too hard about it.
Support/Resistance Lines
Draw support resistance lines on Daily/4hr timeframes. I prefer to use body of the candle instead of the wick for support/resistance.
You can find support/resistance liquidity levels through out the day as well and trade those if the price retraces back through levels its already been through that same day.
It would be a bit length to explain exactly the best place to draw them. If your unsure there is plenty of free resources on the internet. Just try to use your head and look for price levels where the price was "Supported" or it "Resisted" that price level then slap a line on it. Draw as few or as many lines as you feel helps you and your style. I tend to lean on the side of fewer. I typically do about 6 lines main support/resistances (3 of each).
Fibonacci Extensions
Draw two Fibonacci Extensions. One on the daily timeframe, and then one on the 4hr time frame. Then you can trade the Fibonacci levels and use them for TP targets or entry zones if price action respects the level. Also you can use it along with support/resistance and pivots if they happen to line up or are very close.
I cannot really figure out how to put it into words how to draw a Fib if you dont know how. I will have to make a picture to demonstrate it. If your interested post below and I will draw one up and post a link. Probably the easiest way to understand. Just keep in mind the Fib you draw on the 4hr time frame will be inside the daily timeframe one.
Currency Strength/Weakness
The TradeVision2020 dashboard that I use just helps me keep a tab on the current market post plus any swing strength/momentum a currency might have on higher time frames. Helps me look for shifts in the market or confirmation that the bias it already has in momentum is continuing. I have found that often currencies when they get really/weak or strong might continue for several days or even longer like a full week or more. We recently had what felt like 1 week or so of flat out Yen weakness which was making some things wonky. All it does is allow me to look at the dashboard instead of a million other charts.
Indicators
I use two that work well for my intra day style. The Stochastic RSI is just like a RSI but its faster. The second is the Relative Vigor Index which I use to detect swings in momentum and divergences in bullish/bearish momentum. I have used many others in the past, but as I have grown and got better as a trader I have found making my analysis simpler has improved my trading.I dont like the whole idea of have 43 different indicators on 32 different time frames light up a dashboard to be green for me to enter a trade. With how I do it now, I have a clear understanding of what I expect to happen and why. That way when it does happen I understand the move and dont get freaked out if the market moves funny after I am in the trade.
Conclusion I use the above tools/indicators/resources/philosophy's to trade intra day price action that sometimes ends up as noise in the grand scheme of the markets movement.use that method until the price action for the day proves the bias assumption wrong. Also you can couple that with things like Stoch RSI + Relative Vigor Index to find divergences which can increase the probability of your targeted guesses. Trade Example from Yesterday This is an example of a trade I took today and why I took it. I used the following core areas to make my trade decision.
Fundamental Bias: I already had a bullish fundamental outlook on EUUSD with expecting the markets to price in future similes due a higher an higher chance of Biden winning on paper as the election closed in and a "Blue wave" coming which would lead to a weaker dollar. Also, the Euro Zone is getting hammered with COVID pretty hard plus Brexit drama so I had a strong Euro bias.NOTE: As frame of reference, all the other pairs I trade I traded as if they were ranging and trade a range. Markets are messed up right now.
Currency Strength/Weakness: I use a tool that gives me a currency strength/weakness dashboard called TradeVision2020. Helps me track individual currency strength/weakness intra day. Took me about a month to get used to it, but helps me keep track of intra day strength/weakness that can add a bias to trade direction as the day unfolds. Like "Will this run have a 2nd or 3rd push higher" or "I should look to TP at the first sign of weakness in the push" type bias data. You still got to use your brain and figure out the best decision. It wont make choices for you, its only a guide.NOTE: I am not trying to adverse the tool (if providing the code is against sub rules let me know), its just a tool I use every day that helps me with directional bias calls. I am sharing the coupon code that was given to me when I found out about the tool in the TradingView forex chatroom and the guy gave me the code to use when I signed up. I dont want someone to read the name and want to try it out then overpay for no reason. The coupon will give you 40% off. Coupon Code: 3F7A0T5T
Higher Timeframe Analysis: Detected some early signs of Bearish Divergence on the 1hr chart using a on a higher time frame using a Stochastic RSI. Then I saw more confirmation on 5 min charts using Relative Vigor Index to help time my entry mid session.
Pivot Points: I treat pivot points like support/resistance and trade them as such using price action to give me some idea how its being treated by the market. Pretty straight forward.
It may seem like a lot of stuff to process on the fly while trying to figure out live price action but, for the fundamental bias for a pair should already baked in your mindset for any currency pair you trade. For the currency strength/weakness I stare at the dashboard 12-15 hours a day so I am always trying to keep a pulse on what's going or shifts so that's not really a factor when I want to enter as I would not look to enter if I felt the market was shifting against me. Then the higher timeframe analysis had already happened when I woke up, so it was a game of "Stare at the 5 min chart until the price does something interesting" Trade Example: Today , I went long EUUSD long bias when I first looked at the chart after waking up around 9-10pm Eastern. Fortunately, the first large drop had already happened so I had a easy baseline price movement to work with. I then used tool for currency strength/weakness monitoring, Pivot Points, and bearish divergence detected using Stochastic RSI and Relative Vigor Index. I first noticed Bearish Divergence on the 1hr time frame using the Stochastic RSI and got confirmation intra day on the 5 min time frame with the Relative Vigor Index. I ended up buying the second mini dip around midnight Eastern because it was already dancing along the pivot point that the price had been dancing along since the big drop below the pivot point and dipped below it and then shortly closed back above it. I put a stop loss below the first large dip. With a TP goal of the middle point pivot line Then I waited for confirmation or invalidation of my trade. I ended up getting confirmation with Bearish Divergence from the second large dip so I tightened up my stop to below that smaller drip and waited for the London open. Not only was it not a lower low, I could see the divergence with the Relative Vigor Index. It then ran into London and kept going with tons of momentum. Blew past my TP target so I let it run to see where the momentum stopped. Ended up TP'ing at the Pivot Point support/resistance above the middle pivot line. Random Note: The Asian session has its own unique price action characteristics that happen regularly enough that you can easily trade them when they happen with high degrees of success. It takes time to learn them all and confidently trade them as its happening. If you trade Asia you should learn to recognize them as they can fake you out if you do not understand what's going on. TL;DR At the end of the day there is no magic solution that just works. You have to find out what works for you and then what people say works for them. Test it out and see if it works for you or if you can adapt it to work for you. If it does not work or your just not interested then ignore it. At the end of the day, you have to use your brain to make correct trading decisions. Blindly following indicators may work sometimes in certain market conditions, but trading with information you don't understand can burn you just as easily as help you. Its like playing with fire. So, get out there and grind it out. It will either click or it wont. Not everyone has the mindset or is capable of changing to be a successful trader. Trading is gambling, you do all this work to get a edge on the house. Trading without the edge or an edge you understand how to use will only leave your broker happy in the end.
My friend recently told me about getting a message from a guy on Zoosk. She sent me his picture and unfortunately I had to tell my friend that was definitely not the person in the photo , as I searched the photo and found who it really belonged to. She’s new to the dating scene and I’ve been married 16 years, but I’m trying my best to help her navigate online dating. Anyways , she proceeds to keep talking to him and questions the pictures and he “comes clean” with his “real” picture. I look the photos up for her and they don’t come back to anyone. She spends today texting him and he tells her he is a forex trader. I have no clue what that is, so I look it up for her. In the meantime he is texting her telling her that she needs to download an app called coinbase. I tell my friend immediately not to do it. But she says she wants to see what he has to say. I’m not sure if I can post it here , but he gave her an email address associated with his coinbase account. She’s stopped chatting with him , but as her curious friend I am shocked that this is happening on dating websites! We have two phone numbers for this guy and an email address. Are there any websites out there we can use to look information up ? It’s all really strange and it’s her first connection on a dating site , so she’s a bit bummed that it was a scam.
Someone posted on here a few days ago asking about forex and forex trading in Kenya, I have gone through the responses and clearly, most people don’t have an idea. It is 3am in the morning and am in a good mood so let me make this post. This will be a comprehensive and lengthy post so grab a pen and paper and sit down. We’ll be here a while. FIRST OF ALL, who am I..? I am a forex trader, in Nairobi, Kenya..i have been actively involved in forex since I found out about it in Feb 2016 when I somehow ended up in a wealth creation seminar (lol) in pride inn Westlands, the one close to Mpaka Rd. Luckily for me, it was not one of those AIM global meetings or I’d be on Facebook selling God knows what those guys sell. I did not take it seriously till August of the same year and I have been active ever since. I don’t teach, mentor or sell a course or signals, I trade my own money. I am also posting from a throwaway account because I don’t want KRA on my ass. What the fuck is forex and forex trading. In simple plain English, forex is like the stock market but for currencies. Stock Market = Shares, forex = currencies. If you want more in-depth explanation, google is your friend. These currencies are pegged on specific countries, united states- dollar, UK- pound, euro zone- euro, Switzerland- Swiss franc, Kenya- Kenya shilling.. you get the point. Now, there are specific events and happenings between these economies that affect the movement and values of the currencies, driving their value (purchasing power up and down). Forex trading exploits these movements to make money. When the value is going up, we buy and vice versa (down –sell) Is forex trading illegal in Kenya? Is it a scam? Illegal, no. scam, no. All the banks in the world do it (KCB made about 4 billion from trading forex in 2019) Have there been scams involving forex in Kenya? Yes. Here is one that happened recently. This one is the most infamous one yet. Best believe that this is not the end of these type of scams because the stupidity, greed and gullibility of human beings is unfathomable. However, by the end of this post, I hope you won’t fall for such silliness. What next how do I make it work..? Am glad you asked. Generally, there are two ways to go about it. One, you teach yourself. This is the equivalent of stealing our dad’s car and hoping that the pedal you hit is the brake and not the accelerator. It is the route I took, it is the most rewarding and a huge ego boost when you finally make it on your own. Typically, this involves scouring the internet for hours upon hours going down rabbit holes, thinking you have made it telling all your friends how you will be a millionaire then losing all your money. Some people do not have the stomach for that. The second route is more practical, structured and smarter. First Learn the basics. There is a free online forex course at www.babypips.com/learn/forex this is merely an introductory course. Basically it is learning the parts of a car before they let you inside the car. Second, start building your strategy. By the time you are done with the babypips, you will have a feel of what the forex market is, what interests you, etc. Tip..Babypips has a lot of garbage. It is good for introductory purposes but not good for much else, pick whatever stick to you or jumps at you the first time. Nonsense like indicators should be ignored. The next step is now the most important. Developing the skill and building your strategy. As a beginner, you want to exhaust your naivety before jumping into the more advanced stuff. Eg can you identify a trend, what is a pair, what is position sizing, what is metatrader 4 and how to operate it, what news is good for a currency, when can I trade, what are the different trading sessions, what is technical analysis, what is market sentiment, what are bullish conditions what is emotion management, how does my psychology affect my trading (more on this later) an I a swing, scalper or day trader etc Mentors and forex courses.. you have probably seen people advertising how they can teach and mentor you on how to trade forex and charging so much money for it. Somehow it seems that these people are focused on the teaching than the trading. Weird, right..? Truth is trading is hard, teaching not quite. A common saying in the industry is “Those who can’t trade, teach” you want to avoid all these gurus on Facebook and Instagram, some are legit but most are not. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is hard but I did that for you. The info is available online on YouTube, telegram channels etc. am not saying not to spend money on a course, if you find a mentor whose style resonates with you and the course is reasonably priced, please, go ahead and buy..it will cut your learning curve in half. People are different. What worked for me might not work for you. Here are some nice YouTube channels to watch. These guys are legit..
