Hey I’m a second year UTSC student trying to make POST for Computer Science. I’m 20 years old, a guy, and I’m Jamaican. I've lived in Toronto a while around 4 years now. I've also lived in N.Y for around 6 years. I just want to meet some people who actually have an interest in being friends. I know everyone is busy with their daily lives, but if you actually want to take some time to get to know others then reach out to me. I drive, and I'm pretty comfortable around people from other cultures so don't be shy. I work part-time as well, and school is pretty hectic but I don't want that to stop me from getting to know others. Things I like are longboarding, video games (when I have time), I exercise (just b/c), I really enjoy playing volleyball, I watch anime (also when I have the time) but I'm a long time anime and video game fan so dw 😂. I read webtoons, I listen to music literally like everyone else on the planet lool. I really like to try, experience, and do new things. Um I like routines and being organized keeps me focused and on track but I feel like such a stickler sometimes so tryna let loose a lil. I don't smoke or drink mb if that's a deal breaker. And uh ya this post was way longer than I thought it would be might as well while I have this liquid courage. Hopefully talk soon. 👋🏾
Edit: I really like being financially savvy; I invest in the stock market, and I'm gonna start Forex winter break. So that's also a poi

Ive (31f) been with my bf (32m) for 4 years. Overall I think it is a pretty healthy relationship. We both have the same background (Was with ex for 10 years with 2 kids) He treats me well, and respectable. He makes sure that every birthday is special for me. (3-4 day celebration). He texts me Good morning/ Good night every single day. He always sends me a gift on the holidays, that sort of stuff. He co-signed my apartment for me. He’s generally always there if I have a problem, he helps me solve it. I have no doubt that he loves and cares for me and even has rescued me financially a few times before (I’ve always paid him back and I buy him things as well). He also taught me how to produce my own extra stream of income. I don’t depend on him financially but he easily makes 3-4x more than I do.
He works from home. He’s a forex tradesports better which requires a lot of research and generally has always made him unavailable throughout the day/week. Before covid we would get together every other weekend on Saturday to Sunday when we were both free from the kids. Although this has always been our norm and I’ve always had a problem with it but I never thought he was lying about anything and I’m an understanding person so I didn’t want to stress him out. The plan we always talk about is that he’s doing all of this to buy us a house then we’ll get married and move in together. He unequivocally believes it will all go very smoothly and I just need to be patient until it happens.
Here Is where it gets tricky ... I always wanted some more normalcy like stay some nights at each other’s house/ talking on the phone at night, building a relationship etc , but we’ve never really had that. We’ve been together 3 years. I’ve never met his mothefamily/kids or anyone from his life besides 1 mutual friend. I’ve never been to his house, he’s never openly shared his address but never necessarily hid it either. He says he feels weird about having me at a place he used to share with another woman (his kids mother) .. His excuse is about meeting his family is that it’s not a big deal for him to bring someone home to his family because they aren’t super close and their opinion is not a huge factor, which I can understand because I’m not super close with my family either. But his mom has been living with him since the covid. He has also had his kids full time (1 or 2 days with their mom a month) due to covid because he has the safer living/school environment for them, so needless to say since covid started, we’ve seen each other maybe 1 time monthly. His excuse now is that he doesn’t want to danger his mom and kids which I understand.
His stance is that he is dealing with the cards he was dealt (he has to do home schooling with the kids daily , he has to do his research, he has about 4 business partners who depend on him for forex/betting info, he literally has no time and the time he does have he spends it with me, a few hours a month)
My stance is that when we truly want something, we make it happen. I’ve expressed this multiple times but he said it isn’t that easy. & He says that he doesn’t want to force things and would rather everything happens organically, which I too understand .
I guess my problem is that I used to be excited about a life with him but overtime I’ve gotten so used to how our relationship is that the time apart doesn’t bother me anymore. I don’t care if we talk on the phone or not. He is easily one of the most attractive people I’ve ever seen, but the not seeing each other doesn’t bother me anymore. Ive never been crazy about sex but that isn’t exciting either. I do love him but Essentially I don’t get excited about us anymore. & I feel like a bad person for it. I’m worried that I’m making a mistake being immature by thinking that way. And I should focus on staying together because we already both talked about it being that way. Is this feeling of being out of love temporary? I have no doubt that he’s a good person, I just don’t if I’m setting my standards too low or if I’m just being spoiled and immature.
I don’t know if I’m being a brat about it all or if my feelings are legit.
I would love a fresh perspective, I’m very private about my life so I’ve never expressed this out loud before.
Edit: Some things I left out.
No one was ever married.
The side piece thing isn’t logical to me because every time we’ve been away for more than 2 days , his ex sends me a message on fb trying to reach him ‘about where are the kids if he’s with me’
No doubt that his ex is not over the relationship (5 years later) and she keeps the kids with him because she knows it’ll tie his time up. Since he doesn’t work a regular job and is the sole financial provider he can’t say no. She tells him she works 6- 7 days a week at a hospital (guilt tripping him that she has to take care of herself now) so she has no time plus covid dangers, and he has to do it. If he says no, he’s afraid she’s going to move across country with the kids, So he does it.