After a short period of time, you will be able to sniff out bs teachers with relative ease. You will also discover some of your own and expand the list. Two tips, start with the oldest videos first and whichever of these resonates with you, stick with till the wheels fall off. How long will it take until things start making sense Give yourself time to grow and learn. This is all new to you and you are allowed to make mistakes, to fail and discover yourself. Realistically, depending on the effort you put in, you will not start seeing results until after 6 months. Could take longeshorter so there is no guarantee. Social media, Mentality, Psychology and Books Online, forex trading might not have the best reputation online because it takes hard work and scammers and gurus give it a bad name. However, try to not get sucked into the Instagram trader lifestyle as it is nowhere close to what the reality is. You will not make millions tomorrow or the day after, you might never even make it in this market. But that is the reality of life. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed. Your mentality, beliefs and ego will be challenged in this market. You will learn things that will make you blood boil, you will ask yourself daily, how is this possible, why don’t they teach this in school..bla bla bla..it will be hard but growth is painful, if it wasn’t we’d all be billionaires. Take a break, take a walk, drink a glass of whatever you like or roll one..detox. Chill with your girl (or man) Gradually you will develop mental toughness that will set you up for life. Personally, I sorta ditched religion and picked up stoicism. Whatever works for you. Psychology, this is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of your personal development in this journey. Do you believe in yourself? Can you stand by your convictions when everyone is against you? Can you get up every day uncertain of the future? There will be moments where you will question yourself, am I even doing the right thing? the right way? It is normal and essential for your growth. People who played competitive sports have a natural advantage here. Remember the game is first won in your head then on the pitch. Books: ironically, books that helped me the most were the mindset books, Think and grow rich, trading for a living, 4 hour work week, the monk who sold his Ferrari..just google mindset and psychology books, most trading books are garbage. Watch and listen to people who have made it in the investing business. Ray Dalio, warren, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn. This is turning out to be lengthier than I anticipated so I’ll try to be brief for the remaining parts. Brokers You will need to open up an account with a broker. Get a broker who is regulated. Australian ones (IC Market and Pepperstone) are both legit, reliable and regulated. Do your research. I’d avoid local ones because I’ve heard stories of wide spreads and liquidity problems. International brokers have never failed me. There are plenty brokers, there is no one size fits all recommendation. If it ain’t broke..don’t fix it. Money transfer. All brokers accept wire transfers, you might need to call your bank to authorize that, avoid Equity bank. Stanchart and Stanbic are alright. Large withdrawals $10k+ you will have to call them prior. Get Skrill and Neteller if you don’t like banks like me, set up a Bitcoin wallet for faster withdrawals, (Payoneer and Paypal are accepted by some brokers, just check with them.) How much money can I make..? I hate this question because people have perceived ceilings of income in their minds, eg 1 million ksh is too much to make per month or 10,000ksh is too little. Instead, work backwards. What % return did I make this month/ on this trade. Safaricom made 19.5% last year, if you make 20% you have outperformed them. If you reach of consistency where you can make x% per month on whatever money you have, then there are no limits to how much you can make. How much money do I need to start with..? Zero. You have all the resources above, go forth. There are brokers who provide free bonuses and withdraw-able profits. However, to make a fulltime income you will need some serious cash. Generally, 50,000 kes. You can start lower or higher but if you need say 20k to live comfortably and that is a 10% return per month, then you can do the math on how big your account should be. Of course things like compound interest come into play but that is dependent on your skill level. I have seen people do spectacular things with very little funds. Taxes..? Talk to a lawyer or an accountant. I am neither. Family? Friends? Unfortunately, people will not understand why you spend hundreds of hours watching strangers on the internet so it is best to keep it from them. Eventually you will make it work and they will come to your corner talking about how they always knew you’d make it. The journey will be lonely, make some trading buddies along the way. You’d be surprised at how easy it is when people are united by their circumstances (and stupidity) I have guys who are my bros from South Africa and Lebanon who I have never met but we came up together and are now homies. Join forums, ask questions and grow. That is the only way to learn. Ideally, a group of 5-10 friends committed to learning and growth is the best model. Pushing each other to grow and discovering together. Forex is real and you can do amazing things with it. It is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want a quick guaranteed income, get a job. And now it is 5am, fuck. This is oversimplified and leaves out many many aspects. Happy to answer any questions.
UK resident got scammed to send money to an Australian bank account. What I did and what to do next?
Hello, I live in England and this is a long post about how I got scammed, presenting my story and asking for advice. Much appreciated to all who go through all of it and send their ideas. Also posted in AusLegal here: https://www.reddit.com/AusLegal/comments/iujgpq/uk_resident_got_scammed_to_send_money_to_an/ So I met a person online, and after chatting a bit she started showing me her gold trading profits. At first I didn't care that much, but she kept showing me profits and I said I wish I knew how to trade like that. She puts me in contact with this person, who is supposed to teach me how to trade. This teacher tells me that I will start with simulated gold trading, and after some time I would move on to real trading. After a couple of days of trading she says I'm ready to trade for real, I say I need more time to do simulated trading. We do another day of simulated trading and she says I'm ready and I should start trading with real money. Hindsight is 20/20, I can't believe what I was thinking. But I did do some checks on these people, like I aske them for pictures of themselves and I google image searched them. No results, not stock images, so I'm like, okay, a good sign. I ask the first person to have a phone call to talk, we do. Okay, fair enough. I ask the first person to send me the link to her design company that she said she owns, and she sends it over. Site is in Chinese but it's filled with a lot of images of homebuilding and some English sentences about home design. I ask her for more photos and it seems okay. I do the same with the "teacher". Google image search, no stock images, no results. I google the platform she's asking me to open an account on, can't find anything about it saying it's a scam. The reviews for the iphone app are mostly 4-5 stars, with people in the reviews complaining that the previous version of the app was better. So after all this, on the 11th of September I transfer the minimum needed to start investing, USD 10,000. I do this by using Transferwise, so I transfer the money in UK pounds to Transferwise (I live in the UK), the money is converted by Transferwise to USD and is send to the scammer's account to an Australian bank on Friday evening. I sleep on it, and next day morning I start panicking, I think my instincts started kicking in, and I do some more research online and I found something similar, not exactly the same scam, but something similar where you meet somebody online, start talking, some people even met with these people, and then they say can teach you or know somebody that can teach you to trade (gold, bitcoin, forex, etc). At that point I really panicked and I realised I got scammed. I try to reach Transferwise, but since it was Saturday, you could only reach them by email, couldn't even call them. I call the bank in Australia, I tell them what happened, I was scammed and the scammers account is with them and I give them the details of the bank account and everything. So literally after a few hours of the money leaving Trasnferwise I contacted the receiving bank. They told me they will pass it on to the Financial Crime team and look into it. I file a report with Action Fraud in the UK, I sent the report number to my bank, to the Australian bank and to Transferwise, but to Transferwise only on Monday when I can contact them again. I search online for some advice, and everybody thinks the best solution is to keep contacting the receiving bank as they could block the account, or the transaction and it could bounce back to Transferwise so I keep doing that. The receiving bank in Australia tells me to contact Transferwise and have them raise a fraud report and to get in contact with the Australian bank. After numerouse calls with Transferwise asking them to contact the receiving bank where I was told there's nothing they can do after the money has left Transferwise, I resort to calling the bank in Australia again. By this point I raised a cyber fraud report with the Australian police as well and sent the report number to the Australian bank. I ask the bank in Australia what is there to do, if they will deny the transfer or do something so that money does not leave the Australian bank account, and they said the Financial Crime team is looking into it, but I could also ask Transferwise to raise a recall request and to contact them, but I say I already did but Transferwise keeps telling me they can't do that. The person from the Australian bank tells me it seems like Transferwise is giving me wrong information. So I decide to call Transferwise again. I reach out to somebody, and they explain it still cannot be done. I'm almost begging them to do it, but they say it cannot be done. I start searching online of any events with TW and recall requests, and I found something where it said Transferwise doesn't want to do it because there's slim chance of getting the money back so they tell customers it cannot be done. I call Transferwise again and push and complain that I think they're just telling me they can't do it just to get rid of me and the person I'm talking to this time says it can actually be done and she'll do that request for me, and she apologises for her colleagues telling me the wrong information previously. I call the Australian bank again to let them know that Transferwise said they will do the recall and if there is anything I can do. They tell me best thing is for me to keep talking to Transferwise, as the Australian bank has done everything it can. Now, Transferwise shows you an estimation in days of how long a transfer will take. I did the transfer on Friday the 11th, and Transferwise estimated that the transfer would be completed by the 16th at 9:30 pm UK time. So doing all this I had some hope that something can happen. Mind you, I called the receiving bank a few hours after the transfer was done by Transferwise, and by their estimate had around 4-5 days until the transfer was complete. I feel like I wasted precious time because Transferwise was not helpful at all, from the start when I raised the scam with them telling me there's nothing they can do, to the moment I had to make around 5 calls just to get them to do the recall request. The 16th passes, the transfer appears complete in Transferwise and I get a message from the scammer that the funds have arrived and I can start trading. I didn't block them because I didn't want to freak them out and withdraw the money immediately it hits their account. I posted my long story here to see if there is something I can do. I had hopes that the Australian bank would block the withdrawal and it would bounce back, or they would block the scammer's account and my money would not be withdrawn and the recall would go through. I also have some hopes that based on what the scammer said today, the money is still in the Australian bank account. I feel like I acted pretty promptly after I realised I got scammed. Contacted the receiving bank, my bank, Transferwise and the authorities both in the UK and Australia. I don't know what else I could have done to get a more positive outcome, but now I'm asking you, the people of this subreddit, is there anything else I can do? Is there a chance the money is still in the scammer's account and the Australian bank has blocked it? Do you guys think Transferwise didn't treat me properly by dismissing me off the bat, and only helping me with the recall request after around 10 calls and pushing? Any advice would be much appreciated. I know I was foolish, I should have trusted my instincts, but I feel I also took some verification steps that I knew from the internet and I contacted every instituion asap after I realised I was scammed, so a few hours after sending the money. TL;DR I got scammed into sending money to an Australian bank account from the UK. What can I do now?
Hi all, thanks for reading and hopefully we can have a good discussion about the current online dating scene between westerns and chinese women. :) I have recently been meeting Chinese girls through an online dating site. I have met a number of scammers, women (or men?) who start showing me their "mad gainz" in forex/crypto trading and encourage me to sign up for some scam brokeexchange. I believe I have also met some real chinese girls. I am mid 30s so I talk to mostly 27+ year old women, which gets into the "left over" range. My understanding is that these women tend to be under pressure to get married and start having children by parents/family/society at large. My questions:
Any tricks for figuring out who is a scammer? I have talked to some women that turned out to be scammers for some time before realizing. I want to avoid wasting the time and energy talking to scammers.
I noticed a lot of these women claim to own businesses. Is this a common occurrence? Are single 27+ women in China usually well off (ish) business owners or is this a typical scam tactic?
These women seem to be very quick acting. I have had a girl, after talking for a couple days, say that she had love at first sight (with me). She has seen 2 photos of me and is talking about love... I had another girl want to get "serious" after an hour of chatting. That seems to be moving way too fast, even if they are "left behind" women and looking for a husband. Anyone have similar experiences? Are these real women?
KFC6855/环球潮鞋: The Secrets of Replica Sneaker Selling
Following a post from u/donjonne about a HUGE Weibo story on how to actually start your own 1:1 repsneaker empire, I figured as a native Mandarin speaker I gave it a shot and translated the entire article, since I myself am pretty damn intrigued what the guy's speaking.Do note this article is written in March 2017, lots of stuff may have been outdated, and I translated word-for-word with some pruned paragraphs that seems like the fella repeating himself. I absolutely hate the weird flowery prose Mandarin always carry when I work on translations, so apologies if the in-jokes or general writing gets a bit dry. This is my personal tl;dr without the author's boastful claims, so if you're short on time, here's the quick rundown.
How do replica sneakers get sold?
Taobao: Long history with the reputation for being the single biggest online BST hub, with Tmall and Xianyu Second-hands integrated. Lots of fake reviews and seller reputation ratings. The rep game there got outta hand, CEO of Alibaba stepped in and cleaned house, thus everyone moved to... WeChat: Lots more convoluted, no proper tracking and confirmation like a real shopping app and build quality can vary greatly between sneaker models from the same seller. But through word-of-mouth, standout resellers get recommended more organically, of course you need connections to start with. Agents: Your best friend if you're overseas, usually ran by freelancers merely collecting orders, reporting back to resellers and have them directly ship your kicks to your doorstep. Agents can be a single person, or a huge operation i.e. Wegobuy and Ytaopal.
How's the quality tho?
Depends. Some will try to bait-and-switch, some will bond genuine friendships for simply being a return customer. Factories often cut corners to save some dough and end up with a worse rep, so like the purpose of this sub, dig into forums and guide yourself to trustworthy sellers. Author also goes on a tangent and revealed the numbers and figures of selling reps, along with the sheer gold rush he's in now. Read below for more info.
Anything of note?