Hello, dummies
It's your old pal, Fuzzy.
As I'm sure you've all noticed, a lot of the stuff that gets posted here is - to put it delicately - fucking ridiculous. More backwards-ass shit gets posted to wallstreetbets than you'd see on a Westboro Baptist community message board. I mean, I had a look at the daily thread yesterday and..... yeesh. I know, I know. We all make like the divine Laura Dern circa 1992 on the daily and stick our hands deep into this steaming heap of shit to find the nuggets of valuable and/or hilarious information within (thanks for reading, BTW). I agree. I love it just the way it is too. That's what makes WSB great.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of the stuff that gets posted here - notwithstanding it being funny or interesting - is just... wrong. Like, fucking your cousin wrong. And to be clear, I mean the fucking your *first* cousin kinda wrong, before my Southerners in the back get all het up (simmer down, Billy Ray - I know Mabel's twice removed on your grand-sister's side). Truly, I try to let it slide. I do my bit to try and put you on the right path. Most of the time, I sleep easy no matter how badly I've seen someone explain what a bank liquidity crisis is. But out of all of those tens of thousands of misguided, autistic attempts at understanding the world of high finance, one thing gets so consistently - so *emphatically* - fucked up and misunderstood by you retards that last night I felt obligated at the end of a long work day to pull together this edition of Finance with Fuzzy just for you. It's so serious I'm not even going to make a u/pokimane gag. Have you guessed what it is yet? Here's a clue. It's in the title of the post.
That's right, friends. Today in the neighborhood we're going to talk all about hedging in financial markets - spots, swaps, collars, forwards, CDS, synthetic CDOs, all that fun shit. Don't worry; I'm going to explain what all the scary words mean and how they impact your OTM RH positions along the way.
We're going to break it down like this. (1) "What's a hedge, Fuzzy?" (2) Common Hedging Strategies and (3) All About ISDAs and Credit Default Swaps.
Before we begin. For the nerds and JV traders in the back (and anyone else who needs to hear this up front) - I am simplifying these descriptions for the purposes of this post. I am also obviously not going to try and cover every exotic form of hedge under the sun or give a detailed summation of what caused the financial crisis. If you are interested in something specific ask a question, but don't try and impress me with your Investopedia skills or technical points I didn't cover; I will just be forced to flex my years of IRL experience on you in the comments and you'll look like a big dummy.
TL;DR? Fuck you. There is no TL;DR. You've come this far already. What's a few more paragraphs? Put down the Cheetos and try to concentrate for the next 5-7 minutes. You'll learn something, and I promise I'll be gentle.
Ready? Let's get started.
1. The Tao of Risk: Hedging as a Way of Life
The simplest way to characterize what a hedge 'is' is to imagine every action having a binary outcome. One is bad, one is good. Red lines, green lines; uppie, downie. With me so far? Good. A 'hedge' is simply the employment of a strategy to mitigate the effect of your action having the wrong binary outcome. You wanted X, but you got Z! Frowny face. A hedge strategy introduces a third outcome. If you hedged against the possibility of Z happening, then you can wind up with Y instead. Not as good as X, but not as bad as Z. The technical definition I like to give my idiot juniors is as follows:
Utilization of a defensive strategy to mitigate risk, at a fraction of the cost to capital of the risk itself.
Congratulations. You just finished Hedging 101. "But Fuzzy, that's easy! I just sold a naked call against my 95% OTM put! I'm adequately hedged!". Spoiler alert: you're not (although good work on executing a collar, which I describe below). What I'm talking about here is what would be referred to as a 'perfect hedge'; a binary outcome where downside is totally mitigated by a risk management strategy. That's not how it works IRL. Pay attention; this is the tricky part.
You can't take a single position and conclude that you're adequately hedged because risks are fluid, not static. So you need to constantly adjust your position in order to maximize the value of the hedge and insure your position. You also need to consider exposure to more than one category of risk. There are micro (specific exposure) risks, and macro (trend exposure) risks, and both need to factor into the hedge calculus.
That's why, in the real world, the value of hedging depends entirely on the design of the hedging strategy itself. Here, when we say "value" of the hedge, we're not talking about cash money - we're talking about the intrinsic value of the hedge relative to the the risk profile of your underlying exposure. To achieve this, people hedge dynamically. In wallstreetbets terms, this means that as the value of your position changes, you need to change your hedges too. The idea is to efficiently and continuously distribute and rebalance risk across different states and periods, taking value from states in which the marginal cost of the hedge is low and putting it back into states where marginal cost of the hedge is high, until the shadow value of your underlying exposure is equalized across your positions. The punchline, I guess, is that one static position is a hedge in the same way that the finger paintings you make for your wife's boyfriend are art - it's technically correct, but you're only playing yourself by believing it.
Anyway. Obviously doing this as a small potatoes trader is hard but it's worth taking into account. Enough basic shit. So how does this work in markets?
2. A Hedging Taxonomy
The best place to start here is a practical question. What does a business need to hedge against? Think about the specific risk that an individual business faces. These are legion, so I'm just going to list a few of the key ones that apply to most corporates. (1) You have commodity risk for the shit you buy or the shit you use. (2) You have currency risk for the money you borrow. (3) You have rate risk on the debt you carry. (4) You have offtake risk for the shit you sell. Complicated, right? To help address the many and varied ways that shit can go wrong in a sophisticated market, smart operators like yours truly have devised a whole bundle of different instruments which can help you manage the risk. I might write about some of the more complicated ones in a later post if people are interested (CDO/CLOs, strip/stack hedges and bond swaps with option toggles come to mind) but let's stick to the basics for now.
(i) Swaps
A swap is one of the most common forms of hedge instrument, and they're used by pretty much everyone that can afford them. The language is complicated but the concept isn't, so pay attention and you'll be fine. This is the most important part of this section so it'll be the longest one.
Swaps are derivative contracts with two counterparties (before you ask, you can't trade 'em on an exchange - they're OTC instruments only). They're used to exchange one cash flow for another cash flow of equal expected value; doing this allows you to take speculative positions on certain financial prices or to alter the cash flows of existing assets or liabilities within a business. "Wait, Fuzz; slow down! What do you mean sets of cash flows?". Fear not, little autist. Ol' Fuzz has you covered.
The cash flows I'm talking about are referred to in swap-land as 'legs'. One leg is fixed - a set payment that's the same every time it gets paid - and the other is variable - it fluctuates (typically indexed off the price of the underlying risk that you are speculating on / protecting against). You set it up at the start so that they're notionally equal and the two legs net off; so at open, the swap is a zero NPV instrument. Here's where the fun starts. If the price that you based the variable leg of the swap on changes, the value of the swap will shift; the party on the wrong side of the move ponies up via the variable payment. It's a zero sum game.
I'll give you an example using the most vanilla swap around; an interest rate trade. Here's how it works. You borrow money from a bank, and they charge you a rate of interest. You lock the rate up front, because you're smart like that. But then - quelle surprise! - the rate gets better after you borrow. Now you're bagholding to the tune of, I don't know, 5 bps. Doesn't sound like much but on a billion dollar loan that's a lot of money (a classic example of the kind of 'small, deep hole' that's terrible for profits). Now, if you had a swap contract on the rate before you entered the trade, you're set; if the rate goes down, you get a payment under the swap. If it goes up, whatever payment you're making to the bank is netted off by the fact that you're borrowing at a sub-market rate. Win-win! Or, at least, Lose Less / Lose Less. That's the name of the game in hedging.
There are many different kinds of swaps, some of which are pretty exotic; but they're all different variations on the same theme. If your business has exposure to something which fluctuates in price, you trade swaps to hedge against the fluctuation. The valuation of swaps is also super interesting but I guarantee you that 99% of you won't understand it so I'm not going to try and explain it here although I encourage you to google it if you're interested.