We're getting ripped off. Real hard, if you're a Mainlander chances are you're being sold 1/3 of the prices we see here. Part of the reason is that the multi-level reselling jacks up the price a lot, so unless you're buying in bulk for the purpose of selling them, good luck finding GET-passable OW AJ1's for less than $70. If you get caught selling, it's fines upwards of ¥50,000 and your license revoked, but nothing too serious beyond that. Author promised more novel shoes get made in the future, like Uggs and non-hypebeast dress shoes or sumthin. With that outta the way, here's the translation for the whole article, hope you'll learn something for it and if there's any mistakes, feel free to point it out in DMs or just in the comments. EDIT 17/05/2020: punctuation mistakes and missing formatting, also thanks for the kind words repfam _______________
GOD'S HAND: The Secrets of Replica Sneaker Selling
Having been in the rep game for around 4 to 5 years, it all started out of sheer curiosity. I spent ¥1099 for Air Force 1's some celebrity wore, only to had my buddy show up on me with a fake pair of the same sneaker only costs ¥300. Not everyone is some rich parents' spoiled brat where a pair of shoes costing a couple grand is considered pocket change, yet everyone has that sense of envy, the need to follow the hype to really stand out from the crowd, so do I honestly. But then again you'd only wear that pair of grails for only a good couple months and it'll be out of the wave, why not I find myself a more wallet-friendly way to do so? Ever since dipping my toe into the replica community, I'm making connections, meeting new friends and getting scammed in every step I make, keeping contacts of my favorite sellers (looking back yeah they're not the best and cheapest isn't it huh). I'm deep in the rabbit hole now, buying so many pairs I'm starting to be able to tell batches at a glance, and where to hunt down that very best batch at the cheapest price. At this point it's natural that I'm thinking of selling these reps and becoming a middleman with the best of the batches under one roof (which is what's following below). Anyone who has dealt with middlemen know that actually tracking down the direct factory outlets are nigh impossible, and the multiple stages of middlemen-ception where bigger but more discreet resellers selling to more minor, smaller middlemen can only make one dream of the sheer profit you can make for being on the very top of the pyramid, that idea has only been a mere blip in my mind. There was once in a bar my fam hollered at me with "Yo you remember that John Doe went to Putian for two years? Dude gave up college and has been filthy stinkin' rich by now!" I was like bah it'll never work out for me, but with the summer break I'd worth giving it a shot and have John Doe on the line. And boy howdy, ain't he wildin' right now with his business. Some say every Nike you see there's 1/3 chance it's straight outta Putian, some say Nike's LC works by handling a pair of dumb shoes to an uninformed factory worker and have him say "fuck kinda shoes are these, looks cool I guess so it's legit?" The only way is to really tear down the whole sneaker and see the markings in UV, and once we're on the point where we can fake inside tags and its barcodes, ask yourself can call out fakes on feet? A promotion for \"discount\" NB's on Weibo Ever seen promos like these? It's what I saw on Weibo today, and you've seen one like it yourself did you? They all look good on the images and you'd be right that they're photos of the real deal, just that of course the shoes you actually get were reps, and for each pair profits are never above ¥100; I sell ya an NB for ¥165, I'd only make ¥50.
REPLICA SNEAKERS: HOW DO THEY GET SOLD?
TAOBAO Taobao has always been the single biggest hub for BST. Run by the faceless middlemen, sold by the page visits, and reviewed by the bots. And stores with inflated trust scores were used as a front, once costing hundreds of yuan to buy now go for the tens of thousands. As Taobao is taking action to curb counterfeits to make way for legitimate resellers, these fronts are getting more expensive by the day, since then people took it to WeChat later on. Ask anyone who ran a Taobao store, and they'd tell you "you'll never make a cent unless you're selling fakes". A pair of (fake) shoes take some ¥100 to make, and can be sold as a legit like the thousands of yuan you see on their listings, you'd get away with dozens of fakes sold this way, where you can properly guage and adjust said price to match your profit margins. Once the rep game got popular and the snowball kept rolling, the problem got too big for Ma Yun to not ignore it and he went full banhammer on every rep seller. With every media outlet roasting Taobao's ass, everyone wises up to the knowledge that almost every sneaker you see could be fakes. The stigma lived on, and no one would touch any store where its place of origin writes "Putian". When life gives you lemons, you make a whole damn lemonade stand and just circumvent the whole damn thing by appearing that you're not from Putian. Problem solved. As you check your shipping details, it always seems to travel from Shangai, Shenzen, Quanzhou or even goddamn Xiamen of all places, even overseas. Proxy services are very popular due to China's stringent laws When sneakers are labeled as being shipped from Hong Kong, of course the sellers gonna say "it's from Hong Kong" but in fact it's shipping from Shenzhen, and the seller's excuse is that the sneakers are going through HK's borders from Shenzen then to the buyer's location. Even if you bought fakes in Tmall however, it won't be as bad as the ones sold as legit retails in Taobao. There's just too many of these rip-offs anyway! Had a reseller came to me to buy 10 pairs of sneakers, I make ¥10 each pair, but he sold it as retails and went on to make ¥500 each. Of course I'd panicked a jacked a prices a bit so I could have my own slice of extra profit to ¥20 each pair, said the factories jacked the prices themselves as an excuse. Hoe's mad I guess WECHAT While profit margins are no higher than Taobao, they still range around a dozen yuan on bulk. For all the actual friends I have in WeChat, I'd never believe them not having owned a replica sneaker in their whole life, blah blah blah "factory direct", "wholesale prices" my ass, who really can head to the factories and buy direct these days? Rep resellers buying bulk from those factories are truly the "direct from factory" purchases. Resellers then selling the reps to middlemen and agents, that's another step. Said middlemen then resell these reps to quote-on-quote "middlemen". (NB: may have been the very resellers we see on the sub) And it goes on and on and then, to you, the customer.The so-called A-grade reps you see on WC, let's say we buy it from the factory at ¥200 (for example, the real deal won't be this cheap) and sell to the end-user for ¥400~¥500, it does in fact look decent. Heck, retails may get "called out" in forums and reps may sneak under the radar. Chat and forum opinions aren't good indicatiors for a rep's actual quality. Thus you may wonder why buy retails at this point? No one would really hit the New Balance outlets at their local Wanda mall and ask the teeny-bop promoter lady if their kicks are legit anyway, so wouldn't this been the dream job you've wanted, right? SMALL-TIME AGENTS These sort of agents are mostly handling orders from overseas to cater the westerners, mainly Russian, SE-Asian, North/South American countries etc., and will never be some solo project as they always come in groups of a few dozen staff members. These agent groups can also hire decently well-spoken college students to help converse customers in English and pay them good pocket change, which is eerily similar to how Forex scams work before, but this time they're doing legit businesses for a change. Sort of. FREELANCE AGENTS The most common agent you may come across can be your close friends, they get instant payouts for attracting their local classmates to collect orders for reps, and this wannabe hustler reports them back to the resellers to ship to school dorms directly.
REPLICA BUILD AND QUALITY
Replicas reach far, far and wide. You could see your neighborhood cleaner aunt wearing 990v4s, motorbike taxi riders wearing Duck Camo AM90's, your kind old uncle next door exercising in Flyknit Racers and so on. NB, Nike, Converse, Ascis, Kappa; any brand you wanted they got it. ¥100 to ¥500 is what the factories charge, but after it hits resellers with a ¥200 hike, the illusion what seems to be a shoe that'll last breaks down as it wears out after a few wears. Bad stitching? Poorly-tumbled faux-leather? Off-moulded shape? I'd believe you but you sure you can tell if the EVA is fake by just looking on it? Is the gluing pattern underneath it visible even? A good deal of local boutiques sell ¥120 replicas at official retail prices like ¥599, a good ¥400 profit. Putian factories are split into "heavy" and "light" industries. The heavy industries builds the sneaker as a whole from scratch, while the light industries were like CKD vehicles, where parts are purchased and assembled together instead. and quality of each part of the sneaker depends among factories. Lots of them try to cut corners to save every extra cent, which explains the decreasing quality of recent sneakers you see now. Larger factories has always been delivering consistently decent sneakers, as customers who contacted them are much picker and won't slash prices along with quality out of the blue. The stitching (and Nike Air units/Boost soles even!) is close enough to pass off as retails. Some of the more badass factories can make a batch of 100 brand new replicas for you, just hand in a donor retail pair and they'll get to work.The old dogs in Putian has been around for ages, runs most of the resellers you know and love. They buy reps from the factory direct at ¥140, sell to resellers at ¥160 and have the resellers push ¥180, at these prices the shoes are just not enough to satisfy demand. I've gave it an estimate if the factory got his order to 30 dozen pairs of reps, with each pair a ¥20 profit, we're looking at ¥7,000 a day or ¥20,000 a month in gross profit. Of course, the Sales and Commerce Assoc. will still take a heavy hand on counterfeit sneakers till today, basically a few sellers every month get caught in the counterfeit business. The offenders walk into the office, sit down, had "the talk" yet again and pay a good ¥30k~¥50k fine and had their licenses taken away, for just awhile. Factories themselves get raided very seldom, maybe a every 6 months only a single factory gets caught per year. Putian has become the leading worldwide repsneaker operation for the entire world, and outputs around 50% the actual worldwide sneaker market, an estimated ¥20bn yearly. The Nikes and Adidases you wear now has an "OEM" for that. You may have bought a brand sneaker [in China], but it may very well be a fake regardless, to be fair the quality itself is indistinguishable anyway.
REPSNEAKER GRADES
1) The Standard Putian's cheapest offering, pretty much trash tier and a certain Taobao sells them the most often :^) 2) The GET Batch A huge improvement from the Standards, and the so-called 1:1 batch from the mouths of others. It's really not, some of the materials itself is not as fine or accurate as the real deal. Tmall often sells these batches, but often get sold as retails. 3) The 1:1 The absolute tip of the high-end replicas. Take it to HuPu.com and only the eagle-eyed few would call you out. Not everyone can get their hands on them, regardless of price. [eg: similar situation to UABat's Union AJ1's] 4) The Retail Nuff said, just retails. (But really, reps cost just 1/5 of the retail price, why bother lol?) A snapshot of KFC6855's wares
HOW TO TELL FAKES
[The author essentially details how to LC NB998's, so this is best skipped as it adds nothing to the article other than repeating the author's point over and over.]
THE REPSNEAKER FUTURE
If you ever think replica sneakers will only remain within the hypebeast sporty trainer radar, oh you'd be surprised. The replica factories are on full steam, churning out Dr. Martens, UGGS, Tod's and a lot more to come. If you're interested, my WeChat: KFC6855 has them on sale right now, guaranteed to keep ya comfy this winter. With all that said, I hope you learnt something from this, and now that you know if you really wanted a retail pair to sleep well at night, just don't get 'em in online stores. There's no glitz and glamor selling counterfeit sneakers, it's just business after all. If you know, you know.
[META] Recent scam/spam trends.. Or, a peak inside what it's like to moderate /r/forex
After a few...especially trying...interactions with unhappy ban recipients today, I thought it would be fun to share a little info on what moderators do to keep this place clean. :) The forex industry is full of shady characters. Any industry sitting on the intersection of financial independence, work, and money, is bound to attract them. There are many reasons for this; the lower barrier to entry compared to other markets, the lack of public knowledge on the subject, and greedy human nature to name a few. Moderating a subreddit dedicated to forex (or anything trading realted for that matter,) presents extra challenges beyond your regular sub. Marketers and scammers are super motivated, and MLM / referral marketing is extremely popular right now, which can turn everyday regular users into sources of spam. How we currently tackle this problem involves technology (scripts, bots, and automod,) a mod review workflow, and some smart sleuthing when needed. The mod team and our scripts aren't perfect though... but the few false positives we get are a very, very small fraction of all mod actions taken (~1%.) Unfortunately, that means some otherwise sincere members get handled roughly, and that can really suck.. I wish there was a better way, but the alternative is this place becomes a wild west and starts looking like your gmail spam folder. That said, here's my personal stats for JUST the last 24 hours:
Bans: 14[edit:16 nowbefore day's end, two more responding to a 'where can I learn how to trade' post.]
All mod actions (including bans, post and comment removal, etc..): 63
Ban appeals: 2
And I'm just one of the mods. . . So what scammer and marketing trends are we seeing lately?
Content marketing - Infographics with instagram handles watermarked in them, or a blog-like post with a embedded links to their own site.
Personal/direct selling - trying to move the conversation out of public view, usually by taking things to DM, or promoting a 3rd party chatroom where the rules here no longer apply.
Shills - Fake accounts used to boost the credit of another user, or service. It's no coincidence that a user asking about 'ULRA PRO SIGNALZ' will quickly have 5+ replies by low karma, new users, saying how great the service is. [edit:here's an example I just caught..]
Fake P/L Porn - We see this quite often. It's easy to fake MT4 account statements and MT4 Mobile screenshots, and new users can't tell the difference so these posts will get a lot of undeserved attention. When people ask how OP made such mad cash, a sales pitch is usually coming right up.
Honestly, it can be really frustrating at times.. luckily the scripts we have in place make weeding out ~80% of these jokers quite easy and quick. Heck, we had one scammer who blew through 12+ accounts over the last few days trying to scam people but none of their posts ever saw the light of day thanks to the spam triggers I've written. What motivates the mod team to keep this place clean? That's an easy answer: The majority of users here are new to trading. Making sure they aren't food for the wolves is important. But even with all the measures we take, some bad actors still get through. So here's where you can help: Use the report button! Anytime you see something that you think fits the descriptions listed above, or violates our sidebar rules, just report it. Even if you're not 100% sure, don't be afraid to use the report tool.. The worst thing that can happen is the mod team reviews and approves it, but the best outcome is you directly help keep this place clean and humming! :) And the mod team is always looking to improve where it can: I've already talked about what we do to scrub away bad actors, but one place we could do better is education. The plan is to rewrite a good portion of the wiki to include the following sections:
Spotting scams and scammers
How to properly compare brokers and regulatory bodies
The real reason why your old high school friend wants you to sign up to IML, and 10 ways to politely tell him to pound sand
No, that hot instagram model won't sleep with you if you buy her online course
Why all signal services are trash and can die in a fire
(Titles above are a work in progress ;P) Are you a good writer and want to help out with this? Think you can write up a killer wiki article on spotting scam artists? Message the mods and let us know! Finally, a reminder, we are still interested in taking on more moderators and will be revisiting that very shortly. If you'd be interested, read through this post and reply accordingly: https://www.reddit.com/Forex/comments/h7ok6k/seeking_more_mods_recruitment_thread/
UK resident got scammed to send money to an Australian bank account. What I did and what to do next?