Because they're OTC, none of them are filed publicly. Someeeeeetimes you see an ISDA (dsicussed below) but the confirms themselves (the individual swaps) are not filed. You can usually read about the hedging strategy in a 10-K, though. For what it's worth, most modern credit agreements ban speculative hedging. Top tip: This is occasionally something worth checking in credit agreements when you invest in businesses that are debt issuers - being able to do this increases the risk profile significantly and is particularly important in times of economic volatility (ctrl+f "non-speculative" in the credit agreement to be sure).
(ii) Forwards
A forward is a contract made today for the future delivery of an asset at a pre-agreed price. That's it. "But Fuzzy! That sounds just like a futures contract!". I know. Confusing, right? Just like a futures trade, forwards are generally used in commodity or forex land to protect against price fluctuations. The differences between forwards and futures are small but significant. I'm not going to go into super boring detail because I don't think many of you are commodities traders but it is still an important thing to understand even if you're just an RH jockey, so stick with me.
Just like swaps, forwards are OTC contracts - they're not publicly traded. This is distinct from futures, which are traded on exchanges (see The Ballad Of Big Dick Vick for some more color on this). In a forward, no money changes hands until the maturity date of the contract when delivery and receipt are carried out; price and quantity are locked in from day 1. As you now know having read about BDV, futures are marked to market daily, and normally people close them out with synthetic settlement using an inverse position. They're also liquid, and that makes them easier to unwind or close out in case shit goes sideways.
People use forwards when they absolutely have to get rid of the thing they made (or take delivery of the thing they need). If you're a miner, or a farmer, you use this shit to make sure that at the end of the production cycle, you can get rid of the shit you made (and you won't get fucked by someone taking cash settlement over delivery). If you're a buyer, you use them to guarantee that you'll get whatever the shit is that you'll need at a price agreed in advance. Because they're OTC, you can also exactly tailor them to the requirements of your particular circumstances.
These contracts are incredibly byzantine (and there are even crazier synthetic forwards you can see in money markets for the true degenerate fund managers). In my experience, only Texan oilfield magnates, commodities traders, and the weirdo forex crowd fuck with them. I (i) do not own a 10 gallon hat or a novelty size belt buckle (ii) do not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out about the price of pork fat and (iii) love greenbacks too much to care about other countries' monopoly money, so I don't fuck with them.
(iii) Collars
No, not the kind your wife is encouraging you to wear try out to 'spice things up' in the bedroom during quarantine. Collars are actually the hedging strategy most applicable to WSB. Collars deal with options! Hooray!
To execute a basic collar (also called a wrapper by tea-drinking Brits and people from the Antipodes), you buy an out of the money put while simultaneously writing a covered call on the same equity. The put protects your position against price drops and writing the call produces income that offsets the put premium. Doing this limits your tendies (you can only profit up to the strike price of the call) but also writes down your risk. If you screen large volume trades with a VOL/OI of more than 3 or 4x (and they're not bullshit biotech stocks), you can sometimes see these being constructed in real time as hedge funds protect themselves on their shorts.
(3) All About ISDAs, CDS and Synthetic CDOs
You may have heard about the mythical ISDA. Much like an indenture (discussed in my post on $F), it's a magic legal machine that lets you build swaps via trade confirms with a willing counterparty. They are very complicated legal documents and you need to be a true expert to fuck with them. Fortunately, I am, so I do. They're made of two parts; a Master (which is a form agreement that's always the same) and a Schedule (which amends the Master to include your specific terms). They are also the engine behind just about every major credit crunch of the last 10+ years.
First - a brief explainer. An ISDA is a not in and of itself a hedge - it's an umbrella contract that governs the terms of your swaps, which you use to construct your hedge position. You can trade commodities, forex, rates, whatever, all under the same ISDA.
Let me explain. Remember when we talked about swaps? Right. So. You can trade swaps on just about anything. In the late 90s and early 2000s, people had the smart idea of using other people's debt and or credit ratings as the variable leg of swap documentation. These are called credit default swaps. I was actually starting out at a bank during this time and, I gotta tell you, the only thing I can compare people's enthusiasm for this shit to was that moment in your early teens when you discover jerking off. Except, unlike your bathroom bound shame sessions to Mom's Sears catalogue, every single person you know felt that way too; and they're all doing it at once. It was a fiscal circlejerk of epic proportions, and the financial crisis was the inevitable bukkake finish. WSB autism is absolutely no comparison for the enthusiasm people had during this time for lighting each other's money on fire.
Here's how it works. You pick a company. Any company. Maybe even your own! And then you write a swap. In the swap, you define "Credit Event" with respect to that company's debt as the variable leg . And you write in... whatever you want. A ratings downgrade, default under the docs, failure to meet a leverage ratio or FCCR for a certain testing period... whatever. Now, this started out as a hedge position, just like we discussed above. The purest of intentions, of course. But then people realized - if bad shit happens, you make money. And banks... don't like calling in loans or forcing bankruptcies. Can you smell what the moral hazard is cooking?
Enter synthetic CDOs. CDOs are basically pools of asset backed securities that invest in debt (loans or bonds). They've been around for a minute but they got famous in the 2000s because a shitload of them containing subprime mortgage debt went belly up in 2008. This got a lot of publicity because a lot of sad looking rednecks got foreclosed on and were interviewed on CNBC. "OH!", the people cried. "Look at those big bad bankers buying up subprime loans! They caused this!". Wrong answer, America. The debt wasn't the problem. What a lot of people don't realize is that the real meat of the problem was not in regular way CDOs investing in bundles of shit mortgage debts in synthetic CDOs investing in CDS predicated on that debt. They're synthetic because they don't have a stake in the actual underlying debt; just the instruments riding on the coattails. The reason these are so popular (and remain so) is that smart structured attorneys and bankers like your faithful correspondent realized that an even more profitable and efficient way of building high yield products with limited downside was investing in instruments that profit from failure of debt and in instruments that rely on that debt and then hedging that exposure with other CDS instruments in paired trades, and on and on up the chain. The problem with doing this was that everyone wound up exposed to everybody else's books as a result, and when one went tits up, everybody did. Hence, recession, Basel III, etc. Thanks, Obama.
Heavy investment in CDS can also have a warping effect on the price of debt (something else that happened during the pre-financial crisis years and is starting to happen again now). This happens in three different ways. (1) Investors who previously were long on the debt hedge their position by selling CDS protection on the underlying, putting downward pressure on the debt price. (2) Investors who previously shorted the debt switch to buying CDS protection because the relatively illiquid debt (partic. when its a bond) trades at a discount below par compared to the CDS. The resulting reduction in short selling puts upward pressure on the bond price. (3) The delta in price and actual value of the debt tempts some investors to become NBTs (neg basis traders) who long the debt and purchase CDS protection. If traders can't take leverage, nothing happens to the price of the debt. If basis traders can take leverage (which is nearly always the case because they're holding a hedged position), they can push up or depress the debt price, goosing swap premiums etc. Anyway. Enough technical details.
I could keep going. This is a fascinating topic that is very poorly understood and explained, mainly because the people that caused it all still work on the street and use the same tactics today (it's also terribly taught at business schools because none of the teachers were actually around to see how this played out live). But it relates to the topic of today's lesson, so I thought I'd include it here.
Work depending, I'll be back next week with a covenant breakdown. Most upvoted ticker gets the post.
*EDIT 1\* In a total blowout, $PLAY won. So it's D&B time next week. Post will drop Monday at market open.