Hello, I live in England and this is a long post about how I got scammed, presenting my story and asking for advice. Much appreciated to all who go through all of it and send their ideas. Also posted in personalfinance here: https://www.reddit.com/personalfinance/comments/iuja16/uk_resident_got_scammed_what_i_did_and_what_to_do/ So I met a person online, and after chatting a bit she started showing me her gold trading profits. At first I didn't care that much, but she kept showing me profits and I said I wish I knew how to trade like that. She puts me in contact with this person, who is supposed to teach me how to trade. This teacher tells me that I will start with simulated gold trading, and after some time I would move on to real trading. After a couple of days of trading she says I'm ready to trade for real, I say I need more time to do simulated trading. We do another day of simulated trading and she says I'm ready and I should start trading with real money. Hindsight is 20/20, I can't believe what I was thinking. But I did do some checks on these people, like I aske them for pictures of themselves and I google image searched them. No results, not stock images, so I'm like, okay, a good sign. I ask the first person to have a phone call to talk, we do. Okay, fair enough. I ask the first person to send me the link to her design company that she said she owns, and she sends it over. Site is in Chinese but it's filled with a lot of images of homebuilding and some English sentences about home design. I ask her for more photos and it seems okay. I do the same with the "teacher". Google image search, no stock images, no results. I google the platform she's asking me to open an account on, can't find anything about it saying it's a scam. The reviews for the iphone app are mostly 4-5 stars, with people in the reviews complaining that the previous version of the app was better. So after all this, on the 11th of September I transfer the minimum needed to start investing, USD 10,000. I do this by using Transferwise, so I transfer the money in UK pounds to Transferwise (I live in the UK), the money is converted by Transferwise to USD and is send to the scammer's account to an Australian bank on Friday evening. I sleep on it, and next day morning I start panicking, I think my instincts started kicking in, and I do some more research online and I found something similar, not exactly the same scam, but something similar where you meet somebody online, start talking, some people even met with these people, and then they say can teach you or know somebody that can teach you to trade (gold, bitcoin, forex, etc). At that point I really panicked and I realised I got scammed. I try to reach Transferwise, but since it was Saturday, you could only reach them by email, couldn't even call them. I call the bank in Australia, I tell them what happened, I was scammed and the scammers account is with them and I give them the details of the bank account and everything. So literally after a few hours of the money leaving Trasnferwise I contacted the receiving bank. They told me they will pass it on to the Financial Crime team and look into it. I file a report with Action Fraud in the UK, I sent the report number to my bank, to the Australian bank and to Transferwise, but to Transferwise only on Monday when I can contact them again. I search online for some advice, and everybody thinks the best solution is to keep contacting the receiving bank as they could block the account, or the transaction and it could bounce back to Transferwise so I keep doing that. The receiving bank in Australia tells me to contact Transferwise and have them raise a fraud report and to get in contact with the Australian bank. After numerouse calls with Transferwise asking them to contact the receiving bank where I was told there's nothing they can do after the money has left Transferwise, I resort to calling the bank in Australia again. By this point I raised a cyber fraud report with the Australian police as well and sent the report number to the Australian bank. I ask the bank in Australia what is there to do, if they will deny the transfer or do something so that money does not leave the Australian bank account, and they said the Financial Crime team is looking into it, but I could also ask Transferwise to raise a recall request and to contact them, but I say I already did but Transferwise keeps telling me they can't do that. The person from the Australian bank tells me it seems like Transferwise is giving me wrong information. So I decide to call Transferwise again. I reach out to somebody, and they explain it still cannot be done. I'm almost begging them to do it, but they say it cannot be done. I start searching online of any events with TW and recall requests, and I found something where it said Transferwise doesn't want to do it because there's slim chance of getting the money back so they tell customers it cannot be done. I call Transferwise again and push and complain that I think they're just telling me they can't do it just to get rid of me and the person I'm talking to this time says it can actually be done and she'll do that request for me, and she apologises for her colleagues telling me the wrong information previously. I call the Australian bank again to let them know that Transferwise said they will do the recall and if there is anything I can do. They tell me best thing is for me to keep talking to Transferwise, as the Australian bank has done everything it can. Now, Transferwise shows you an estimation in days of how long a transfer will take. I did the transfer on Friday the 11th, and Transferwise estimated that the transfer would be completed by the 16th at 9:30 pm UK time. So doing all this I had some hope that something can happen. Mind you, I called the receiving bank a few hours after the transfer was done by Transferwise, and by their estimate had around 4-5 days until the transfer was complete. I feel like I wasted precious time because Transferwise was not helpful at all, from the start when I raised the scam with them telling me there's nothing they can do, to the moment I had to make around 5 calls just to get them to do the recall request. The 16th passes, the transfer appears complete in Transferwise and I get a message from the scammer that the funds have arrived and I can start trading. I didn't block them because I didn't want to freak them out and withdraw the money immediately it hits their account. I posted my long story here to see if there is something I can do. I had hopes that the Australian bank would block the withdrawal and it would bounce back, or they would block the scammer's account and my money would not be withdrawn and the recall would go through. I also have some hopes that based on what the scammer said today, the money is still in the Australian bank account. I feel like I acted pretty promptly after I realised I got scammed. Contacted the receiving bank, my bank, Transferwise and the authorities both in the UK and Australia. I don't know what else I could have done to get a more positive outcome, but now I'm asking you, the people of this subreddit, is there anything else I can do? Is there a chance the money is still in the scammer's account and the Australian bank has blocked it? Do you guys think Transferwise didn't treat me properly by dismissing me off the bat, and only helping me with the recall request after around 10 calls and pushing? Any advice would be much appreciated. I know I was foolish, I should have trusted my instincts, but I feel I also took some verification steps that I knew from the internet and I contacted every instituion asap after I realised I was scammed, so a few hours after sending the money. TL;DR I got scammed into sending money to an Australian bank account from the UK. What can I do now?
This might be a bit of a rant, at this point I'm confused about all of this life stuff. I'm 24 years old and I know that can be quite young depending on perspective but I feel like I'm at the end. I've been an entrepreneur for about 6 years, I've also had multiple jobs in between. Does this cancel the whole entrepreneur thing? I've done regular retail work, customer service management, real estate sales, call centre and more so I'm pretty well experienced. I give everything I do 110%, its just in my nature and I take pride in separating myself from the crowd. I've done buying and selling of everything you can imagine (all legal) and I run an online clothing store. On top of that I've been in the stock market, forex etc. It might seem like I'm a jack of all trades but I try and put my efforts into 1 thing at a time. Have I still done too much? No matter what i try, I keep failing, am I looking for instant gratification too much? I've been running the clothing brand for about 3 years now and its only just getting to a point where I might make £50-£100 in profit per month, on a good month. I've just been scammed for £4,000 by some crooks, my bank has said they can't help me. I don't really want to live anymore. I lost £5,000 doing a favour for someone 2 years ago. What's the point of continuing if it seems like I'm only going to suffer. I'm a Christian and I actually paid tithes the same day I was scammed. I don't know, I'm tired of this.
UK resident got scammed. What I did and what to do next?
Hello, I live in England and this is a long post about how I got scammed, presenting my story and asking for advice. Much appreciated to all who go through all of it and send their ideas. Also posted in personalfinance here: https://www.reddit.com/personalfinance/comments/iuja16/uk_resident_got_scammed_what_i_did_and_what_to_do/ So I met a person online, and after chatting a bit she started showing me her gold trading profits. At first I didn't care that much, but she kept showing me profits and I said I wish I knew how to trade like that. She puts me in contact with this person, who is supposed to teach me how to trade. This teacher tells me that I will start with simulated gold trading, and after some time I would move on to real trading. After a couple of days of trading she says I'm ready to trade for real, I say I need more time to do simulated trading. We do another day of simulated trading and she says I'm ready and I should start trading with real money. Hindsight is 20/20, I can't believe what I was thinking. But I did do some checks on these people, like I asked them for pictures of themselves and I google image searched them. No results, not stock images, so I'm like, okay, a good sign. I ask the first person to have a phone call to talk, we do. Okay, fair enough. I ask the first person to send me the link to her design company that she said she owns, and she sends it over. Site is in Chinese but it's filled with a lot of images of homebuilding and some English sentences about home design. I ask her for more photos and it seems okay. I do the same with the "teacher". Google image search, no stock images, no results. I google the platform she's asking me to open an account on, can't find anything about it saying it's a scam. The reviews for the iphone app are mostly 4-5 stars, with people in the reviews complaining that the previous version of the app was better. So after all this, on the 11th of September I transfer the minimum needed to start investing, USD 10,000. I do this by using Transferwise, so I transfer the money in UK pounds to Transferwise (I live in the UK), the money is converted by Transferwise to USD and is send to the scammer's account to an Australian bank on Friday evening. I sleep on it, and next day morning I start panicking, I think my instincts started kicking in, and I do some more research online and I found something similar, not exactly the same scam, but something similar where you meet somebody online, start talking, some people even met with these people, and then they say can teach you or know somebody that can teach you to trade (gold, bitcoin, forex, etc). At that point I really panicked and I realised I got scammed. I try to reach Transferwise, but since it was Saturday, you could only reach them by email, couldn't even call them. I call the bank in Australia, I tell them what happened, I was scammed and the scammers account is with them and I give them the details of the bank account and everything. So literally after a few hours of the money leaving Trasnferwise I contacted the receiving bank. They told me they will pass it on to the Financial Crime team and look into it. I file a report with Action Fraud in the UK, I sent the report number to my bank, to the Australian bank and to Transferwise, but to Transferwise only on Monday when I can contact them again. I search online for some advice, and everybody thinks the best solution is to keep contacting the receiving bank as they could block the account, or the transaction and it could bounce back to Transferwise so I keep doing that. The receiving bank in Australia tells me to contact Transferwise and have them raise a fraud report and to get in contact with the Australian bank. After numerouse calls with Transferwise asking them to contact the receiving bank where I was told there's nothing they can do after the money has left Transferwise, I resort to calling the bank in Australia again. By this point I raised a cyber fraud report with the Australian police as well and sent the report number to the Australian bank. I ask the bank in Australia what is there to do, if they will deny the transfer or do something so that money does not leave the Australian bank account, and they said the Financial Crime team is looking into it, but I could also ask Transferwise to raise a recall request and to contact them, but I say I already did but Transferwise keeps telling me they can't do that. The person from the Australian bank tells me it seems like Transferwise is giving me wrong information. So I decide to call Transferwise again. I reach out to somebody, and they explain it still cannot be done. I'm almost begging them to do it, but they say it cannot be done. I start searching online of any events with TW and recall requests, and I found something where it said Transferwise doesn't want to do it because there's slim chance of getting the money back so they tell customers it cannot be done. I call Transferwise again and push and complain that I think they're just telling me they can't do it just to get rid of me and the person I'm talking to this time says it can actually be done and she'll do that request for me, and she apologises for her colleagues telling me the wrong information previously. I call the Australian bank again to let them know that Transferwise said they will do the recall and if there is anything I can do. They tell me best thing is for me to keep talking to Transferwise, as the Australian bank has done everything it can. Now, Transferwise shows you an estimation in days of how long a transfer will take. I did the transfer on Friday the 11th, and Transferwise estimated that the transfer would be completed by the 16th at 9:30 pm UK time. So doing all this I had some hope that something can happen. Mind you, I called the receiving bank a few hours after the transfer was done by Transferwise, and by their estimate had around 4-5 days until the transfer was complete. I feel like I wasted precious time because Transferwise was not helpful at all, from the start when I raised the scam with them telling me there's nothing they can do, to the moment I had to make around 5 calls just to get them to do the recall request. The 16th passes, the transfer appears complete in Transferwise and I get a message from the scammer that the funds have arrived and I can start trading. I didn't block them because I didn't want to freak them out and withdraw the money immediately it hits their account. I posted my long story here to see if there is something I can do. I had hopes that the Australian bank would block the withdrawal and it would bounce back, or they would block the scammer's account and my money would not be withdrawn and the recall would go through. I also have some hopes that based on what the scammer said today, the money is still in the Australian bank account. I feel like I acted pretty promptly after I realised I got scammed. Contacted the receiving bank, my bank, Transferwise and the authorities both in the UK and Australia. I don't know what else I could have done to get a more positive outcome, but now I'm asking you, the people of this subreddit, is there anything else I can do? Is there a chance the money is still in the scammer's account and the Australian bank has blocked it? Do you guys think Transferwise didn't treat me properly by dismissing me off the bat, and only helping me with the recall request after around 10 calls and pushing? Any advice would be much appreciated. I know I was foolish, I should have trusted my instincts, but I feel I also took some verification steps that I knew from the internet and I contacted every instituion asap after I realised I was scammed, so a few hours after sending the money. TL;DR I got scammed into sending money to an Australian bank account from the UK. What can I do now?
The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) finally got around to updating its list of unregulated online trading brokers. This list includes both forex and binary options unregulated brokers. Despite the fact, these brokers supposedly offer numerous services they are located in financial havens such as Seychelles, the Marshall Islands or Vanuatu and provide little to no information as to who they really are, and which parent company operates them. So, without further ado let’s introduce these fraudulent companies
SolidCFD
Owned by LOK Marketing Ltd, this forex broker is supposedly located in Vanuatu, a tax haven for any illicit business. Apparently, SolidCFD appears to be forging a path for current forex brokers and others that would like to set up shop in the country, whose major exports are frozen fish and distinct floating edifices. However, upon further inspection, the SolidCFD has two other offices registered on their website. The first is under the name MGNC Marketing Ltd. and it is located in Cyprus. A quick google search tells us all that we need to know. MGNC Marketing LTD (Solid CFD) cold-calls potential investors and offers them unauthorized or prohibited financial services. An additional address is attributed to an area in West London. However, upon further review, there is no real company located there. Unsurprisingly no company is registered in the UK under SolidCFD, LOK marketing or MGNC Marketing, which implies that the broker has no physical presence in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, there is a whole list of negative reviews pertaining to SolidCFD. This includes clients being unable to withdraw their funds, aggressive salesmen and not being able to log back into an account once a withdrawal request is made.
StratX Markets
Registered in the Marshal Islands, the company supposedly has an office in North London. However, the address that is provided is used by a company that enables other companies to register their business under their address. This obviously implies that StratX has no workers at its given address. Just by merely glancing at a few of the reviews tells you that StratX Markets is operated by a bunch of con-artists. In fact what is more alarming, a number of former clients are claiming that StratX personnel are operating a fraudulent fund recovery company called Linrow Clarion Solvency that claims they can recover money that was lost to illegitimate brokers like Stratx Markets.
Options Stars Global
Last but not least this “broker” is registered in Samoa, but apparently has some sort of a branch in Cyprus that is regulated by CySEC. That is patently false. Additionally, although the website has a U.K. phone number none of their of operations occur in the country. Not only Are there plenty of negative reviews about them, there is a dedicated Facebook page against them Users of the website report an inability to withdraw funds, threatening salesmen, and pushy brokers who tempt traders into depositing more cash into their accounts. The company has done so badly they even have a Facebook page against them.
Take Action
If you have fallen victim to a cryptocurrency scam, send a complaint to at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), and we will do our very best to get into contact with you as soon as we can to initiate your funds recovery process.
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Hello. There have been both positive and negative comments about IM Academy. Some people believe it's a pyramid scheme while others believe it's the real deal. I'm here to give my thoughts on what I have experienced since joining IM Academy. Since day one, there has been nothing but support and motivation from every individual I have come in contact with. In our group, we have over 2000 members. I am learning A LOT about FOREX, HFX, DCX, how to be an IBO (Independent Business Owner) and more! Do they promote? YES, they do promote the EDUCATION, the SKILL SET, the TRAININGS, the WEBINARS, SUPPORTING not just your team, but others, they promote having a positive MIND SET and reaching out to your MENTORS! They encourage you to inform others of these opportunities in the same way you would inform others of your favorite TV Show, restaurant, sports team, your favorite drink, etc. Do you HAVE to inform others of this life changing skill set that can possibly enhance not only your finances, but your way of life? NO, you do NOT HAVE to say one word about it. The only difference between them encouraging you to tell others about the Academy, the MILLIONAIRE skills you LEARN as you EARN vs. talking about your favorite eatery is that in doing so you have the opportunity to gain residual income. For those who do not know what Residual Income is: simply put, you are able to have an additional stream of income. Who would not want to have an additional stream of income just by simply telling others what you do and they decide to join your team? All you are doing is telling someone about the opportunity to join IM Academy to learn the same skills used by Millionaires! It's up them to decide if they would like to take advantage of the opportunity or not. There are several individuals who are making 6, 7 and even 8 figures by using the skill set and/or telling someone else of this opportunity. Some of these individuals are just like you and me and some are the Educators which we do have over 100 of. They offer LIVE TRAININGS where you can ask them questions right then and there if need be. I have read some comments about how you can find this information on YouTube or other online platforms. Maybe you can, BUT it will NOT be well put together, it may not be as accurate and will you have access to Mentors including Millionaire mentors whenever you need help with something like you do with IM Academy? I've also heard people have said, if you only invest $50 into your account once you get started, it will be gone in no time. More than likely, people who make these comments did NOT attend the trainings and they did NOT use proper risk management. We have SEVERAL trainings through the week and one of the most important training is called the TRADING Plan! This plan teaches you exactly how NOT to over leverage your account. It also teaches you how much to risk for your account size, knowing this will let you know how many trades per a day you can take. If you do exactly what you are taught, your account will not go negative and you would not be posting angry comments about how IM Academy is not what it says it is. Not only do we have trainings by our peers that teach you this, but we also learn this in the Academy Education with the Educators. Simple Run Down: Have you ever opened a Bank Account and they had you filled out all these forms that had a bunch of big fancy terminology on them? Well, that fancy terminology means, you are agreeing to allow the banks to invest YOUR money for you. In turn they give you 1% or LESS within a certain amount of MONTHS or even YEARS! You see, what they are doing is investing YOUR money in the FOREX market. They basically flip YOUR funds into profit within a matter of a few days to a few MINUTES and give you the PENNIES of what they made from YOUR money. Did you know according toglassdoor.com, the national average for a FOREX Trader at a BANK makes around $92,327 a year. To most people that is a LOT of money, but what if I told you they have actually learned a skill that can allow them to make that in a MONTH or LESS? How would YOU like to learn how to do the SAME THING! This is a financially life changing skill that you can learn to possibly have a better life! You Do NOT need to have experience. You DO NOT need to talk to other people to join YOUR team. This is NOT a SCAM, it is not a GET RICH QUICK solution, but you can become wealthy if you learn and put those skills to use. ANYONE can do this! I do NOT care if you did not graduate High School, if you are a Janitorial Custodian, an Exotic Dancer or a Multi-Millionaire who is looking to gain even more income. You are NOT ALONE with IM Academy. WE are in this together! What is FOREX? It is simple the Foreign Exchange Market. It is much bigger than the Stock Market, as FOREX is worldwide and trades over $5 Trillion daily! Yes, you read that right, over $5 TRILLION daily! I think there is enough for you to get a piece of the pie. What is HFX? HFX stands for High Frequency Forex also known as Binary Options. You can buy and sell within a matter of minutes. Which means you can gain profits or lose within 1 to 30 minutes on average. YES, that's right! You do have the possibility of increasing your funds with HFX in as little as 1 minute! BUT, DISCLAIMER: We do NOT recommend you doing this type of trade on your own. With our Academy we have highly skilled Educators who will teach you THEIR technique. Yes, that's right, we have Millionaire Educators who created their own program and will teach you how to use it in order to get significant profits with HFX. What is DCX? DCX is Cryptocurrency, such as your Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple and more! Remember, the guy who purchased a home with Bitcoin several years ago? Well, today it's becoming a lot more popular. People are able to purchase several types of assets using Cryptocurrency, especially since over 10,000 retailers are now accepting Cryptocurrency as payment. Oh, did I forget to mention The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop a "hypothetical" digital currency platform. Now, ask yourself, why would the Federal Reserve Bank "hypothetically" create a digital currency platform? Why would they "hypothetical" spend MILLIONS of dollars in creating a "hypothetical" anything? Bottom line for me is, our world has and is continuing to change. When I was a child, I only saw self driving cars, smart homes, weird types of currencies being used in movies. Look around, what do you see in real life today? I am not trying to convince you to join me and my team so that I can have residual income. I am giving you vital information to possible help secure your future. FOREX is exchanging over $5 Trillion dollars EVERY SINGLE DAY! Me, YOU, YOUR families, YOUR friends have the opportunity to get in NOW on skills that eventually everyone will have to learn at some point in their lives. You might as well do it NOW, go at your own pace, so you do NOT have to rush to figure it out later. I sure hope this answered your questions. If you have more questions or would like to know more information, PLEASE respond to me here or send me an e-mail, [email protected].
Binary Options Review; Best Binary Options Brokers
Binary Options Review; Best Binary Options Brokers We have compared the best regulated binary options brokers and platforms in May 2020 and created this top list. Every binary options company here has been personally reviewed by us to help you find the best binary options platform for both beginners and experts. The broker comparison list below shows which binary trading sites came out on top based on different criteria. You can put different trading signals into consideration such as using payout (maximum returns), minimum deposit, bonus offers, or if the operator is regulated or not. You can also read full reviews of each broker, helping you make the best choice. This review is to ensure traders don't lose money in their trading account. How to Compare Brokers and Platforms In order to trade binary options, you need to engage the services of a binary options broker that accepts clients from your country e.g. check US trade requirements if you are in the United States. Here at bitcoinbinaryoptionsreview.com, we have provided all the best comparison factors that will help you select which trading broker to open an account with. We have also looked at our most popular or frequently asked questions, and have noted that these are important factors when traders are comparing different brokers:
What is the Minimum Deposit? (These range from $5 or $10 up to $250)
Are they regulated or licensed, and with which regulator?
Can I open a Demo Account?
Is there a signals service, and is it free?
Can I trade on my mobile phone and is there a mobile app?
Is there a Bonus available for new trader accounts? What are the Terms and
conditions?
Who has the best binary trading platform? Do you need high detail charts with technical analysis indicators?
Which broker has the best asset lists? Do they offer forex, cryptocurrency, commodities, indices, and stocks – and how many of each?
Which broker has the largest range of expiry times (30 seconds, 60 seconds, end of the day, long term, etc?)
How much is the minimum trade size or amount?
What types of options are available? (Touch, Ladder, Boundary, Pairs, etc)
Additional Tools – Like Early closure or Metatrader 4 (Mt4) plugin or integration
Do they operate a Robot or offer automated trading software?
What is Customer Service like? Do they offer telephone, email and live chat customer support – and in which countries? Do they list direct contact details?
Who has the best payouts or maximum returns? Check the markets you will trade.
The Regulated Binary Brokers Regulation and licensing is a key factor when judging the best broker. Unregulated brokers are not always scams, or untrustworthy, but it does mean a trader must do more ‘due diligence’ before trading with them. A regulated broker is the safest option. Regulators - Leading regulatory bodies include:
CySec – The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (Cyprus and the EU)
FCA – Financial Conduct Authority (UK)
CFTC – Commodity Futures Trading Commission (US)
FSB – Financial Services Board (South Africa)
ASIC – Australia Securities and Investment Commission
There are other regulators in addition to the above, and in some cases, brokers will be regulated by more than one organization. This is becoming more common in Europe where binary options are coming under increased scrutiny. Reputable, premier brands will have regulation of some sort. Regulation is there to protect traders, to ensure their money is correctly held and to give them a path to take in the event of a dispute. It should therefore be an important consideration when choosing a trading partner. Bonuses - Both sign up bonuses and demo accounts are used to attract new clients. Bonuses are often a deposit match, a one-off payment, or risk-free trade. Whatever the form of a bonus, there are terms and conditions that need to be read. It is worth taking the time to understand those terms before signing up or clicking accept on a bonus offer. If the terms are not to your liking then the bonus loses any attraction and that broker may not be the best choice. Some bonus terms tie in your initial deposit too. It is worth reading T&Cs before agreeing to any bonus, and worth noting that many brokers will give you the option to ‘opt-out’ of taking a bonus. Using a bonus effectively is harder than it sounds. If considering taking up one of these offers, think about whether, and how, it might affect your trading. One common issue is that turnover requirements within the terms, often cause traders to ‘over-trade’. If the bonus does not suit you, turn it down. How to Find the Right Broker But how do you find a good broker? Well, that’s where BitcoinBinaryOptionsReview.com comes in. We assess and evaluate binary options brokers so that traders know exactly what to expect when signing up with them. Our financial experts have more than 20 years of experience in the financial business and have reviewed dozens of brokers. Being former traders ourselves, we know precisely what you need. That’s why we’ll do our best to provide our readers with the most accurate information. We are one of the leading websites in this area of expertise, with very detailed and thorough analyses of every broker we encounter. You will notice that each aspect of any broker’s offer has a separate article about it, which just goes to show you how seriously we approach each company. This website is your best source of information about binary options brokers and one of your best tools in determining which one of them you want as your link to the binary options market. Why Use a Binary Options Trading Review? So, why is all this relevant? As you may already know, it is difficult to fully control things that take place online. There are people who only pose as binary options brokers in order to scam you and disappear with your money. True, most of the brokers we encounter turn out to be legit, but why take unnecessary risks? Just let us do our job and then check out the results before making any major decisions. All our investigations regarding brokers’ reliability can be seen if you click on our Scam Tab, so give it a go and see how we operate. More detailed scam reports than these are simply impossible to find. However, the most important part of this website can be found if you go to our Brokers Tab. There you can find extensive analyses of numerous binary options brokers irrespective of your trading strategy. Each company is represented with an all-encompassing review and several other articles dealing with various aspects of their offer. A list containing the very best choices will appear on your screen as you enter our website whose intuitive design will allow you to access all the most important information in real-time. We will explain minimum deposits, money withdrawals, bonuses, trading platforms, and many more topics down to the smallest detail. Rest assured, this amount of high-quality content dedicated exclusively to trading cannot be found anywhere else. Therefore, visiting us before making any important decisions regarding this type of trading is the best thing to do. CONCLUSION: Stay ahead of the market, and recover from all kinds of binary options trading loss, including market losses in bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and forex markets too. Send your request via email to - [email protected]
This might be a bit of a rant, at this point I'm confused about all of this life stuff. I'm 24 years old and I know that can be quite young depending on perspective but I feel like I'm at the end. I've been an entrepreneur for about 6 years, I've also had multiple jobs in between. Does this cancel the whole entrepreneur thing? It's really the title that matters to me in the end. I've done regular retail work, customer service management, real estate sales, call centre and more so I'm pretty well experienced. I give everything I do 110%, its just in my nature and I take pride in separating myself from the crowd. Since I've basically done every job that exists, I want credit now for my extensive knowledge of everything. I've done buying and selling of everything you can imagine (all legal) and I run an online clothing store. On top of that I've been in the stock market, forex etc. It might seem like I'm a jack of all trades but I try and put my efforts into 1 thing at a time. Have I still done too much? Or have I done too little; maybe I should try the illegal stuff now too? No matter what I try, I keep winning but I'm not mega-yacht rich yet, so I dunno; am I looking for instant gratification too much? I've been running the clothing brand for about 3 years now and its only just getting to a point where I might make $50,000-$100,000 in profit per month, on a good month. A recent experience where I got scammed opened my eyes to the possibility that scamming people might be lucrative, too. What's the point of continuing if it's just so easy to find and create all these opportunities to try out at such a young age? I'm getting bored and not one of the opportunities has gifted me my yacht, so pretty much feeling like I should give up. I'm a Christian and I actually paid tithes the same day I came up with the scamming idea, so maybe that really is the best route. I don't know, I'm tired of this. Why don't I get to FatFire yet??