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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..

1. Sam sieden
   
2. Cuebanks
   
3. TheCoinFx
   
4. The trading channel
   
5. Astro
   
6. Forex family
   
7. Wicksdontlie
   

Advanced stuff

1. ICT

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.

(not sure if this is the appropriate subreddit to post this)
I [29M] recently finished graduate school and have since been working and saving consistently, and paying off my student loans accordingly...until the COVID19 pandemic hit and I was laid off from work in March. During my time off, I stayed home and spent time with family and explored several hobbies. I was also able to collect unemployment, but the amount was severely reduced by the end of July. Luckily, my old job rehired me but at severely reduced hours (though they're gradually increasing every week).
I count my blessings because the facts that I was relatively financially responsible, lived at home, and had some family support, and got my old job back, the pandemic did not hit me as hard as compared to millions of other people and I'm in a position to pay off my student loans relatively soon. However, my position could have been a lot better. Instead of going through the motions, wondering what to do, and exploring my hobbies during my time off, I should have been more proactive with financial education. Based on general research and my peers, I only have a general idea of various terms such as stocks, index funds, forex, futures, options, mutual funds, 401k, IRA, Roth IRA, FBA (fulfillment by Amazon), drop shipping, IUL (index universal life insurance), etc. However, whenever I have down time, I'm not as inclined to actively seek more detailed information about these things myself. I revert to household chores, my hobbies, or just lounging. I know that just because all of those things are more comfortable and just because I'm no longer in a disciplined school environment, it's not an excuse to not be proactive. I do want to break the cycle, but I'm not sure how.
My questions are: How do I develop the motivation to develop a consistent routine to learn about the financial education aspects listed above and more? Where can I find the most trusted, coherent, reliable financial advice? I know there are many books and Youtube channels out there, but I don't want to chase down the wrong rabbit hole and get frustrated with information that's too technical or get my hopes up or bamboozled by information that's misleading. I want information that's practical and applicable to my daily life. I do want to reach the next milestones in my life (get married, buy a house, etc.) and perhaps financial education would accelerate me towards those goals. The last thing I need is a get rich quick scheme, but I do want to build wealth consistently for a stable financial future.

I've noticed that about 2,000 people have joined the Forex community in the recent weeks. Has anyone else noticed this? I suspect this is because of the lay offs due to the corona virus, and people are frantically looking for ways to supplement their incomes. While I'm glad that people are trying to better themselves and take control of their financial situations, I have to admit that the daily "newbie" questions are getting quite annoying. And it's not because there are new, inexperienced traders asking for help, but it's because the questions are more-less the same questions. I know there is a pinned "New Traders" section at the top of the thread, but it seems it isn't catching much traction.
But first, to the new traders I'd first like to say:
​
Welcome! This will be a tough journey, but it will pay in dividends (not literally).
A couple tips before we start:
FIRST, see the pinned New Traders section of Forex
SECOND, go to babypips and take their FREE courses where you will learn the basics. I never did because I'm an idiot, and it took me many years of trial and error to succeed in this game. Don't be a lemon like me, go to babypips.
Now my basics;
Always have at least a 1:2 Risk:Reward. Simply put, risk at least $1 for $2.
Always set a stop loss and take profit.
In the beginning, I find it best to give new traders a black or white, go-or-no-go trading strategy. Trade mechanically. While discretionary trading is profitable, you need years of experience and time in the charts to be good at it. It could be something like, "I only trade low volatility break outs on the 4hr. Any candle below x ATR and I will enter via stop order at the high/low of that candle. My sl will be at the high/low of the entry candle, and I will look to make at least 2 reward on that trade. I will risk 1% per trade, even on demo, and I will trade in the direction of a 10 period moving average" This is a VERY crude strategy, one I just pulled out of my ass, so don't go using it and blowing your accounts!
I recommend starting with 1 pair in the beginning, at MOST 3. And I recommend not swapping into different pairs. Keep those 1-3 pairs.
Once babypips is completed, demo trade. Put time in the charts and develop a strategy (mechanically, preferably). Your strategy could be as complex or as simple as you like. Simplicity is genius in my opinion, but you do you. I'm not trying to sound like an ass, but everything you really needed to learn you learned from babypips.
With that said, DO NOT pay for courses from ANYONE. They will often know the same as you, if not less. In my opinion to be really great in this game you don't need a lot of information., and capitalize on every opportunity. You just need to be really good at one style and max that the hell out. For instance, being really good at low volatility breakouts, and having a system based off that. No amount of schooling (high school, college, or courses via Forex gurus) will make you successful. It's one thing to know a strategy, but to implement it in real time with real consequences is daunting. The only way to conquer this is to simply do it. Trade.
Trade with an amount of money you can emotionally and financially afford to lose! I would even recommend starting a live account with $50 and only trading micro lots (0.01) until you become comfortable and your strategy proves successful. This is AFTER demo trading your strategy.
Master yourself before you master the markets. Work out. Feed your brain. Get enough sleep. The money you make or lose isn't worth your health.
Psychology. In my opinion the best psychology you can have while trading is a form of stoicism. You've placed your trade based off your strategy, you managed your trade based off your strategy, and you risked an amount you've told yourself you were comfortable losing with an account you told yourself you were comfortable blowing, so what's the worry? Why the second guessing? Everyone's heard that story, right? Where a man goes to a successful "guru" and says he wants to be successful. The guru says, "Ok. Show up at the beach this time tomorrow." The man shows up at the beach in a suit and tie, ready for success! The guru tells him to get in the water. Once in, the guru holds the mans head under the water, drowning him. At the last second the guru lets him up and says, "once you want success as much you wanted to breathe, you'll be successful. That's what you need to be like. You need to be willing to do what is necessary and put in the work. It's not easy. You're going to lose money, maybe even blow accounts. You may struggle for years without a return, or even lose money over that time. How bad do you want it success, though? And are you willing to drown to attain it?
Best of luck new traders!
Experienced traders, please feel free to add things or tell me I'm a goof in the comments.