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I wanted to write a quick post in answer to the people who routinely make claims I have a history of stealing from people in my previous company and base this upon a blog they read. If you would like to discuss this further, please make a post and link it to me to engage on. I will do so as long as we deal with the facts of how a PAMM company really works. I won't engage in circular debates where the essential point is, "I don't believe you". You don't have to - that's not how any of this works. Just fact check.
Anti-SEO:
I want to avoid Google ranking on this post. Although for my personal 'PR' it would be beneficial to aim to rank something answering claims, at some points in this some others involved in the company will not really come over in the best light. I assume it's likely these people are still involved things (Not spoke with them for 5 yrs) - It'd be unfair to rank bad PR on them. The failure of the company was squarely due to me. Anything anyone else did either would not have happened or not have mattered if I'd done better. I do not want anything I do now to further hinder anyone. So I will refer to names by only one letter (or number if applicable).
Ponzi Claims:
I found it strange at the time this ended up centred around the ponzi scheme side of things. There was a reasonable question to be asked and answered as to if it was a pyramid scheme. Were people signing up just to sign people up, or was there a core product of fair market value. The services sold I'd previously ran at the same sort of price point direct to market - so I felt on fairly good ground on that. Initially I's actually been a bit excited initially, because I was a reader of the blog in question and I liked the work they'd done on pyramid schemes. I thought I'd be able to either validate I was doing things right, or learn how I should be doing them better. I never thought the ponzi side of it would take any more than a few minutes to clear up. But that was not so ... A ponzi scheme was to all intents and purposes impossible. All of our business was done via three different brokers and all of our results publicly tracked with close to real time updates for marketing purposes. Of the three brokers we were using, two of them had good regulation. An off-shore broker had to be used for US clients, so this is the only one with any sort of question mark. All of our results over all the brokers were almost identical (Some execution/costs variance). The two regulated brokers were under different regulators. Most, if not all, the brokers held clients funds in segregated accounts. All brokers would have to have been fully complicit in the scam - and it costs more to get regulated than there was to steal. Logically, it could not have been so. We were using a PAMM model. This works by the client opening a brokerage account and signing a LPoA to allow trades to be copied onto their account. The LPoA grants the company no access to the funds. Money laundering laws also dictate the funds can only be redeemed to same source they were funded. PAMMs are big business. Protection of all parties is built into it, it's a well trusted model. This should have taken no less than 5 minutes to self verify. It could not have been a ponzi.
£50,000 Fine:
That happened. Turns out if you set up a PAMM in the Netherlands and then let a bunch of people refer investment to it this is classed as running a ... I can't remember exactly and even at the time it was in Dutch so I didn't personally read it all. The underlying problem was not the model in any way. We were told at the time we basically jut had to pay £2,000 for each country we did business in. We were global. At this time the company had neither the money to do that, or pay the fine they gave us for not having the money to do that. My mistaken assumption was that since when you run a PAMM you are basically piggybacking off the broker's licence, all was well and good. This was true - but the problem was sourcing. Paying people to refer investment was what we were fined for when you get right down to it.
$180,000 Stolen:
This was just a headline. In many ways it's misleading. Firstly, nothing was stolen or even taken. It was lost or given away to clients who'd lost in the PAMMs that went bad. All the money lost was lost trying to get enough money to make good all the PAMMs. So it was not stolen, and there is nothing in anyway to imply that's a suitable word to use. In the blog, no explanation of that is offered. What seems to be inferred is that this was commissions due out to clients that the company kept. Even outside the above mentioned this would be wrong. All affiliates were paid. You will not find a single one who says they were not. Further to that, of all the funds invested into the company (We'll call the company '5') somewhere in the 60 - 70% range was sourced directly by me. Other funds were sourced by my co-founder. Investments were made through passive advertising without them being attributed to a refer. All in all, assuming we did not pay the affiliates and we had this much, $18,000 would be the number. Of the $180,000 somewhere a bit over $100,000 would have been mine. I never took that, and could not have "Stolen" it. I don't see the point in getting super technical on everything by going through how, but the number also probably wasn't $180,000. I think this was an overestimate made in a throw away comment by my co-founder (We'll call her 'M') who was (Justifiably) extremely angry at me at the time she came up with the number and added it in a post (Of this multi paragraph post, this one line and one number was taken - if memory servers, all context was left out when the blogger cited this as stolen. Which would make sense. The post was berating me for losing the money. That didn't fit the narrative.
What Backs the Story?
Of all of the claims of wrongdoing (Apart from the fine, which is documented and true) - there is no evidence proposed for any of the claims made. All of it hinges on a story told to the blogger by one person, who was another of my co-founders 'We'll call her 'E'. E was either a late teenager or very early 20s at the time. In the founding of 5, E was essential. Before 5 I'd been running a service selling trading signals and selling them at $5 a week subscription. I was generating a lot of business (Working all day, every day and having fun with it. Like I did here for a while, but at that time I really was marketing). 5 - 10 people a day could be signing up. I knew nothing at all about how to structure an online business. No listing of new clients to send emails. Nothing about making membership sites with password access etc. I was working off a Wix site I made myself with no on-boarding system in place. The volume of people joining was crushing me. I could not process them and was getting a lot of PayPal disputes. I wanted to send them the stuff. Just did not have the process to ensure this was being done. E stepped in and saved me on that. She made original 5 website (On Wordpress, I believe it was later upgraded to something else). Set up memberships payments. Automated listing. Also she suggested changing the name to what the company became. E made the work I was doing work. After that, she had varying performance. Her gripe in the blog is she was not paid for helping to found the company. Left out of this is the fact she was not paid because she was head of marketing and we were not getting enough clients. Almost all of them coming from me hitting the DMs and signing people up the old fashioned way. On results of trading, everything was going well (and this was my area). Things were going so well people legit through it must be a ponzi! But we did not have in-flow of clients. On this I again blame myself. I sort of assumed this would all work itself out and did not put focus on fixing problems before they became problems. There was a lot of pressure on everyone. E got into a new romantic relationship. I think she was heavily influenced by this person (I found E to be good hearted on the whole). E and M started to get along less and less. Then E and M seemed to hate each other. It all seemed to come from nowhere, but it quickly got to the point me and M felt it was not working with E, and she thought the same. Pretty much everything is based upon the story told to the blogger by E. As I've said before I found her to be a good heart overall and believe she was influenced into doing what she did, and would not have done it on her own gumption. Therefore I won't rip into her; but if you're reading, 'E' (Won't be lol) - that was a bit naughty, wasn't it? Little 'Economic with the truth'.
Why would the blogger post such big claims with no evidence?
People should ask themselves this on the first read through of the blog, to be fair. If you're a single source reporting on a story - tell how you know it's true. I think this mainly came down to revenge. After the ponzi thing I wrote blog line by line ripping the initial blog to bits. It was written in a very cheeky sort of tone, and what I was saying was right. He then played, "My blog's bigger than your blog" , on which he was right. If you think there is some smoking gun here in any way, just email the blogger and ask them how they know. What evidence were they ever given any money was stolen. There was none.
Money taken from the company:
In it's sad and drawn out end, cash on hand and assets within the company got down to around $10,000 and we were due out over 10* this to clients who I wanted to pay back. I was not bringing in new business (It seemed unethical to do until I fixed old problems - this was a miscalculation. No business was the big problem) and there was the 50K fine. The company was essentially bankrupt. I wanted to use the remaining 10K to have one last ditch effort to re-coup losses, or randomly select clients to pay the 10K to. M didn't. At this time we fell out (Forever). I have no idea what happened to that 10K. I think M probably kept it. At the time I was livid about that - but to be honest, after all the work she did she deserved something. Losing was not her fault. To 'M' if you're reading (Won't be), I'm sorry.
What went wrong?
I was not good enough. When I got ahead I thought I was coasting. I came from a background of having nothing and as soon as I started to make a few grand I assumed I was gliding to being a millionaire. I stopped learning. Stopped improving. I never watered what I planted, and it withered and died. I fail. Turns out you can not coast up a learning curve without ending up on your arse.
Forex Trading: a Beginner's Guide The forex market is the world's largest international currency trading market operating non-stop during the working week. Most forex trading is done by professionals such as bankers. Generally forex trading is done through a forex broker - but there is nothing to stop anyone trading currencies. Forex currency trading allows buyers and sellers to buy the currency they need for their business and sellers who have earned currency to exchange what they have for a more convenient currency. The world's largest banks dominate forex and according to a survey in The Wall Street Journal Europe, the ten most active traders who are engaged in forex trading account for almost 73% of trading volume. However, a sizeable proportion of the remainder of forex trading is speculative with traders building up an investment which they wish to liquidate at some stage for profit. While a currency may increase or decrease in value relative to a wide range of currencies, all forex trading transactions are based upon currency pairs. So, although the Euro may be 'strong' against a basket of currencies, traders will be trading in just one currency pair and may simply concern themselves with the Euro/US Dollar ( EUUSD) ratio. Changes in relative values of currencies may be gradual or triggered by specific events such as are unfolding at the time of writing this - the toxic debt crisis. Because the markets for currencies are global, the volumes traded every day are vast. For the large corporate investors, the great benefits of trading on Forex are:
Enormous liquidity - over $4 trillion per day, that's $4,000,000,000. This means that there's always someone ready to trade with you
Every one of the world's free currencies are traded - this means that you may trade the currency you want at any time
Twenty four - hour trading during the 5-day working week
Operations are global which mean that you can trade with any part of the world at any time
From the point of view of the smaller trader there's lots of benefits too, such as:
A rapidly-changing market - that's one which is always changing and offering the chance to make money
Very well developed mechanisms for controlling risk
Ability to go long or short - this means that you can make money either in rising or falling markets
Leverage trading - meaning that you can benefit from large-volume trading while having a relatively-low capital base
Lots of options for zero-commission trading
How the forex Market Works As forex is all about foreign exchange, all transactions are made up from a currency pair - say, for instance, the Euro and the US Dollar. The basic tool for trading forex is the exchange rate which is expressed as a ratio between the values of the two currencies such as EUUSD = 1.4086. This value, which is referred to as the 'forex rate' means that, at that particular time, one Euro would be worth 1.4086 US Dollars. This ratio is always expressed to 4 decimal places which means that you could see a forex rate of EUUSD = 1.4086 or EUUSD = 1.4087 but never EUUSD = 1.40865. The rightmost digit of this ratio is referred to as a 'pip'. So, a change from EUUSD = 1.4086 to EUUSD = 1.4088 would be referred to as a change of 2 pips. One pip, therefore is the smallest unit of trade. With the forex rate at EUUSD = 1.4086, an investor purchasing 1000 Euros using dollars would pay $1,408.60. If the forex rate then changed to EUUSD = 1.5020, the investor could sell their 1000 Euros for $1,502.00 and bank the $93.40 as profit. If this doesn't seem to be large amount to you, you have to put the sum into context. With a rising or falling market, the forex rate does not simply change in a uniform way but oscillates and profits can be taken many times per day as a rate oscillates around a trend. When you're expecting the value EUUSD to fall, you might trade the other way by selling Euros for dollars and buying then back when the forex rate has changed to your advantage. Is forex Risky? When you trade on forex as in any form of currency trading, you're in the business of currency speculation and it is just that - speculation. This means that there is some risk involved in forex currency trading as in any business but you might and should, take steps to minimise this. You can always set a limit to the downside of any trade, that means to define the maximum loss that you are prepared to accept if the market goes against you - and it will on occasions. The best insurance against losing your shirt on the forex market is to set out to understand what you're doing totally. Search the internet for a good forex trading tutorial and study it in detail- a bit of good forex education can go a long way!. When there's bits you don't understand, look for a good forex trading forum and ask lots and lots of questions. Many of the people who habitually answer your queries on this will have a good forex trading blog and this will probably not only give you answers to your questions but also provide lots of links to good sites. Be vigilant, however, watch out for forex trading scams. Don't be too quick to part with your money and investigate anything very well before you shell out any hard-earned! The forex Trading Systems While you may be right in being cautious about any forex trading system that's advertised, there are some good ones around. Most of them either utilise forex charts and by means of these, identify forex trading signals which tell the trader when to buy or sell. These signals will be made up of a particular change in a forex rate or a trend and these will have been devised by a forex trader who has studied long-term trends in the market so as to identify valid signals when they occur. Many of the systems will use forex trading software which identifies such signals from data inputs which are gathered automatically from market information sources. Some utilise automated forex trading software which can trigger trades automatically when the signals tell it to do so. If these sound too good to be true to you, look around for online forex trading systems which will allow you undertake some dummy trading to test them out. by doing this you can get some forex trading training by giving them a spin before you put real money on the table. How Much do you Need to Start off with? This is a bit of a 'How long is a piece of string?' question but there are ways for to be beginner to dip a toe into the water without needing a fortune to start with. The minimum trading size for most trades on forex is usually 100,000 units of any currency and this volume is referred to as a standard "lot". However, there are many firms which offer the facility to purchase in dramatically-smaller lots than this and a bit of internet searching will soon locate these. There's many adverts quoting only a couple of hundred dollars to get going! You will often see the term acciones trading forex and this is just a general term which covers the small guy trading forex. Small-scale trading facilities such as these are often called as forex mini trading. Where do You Start? The single most obvious answer is of course - on the internet! Online forex trading gives you direct access to the forex market and there's lots and lots of companies out there who are in business just to deal with you online. Be vigilant, do spend the time to get some good forex trading education, again this can be provided online and set up your dummy account to trade before you attempt to go live. If you take care and take your time, there's no reason why you shouldn't be successful in forex trading so, have patience and stick at it!
06-24 10:14 - 'SCAM awareness/ Phising' (self.Bitcoin) by /u/certifieddesi removed from /r/Bitcoin within 0-9min
''' Scam/ Phishing/ Bitcoin Scam/ Fake Banks Hi Guys! I just want to make everyone aware of one of the biggest scam going on currently and I was a victim of it. So they will try to get in touch with you through mostly Instagram or any other way saying they are investors and will have real company website in profile (they don’t work there) and that they are experts in forex trade and will work to increase our money by investing in one week. So to convince they will say we can even deposit minimum like $200 then they will have you make an account on sites like tradersplacefx (fake) or any other site. So on the account they will show you that the money is growing in a week, so fakely you will see that your deposit is growing to like $20,000. Of course you will get excited, so since your deposit grew they will ask you to deposit money certain amount of money ($2000 for me). I ll be honest I fell for all of this but I want to save other people’s money. So I deposited and then now it gets interesting they will make you create blockchain wallet and account saying that they will transfer the funds in blockchain wallet. So they will ask for your login info. So once you give login info you do see your deposit there but then they will ask you to deposit $5000 saying you cannot have empty wallet. Once you do they will lock the wallet address with private key (which you cannot retrieve) just can see the money sitting there. They will say we will keep adding the deposit whatever you deposit. So now your blockchain wallet has about $26,000 which is not yours. So now they will say that we deal with only one bank such as EUPHORIA SWISS BANK (Euphoriaswissbank), so I did some research they have made their website look like a real bank website [[link]2 With pics of agents and all but I found out that it was a copy of a US bank that looks the same. So they will ask you to make an account there, you will see your money go into the bank. Now they will ask you to deposit about 10K for some BS reason, they will say it is to link offline and online account. But lets say if you do that also then they will send you another e-mail saying we have to deposit 14% for security of deposit which is another $6,500 . So now I got suspicious that they keep on asking for deposit here and there to transfer my money to my local bank. So I asked bank to provided me with FDIC and physical address of the bank, of course which they don’t have they will say its online bank that’s why. So I did not send anymore after that, then they will keep e-mailing you to deposit payment to transfer funds to your local bank. So Now I have money in their bank account, just sitting there and they will show fake numbers. SO guys BE AWARE, take my example and DO not Fall for this!!!!!! They are earning a lot by this, I even saw someone send about 125K I feel bad for that person. SAVE your MONEY!! I want to make everyone aware and save their money because it does hurt losing hard earned money. I have lost about $21,000 L. At this point you cannot recover your money no matter how hard you try. Please Help share and remember the names of the banks or Instagram address might be different but do your research about bank (if no FDIC number or physical address not a real bank! I learned the hard way!. They will make it look like its very real bank and real site. So BE ALERT!!! And AWARE and help me Spread the word. PS: If you think this above info helped saved your money, I’ll really appreciate optional donation ( to recover my savings which I spent a lot of time saving L) to my bitcoin address: 36adH3bRYw1Pmoky6gAZth7qJYWTJfi2cA ''' SCAM awareness/ Phising Go1dfish undelete link unreddit undelete link Author: certifieddesi 1: en-s.euph**ias***sba*k.co*/ 2: **-s.e*phor*aswi*sba*k*co*/]^^1 Unknown links are censored to prevent spreading illicit content.
So here it is, three more days and October begins, which marks one year of trading for me. I figured I would contribute to the forum and share some of my experience, a little about me, and what I've learned so far. Whoever wants to listen, that's great. This might get long so buckle up.. Three years ago, I was visiting Toronto. I don't get out much, but my roommate at the time travels there occasionally. He asked everyone at our place if we wanted to come along for a weekend. My roommate has an uncle that lives there and we didn't have to worry about a hotel because his uncle owns a small house that's unlived in which we could stay at. I was the only one to go with. Anyways, we walk around the city, seeing the sights and whatnot. My friend says to me "where next?" "I don't know, you're the tour guide" "We can go check out Bay Street" "what's 'Bay Street?'" "It's like the Canadian Wall street! If you haven't seen it you gotta see it!" Walking along Bay, I admire all the nice buildings and architecture, everything seems larger than life to me. I love things like that. The huge granite facades with intricate designs and towering pillars to make you think, How the fuck did they make that? My attention pivots to a man walking on the sidewalk opposite us. His gait stood out among everyone, he walked with such a purpose.. He laughed into the cell phone to his ear. In the elbow-shoving city environment, he moved with a stride that exuded a power which not only commanded respect, but assumed it. I bet HE can get a text back, hell he's probably got girls waiting on him. This dude was dressed to kill, a navy suit that you could just tell from across the street was way out of my budget, it was a nice fucking suit. I want that. His life, across the street, seemed a world a way from my own. I've worn a suit maybe twice in my life. For my first communion, it was too big for me, I was eleven or whatever so who gives a shit, right? I'm positive I looked ridiculous. The other time? I can't remember. I want that. I want the suit. I want the wealth, the independence.I want the respect and power, and I don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it. Cue self doubt. Well, He's probably some rich banker's son. That's a world you're born into. I don't know shit about it. \sigh* keep walking..* A year later, I'm visiting my parents at their house, they live an hour away from my place. My dad is back from Tennessee, his engineering job was laying people off and he got canned... Or he saw the end was near and just left... I don't know, hard to pay attention to the guy honestly because he kind of just drones on and on. ("Wait, so your mom lives in Michigan, but your dad moved to Tennessee... for a job?" Yea man, I don't fucking know, not going to touch on that one.) The whole project was a shit show that was doomed to never get done, the way he tells it. And he's obviously jaded from multiple similar experiences at other life-sucking engineer jobs. My mom is a retired nurse practitioner who no longer works because of her illness. I ask him what he's doing for work now and he tells me he trades stocks from home. I didn't even know you could do that. I didn't know "trading" was a thing. I thought you just invest and hope for the best. "Oh that's cool, how much money do you need to do that?" "Ehh, most say you need at least $25,000 as a minimum" "Oh... guess I can't do that..." Six months later, I get a call and it's my dad. We talk a little about whatever. Off topic, he starts asking if I'm happy doing what I'm doing (I was a painter, commercial and residential) I tell him yes but it's kind of a pain in the ass and I don't see it as a long term thing. Then he gets around to asking if I'd like to come work with him. He basically pitches it to me. I'm not one to be sold on something, I'm always skeptical. So I ask all the questions that any rational person would ask and he just swats them away with reassuring phrases. He was real confident about it. But basically he says for this to work, I have to quit my job and move back home so he can teach me how to trade and be by my side so I don't do anything stupid. "My Name, you can make so much money." I say that I can't raise the $25,000 because I'm not far above just living paycheck to paycheck. "I can help you out with that." Wow, okay, well... let me think about it. My "maybe" very soon turned into a "definitely." So over the next six months, I continue to work my day job painting, and I try to save up what I could for the transition (it wasn't a whole lot, I sucked at saving. I was great at spending though!). My dad gives me a book on day trading (which I will mention later) and I teach myself what I can about the stock market using Investopedia. Also in the meantime, my dad sends me encouraging emails. He tells me to think of an annual income I would like to make as a trader, and used "more than $100,000 but less than a million" as a guideline. He tells me about stocks that he traded that day or just ones that moved and describes the basic price action and the prices to buy and sell at. Basically saying "if you bought X amount of shares here and sold it at X price here, you could make a quick 500 bucks!" I then use a trading sim to trade those symbols and try to emulate what he says. Piece of cake. ;) Wow, that's way more than what I make in a day. He tells me not to tell anyone about my trading because most people just think it's gambling. "Don't tell your Mom either." He says most people who try this fail because they don't know how to stop out and take a loss. He talks about how every day he was in a popular chatroom, some noob would say something like, "Hey guys, I bought at X price (high of day or thereabout), my account is down 80% .. uhh I'm waiting for it to come back to my entry price.. what do I do??" Well shit, I'm not that fucking dumb. If that's all it takes to make it is to buy low, sell high, and always respect a stop then I'll be fantastic. By the end of September, I was very determined. I had been looking forward everyday to quitting my painting job because while it used to be something I loved, it was just sucking the life out of me at this point. Especially working commercial, you just get worked like a dog. I wasn't living up to my potential with that job and I felt awful for it every minute of every day. I knew that I needed a job where I could use my brain instead of slaving my body to fulfill someone else's dream. "Someone's gotta put gas in the boss's boat" That's a line my buddy once said that he probably doesn't know sticks with me to this day. It ain't me. So now it was October 2018, and I'm back living with Mom n' Pops. I was so determined that on my last day of work I gave away all of my painting tools to my buddy like, "here, I don't need this shit." Moving out of my rental was easy because I don't own much, 'can't take it with ya.' Excited for the future I now spend my days bundled up in winter wear in the cold air of our hoarder-like basement with a space heater at my feet. My laptop connected to a TV monitor, I'm looking at stocks next to my dad and his screens in his cluttered corner. Our Trading Dungeon. I don't trade any money, (I wasn't aware of any real-time sim programs) I just watch and learn from my dad. Now you've got to keep in mind, and look at a chart of the S&P, this is right at the beginning of Oct '18, I came in right at the market top. Right at the start of the shit-show. For the next three or four weeks, I watch my dad pretty much scratch on every trade, taking small loss after small loss, and cursing under his breath at the screen. Click. "dammit." Click. "shit." Click. Click. "you fuck." Click. This gets really fucking annoying as time goes on, for weeks, and I get this attitude like ugh, just let me do it. I'll make us some fucking money. So I convince him to let me start trading live. I didn't know anything about brokers so I set up an account using his broker, which was Fidelity. It was a pain and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to day trade with this broker. I actually had to make a joint account with my dad as I couldn't get approved for margin because my credit score is shit (never owned a credit card) and my net worth, not much. Anyways, they straight up discourage day trading and I get all kinds of warning messages with big red letters that made me shit myself like oooaaahhh what the fuck did I do now. Did I forget to close a position?? Did I fat finger an order? Am I now in debt for thousands of dollars to Fidelity?? They're going to come after me like they came after Madoff. Even after you are approved for PDT you still get these warning messages in your account. Some would say if I didn't comply with "whatever rule" they'd even suspend my account for 60 days. It was ridiculous, hard to describe because it doesn't make sense, and it took the support guy on the phone a good 20 minutes to explain it to me. Basically I got the answer "yea it's all good, you did nothing wrong. As long as you have the cash in your account to cover whatever the trade balance was" So I just kept getting these warnings that I had to ignore everyday. I hate Fidelity. My fist day trading, I made a few so-so trades and then I got impatient. I saw YECO breaking out and I chased, soon realized I chased, so I got out. -$500. Shit, I have to make that back, I don't want my dad to see this. Got back in. Shit. -$400. So my first day trading, I lost $900. My dumbass was using market orders so that sure didn't help. I reeled the risk back and traded more proper position size for a while, but the commissions for a round trip are $10, so taking six trades per day, I'm losing $60 at a minimum on top of my losing trades. Quickly I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. What about my dad? Does HE know? One day, in the trading dungeon, I was frustrated with the experience I'd been having and just feeling lost overall. I asked him. "So, are you consistently profitable?" "mmm... I do alright." "Yea but like, are you consistently profitable over time?" ......................... "I do alright." Silence. "Do you know any consistently profitable traders?" "Well the one who wrote that book I gave you, Tina Turner.. umm and there's Ross Cameron" ...................... "So you don't know any consistently profitable traders, personally.. People who are not trying to sell you something?" "no." ................... Holy fucking shit, what did this idiot get me into. He can't even say it to my face and admit it. This entire life decision, quitting my job, leaving my rental, moving from my city to back home, giving shit away, it all relied on that. I was supposed to be an apprentice to a consistently profitable day trader who trades for a living. It was so assumed, that I never even thought to ask! Why would you tell your son to quit his job for something that you yourself cannot do? Is this all a scam? Did my dad get sold a DREAM? Did I buy into some kind of ponzi scheme? How many of those winning trades he showed me did he actually take?Are there ANY consistently profitable DAY TRADERS who TRADE FOR A LIVING?Why do 90% fail? Is it because the other 10% are scamming the rest in some way? Completely lost, I just had no clue what was what. If I was going to succeed at this, if it was even possible to succeed at this, it was entirely up to me. I had to figure it out. I still remember the feeling like an overwhelming, crushing weight on me as it all sunk in. This is going to be a big deal.. I'm not the type to give up though. In that moment, I said to myself, I'm going to fucking win at this. I don't know if this is possible, but I'm going to find out. I cannot say with certainty that I will succeed, but no matter what, I will not give up. I'm going to give all of myself to this. I will find the truth. It was a deep moment for me. I don't like getting on my soapbox, but when I said those things, I meant it. I really, really meant it. I still do, and I still will. Now it might seem like I'm being hard on my dad. He has done a lot for me and I am very grateful for that. We're sarcastic as hell to each other, I love the bastard. Hell, I wouldn't have the opportunity to trade at all if not for him. But maybe you can also understand how overwhelmed I felt at that time. Not on purpose, of course he means well. But I am not a trusting person at all and I was willing to put trust into him after all the convincing and was very disappointed when I witnessed the reality of the situation. I would have structured this transition to trading differently, you don't just quit your job and start trading. Nobody was there to tell me that! I was told quite the opposite. I'm glad it happened anyway, so fuck it. I heard Kevin O'Leary once say, "If I knew in the beginning how difficult starting a business was, I don't know that I ever would've started." This applies very much to my experience. So what did I do? Well like everyone I read and read and Googled and Youtube'd my ass off. I sure as hell didn't pay for a course because I didn't have the money and I'm like 99% sure I would be disappointed by whatever they were teaching as pretty much everything can be found online or in books for cheap or free. Also I discovered Thinkorswim and I used that to sim trade in real-time for three months. This is way the hell different than going on a sim at 5x speed and just clicking a few buy and sell buttons. Lol, useless. When you sim trade in real-time you're forced to have a routine, and you're forced to experience missing trades with no chance to rewind or skip the boring parts. That's a step up because you're "in it". I also traded real money too, made some, lost more than I made. went back to sim. Traded live again, made some but lost more, fell back to PDT. Dad fronted me more cash. This has happened a few times. He's dug me out of some holes because he believes in me. I'm fortunate. Oh yeah, about that book my dad gave me. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online by Toni Turner. This book... is shit. This was supposed to be my framework for how to trade and I swear it's like literally nothing in this book fucking works lol. I could tell this pretty early on, intuitively, just by looking at charts. It's basically a buy-the-breakout type strategy, if you want to call it a strategy. No real methodology to anything just vague crap and showing you cherry-picked charts with entries that are way too late. With experience in the markets you will eventually come to find that MOST BREAKOUTS FAIL. It talks about support/resistance lines and describes them as, "picture throwing a ball down at the floor, it bounces up and then it bounces down off the ceiling, then back up." So many asinine assumptions. These ideas are a text book way of how to trade like dumb money. Don't get me wrong, these trades can work but you need to be able to identify the setups which are more probable and identify reasons not to take others. So I basically had to un-learn all that shit. Present day, I have a routine in place. I'm out of the dungeon and trade by myself in my room. I trade with a discount broker that is catered to day traders and doesn't rape me on commissions. My mornings have a framework for analyzing the news and economic events of the particular day, I journal so that I can recognize what I'm doing right and where I need to improve. I record my screens for later review to improve my tape reading skills. I am actually tracking my trades now and doing backtesting in equities as well as forex. I'm not a fast reader but I do read a lot, as much as I can. So far I have read about 17-18 books on trading and psychology. I've definitely got a lot more skilled at trading. As of yet I am not net profitable. Writing that sounds like selling myself short though, honestly. Because a lot of my trades are very good and are executed well. I have talent. However, lesser quality trades and trades which are inappropriately sized/ attempted too many times bring down that P/L. I'm not the type of trader to ignore a stop, I'm more the trader that just widdles their account down with small losses. I trade live because at this point, sim has lost its value, live trading is the ultimate teacher. So I do trade live but I just don't go big like I did before, I keep it small. I could show you trades that I did great on and make people think I'm killing it but I really just don't need the validation. I don't care, I'm real about it. I just want to get better. I don't need people to think I'm a genius, I'm just trying to make some money. Psychologically, to be honest with you, I currently feel beaten down and exhausted. I put a lot of energy into this, and sometimes I work myself physically sick, it's happened multiple times. About once a week, usually Saturday, I get a headache that lasts all day. My body's stress rebound mechanism you might call it. Getting over one of those sick periods now, which is why I barely even traded this week. I know I missed a lot of volatility this week and some A+ setups but I really just don't give a shit lol. I just currently don't have the mental capital, I think anyone who's been day trading every day for a year or more can understand what I mean by that. I'm still being productive though. Again, I'm not here to present an image of some badass trader, just keeping it real. To give something 100% day after day while receiving so much resistance, it takes a toll on you. So a break is necessary to avoid making bad trading decisions. That being said, I'm progressing more and more and eliminating those lesser quality trades and identifying my bad habits. I take steps to control those habits and strengthen my good habits such as having a solid routine, doing review and market research, taking profits at the right times, etc. So maybe I can give some advice to some that are new to day trading, those who are feeling lost, or just in general thinking "...What the fuck..." I thought that every night for the first 6 months lol. First of all, manage expectations. If you read my story of how I came to be a trader, you can see I had a false impression of trading in many aspects. Give yourself a realistic time horizon to how progress should be made. Do not set a monetary goal for yourself, or any time-based goal that is measured in your P/L. If you tell yourself, "I want to make X per day, X per week, or X per year" you're setting yourself up to feel like shit every single day when it's clear as the blue sky that you won't reach that goal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it will appear you are moving further AWAY from that goal if you just focus on your P/L, which brings me to my next point. You will lose money. In the beginning, most likely, you will lose money. I did it, you'll do it, the greatest Paul Tudor Jones did it. Trading is a skill that needs to be developed, and it is a process. Just look at it as paying your tuition to the market. Sim is fine but don't assume you have acquired this skill until you are adept at trading real money. So when you do make that leap, just trade small. Just survive. Trade small. get the experience. Protect your capital. To reach break even on your bottom line is a huge accomplishment. In many ways, experience and screen time are the secret sauce. Have a routine. This is very important. I actually will probably make a more in-depth post in the future about this if people want it. When I first started, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "What the fuck am I supposed to DO?" I felt lost. There's no boss to tell you how to be productive or how to find the right stocks, which is mostly a blessing, but a curse for new traders. All that shit you see, don't believe all that bullshit. You know what I'm talking about. The bragposting, the clickbait Youtube videos, the ads preying on you. "I made X amount of money in a day and I'm fucking 19 lolz look at my Lamborghini" It's all a gimmick to sell you the dream. It's designed to poke right at your insecurities, that's marketing at it's finest. As for the bragposting on forums honestly, who cares. And I'm not pointing fingers on this forum, just any trading forum in general. They are never adding anything of value to the community in their posts. They never say this is how I did it. No, they just want you to think they're a genius. I can show you my $900 day trading the shit out of TSLA, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Gamblers never show you when they lose, you might never hear from those guys again because behind the scenes, they over-leveraged themselves and blew up. Some may actually be consistently profitable and the trades are 100% legit. That's fantastic. But again, I don't care, and you shouldn't either. You shouldn't compare yourself to others. "Everyone's a genius in a bull market" Here's the thing.. Markets change. Edges disappear. Trading strategies were made by traders who traded during times when everything they did worked. Buy all the breakouts? Sure! It's the fucking tech bubble! Everything works! I'm sure all those typical setups used to work fantastically at some point in time. But the more people realize them, the less effective they are. SOMEONE has to be losing money on the opposite side of a winning trade, and who's willing to do that when the trade is so obvious? That being said, some things are obvious AND still work. Technical analysis works... sometimes. The caveat to that is, filters. You need to, in some way, filter out certain setups from others. For example, you could say, "I won't take a wedge pattern setup on an intraday chart unless it is in a higher time frame uptrend, without nearby resistance, and trading above average volume with news on that day." Have a plan. If you can't describe your plan, you don't have one. Think in probabilities. You should think entirely in "if, then" scenarios. If X has happens, then Y will probably happen. "If BABA breaks this premarket support level on the open I will look for a pop up to short into." Backtest. Most traders lose mainly because they think they have an edge but they don't. You read these books and all this stuff online telling you "this is a high probability setup" but do you know that for a fact? There's different ways to backtest, but I think the best way for a beginner is manual backtesting with a chart and an excel sheet. This builds up that screen time and pattern recognition faster. This video shows how to do that. Once I saw someone do it, it didn't seem so boring and awful as I thought it was. Intelligence is not enough. You're smarter than most people, that's great, but that alone is not enough to make you money in trading necessarily. Brilliant people try and fail at this all the time, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, engineers.. Why do they fail if they're so smart? It's all a fucking scam. No, a number of reasons, but the biggest is discipline and emotional intelligence. Journal every day.K no thanks, bro. That's fucking gay. That's how I felt when I heard this advice but really that is pride and laziness talking. This is the process you need to do to learn what works for you and what doesn't. Review the trades you took, what your plan was, what actually happened, how you executed. Identify what you did well and what you can work on. This is how you develop discipline and emotional intelligence, by monitoring yourself. How you feel physically and mentally, and how these states affect your decision-making. Always be learning. Read as much as you can. Good quality books. Here's the best I've read so far; Market Wizards -Jack Schwager One Good Trade -Mike Bellafiore The Daily Trading Coach -Bret Steenbarger Psycho-cybernetics -Maxwell Maltz Why You Win or Lose -Fred Kelly The Art and Science of Technical Analysis -Adam Grimes Dark Pools -Scott Patterson Be nimble. Everyday I do my research on the symbols I'm trading and the fundamental news that's driving them. I might be trading a large cap that's gapping up with a beat on EPS and revenue and positive guidance. But if I see that stock pop up and fail miserably on the open amidst huge selling pressure, and I look and see the broader market tanking, guess what, I'm getting short, and that's just day trading. The movement of the market, on an intraday timeframe, doesn't have to make logical sense. Adapt. In March I used to be able to buy a breakout on a symbol and swing it for the majority of the day. In the summer I was basically scalping on the open and being done for the day. Volatility changes, and so do my profit targets. Be accountable. Be humble. Be honest. I take 100% responsibility for every dime I've lost or made in the market. It's not the market makers fault, it wasn't the HFTs, I pressed the button. I know my bad habits and I know my good habits.. my strengths/ my weaknesses. Protect yourself from toxicity. Stay away from traders and people on forums who just have that negative mindset. That "can't be done" mentality. Day trading is a scam!! It can certainly be done. Prove it, you bastard. I'm posting to this particular forum because I don't see much of that here and apparently the mods to a good job of not tolerating it. As the mod wrote in the rules, they're most likely raging from a loss. Also, the Stocktwits mentality of "AAPL is going to TANK on the open! $180, here we come. $$$" , or the grandiose stories, "I just knew AMZN was going to go up on earnings. I could feel it. I went ALL IN. Options money, baby! ka-ching!$" Lol, that is so toxic to a new trader. Get away from that. How will you be able to remain nimble when this is your thought process? Be good to yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're an entrepreneur. You're boldly going where no man has gone before. You've got balls. Acknowledge your mistakes, don't identify with them. You are not your mistakes and you are not your bad habits. These are only things that you do, and you can take action necessary to do them less. It doesn't matter what people think. Maybe they think you're a fool, a gambler. You don't need their approval. You don't need to talk to your co-workers and friends about it to satisfy some subconscious plea for guidance; is this a good idea? You don't need anyone's permission to become the person you want to be. They don't believe in you? Fuck 'em. I believe in you.
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