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 to glassdoor.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].

Company Name	Title	City
First Student Canada	First Student Canada: School Bus Driver - Kincardine / Port Elgin, On	Arran-Elderslie
First Student Canada	First Student Canada: School Bus Driver - Kincardine / Port Elgin, On	Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh
Maverick FX	Maverick FX: Remote Forex Trader Job In Atikokan, On Full Time	Atikokan
Maverick FX	Maverick FX: Remote Foreign Currencey Trader Job In Atikokan, On Part Time	Atikokan
Maverick FX	Maverick FX: Remote Foreign Currencey Trader Job In Belleville, On Part Time	Belleville
Manpower	Manpower: Temporary Construction Flaggers	Belleville
First Student Canada	First Student Canada: School Bus Driver - Scugog, On	Bowmanville
AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah	Aaa Northern California, Nevada & Utah: Tow And Battery/Light Service Driver	Gore Bay
Manpower	Manpower: Warehouse	Guelph
Sport Clips	Sport Clips: Hair Stylist - Licensed / Apprentice On302	Guelph
Magna International	Magna International: Team Leader - Epp/Mould	Guelph
Magna International	Magna International: Maintenance Team Leader	Guelph
WorkatCSJ	WorkatCSJ: Work From Home Customer Service	Guelph
Flex-N-Gate Corporation	Flex-N-Gate Corporation: ShippeMaterial Handler	Kitchener
Flex-N-Gate Corporation	Flex-N-Gate Corporation: Summer Students - General Labour	Kitchener
Sport Clips	Sport Clips: Hair Stylist - Licensed / Apprentice On301	Kitchener
Home Depot	Home Depot: Part Time Merchandising (13 Month Contract)	Kitchener
Robert Half	Robert Half: Data Entry Clerk	Kitchener
ULINE	ULINE: Warehouse Associate	Milton
Magna International	Magna International: Millwright	Milton
SIGNATURE IRRIGATION	SIGNATURE IRRIGATION: Irrigation Installation Technician	Milton
ULINE	ULINE: Warehouse Associate - Nights	Milton
ULINE	ULINE: Order Picker	Milton
Sport Clips	Sport Clips: Hair Stylist - Licensed / Apprentice On304	Milton
Manpower	Manpower: Part-Time Warehouse Sorter - North Bay	North Bay
Procom	Procom: Sqa Services	Ottawa
Fortinet	Fortinet: Gui Software Developer	Ottawa
Aerotek	Aerotek: Embedded Software Engineer	Ottawa
Robert Half	Robert Half: Office Manager	Ottawa
Accountemps	Accountemps: Accounts Payable Clerk	Ottawa
Procom	Procom: Developer	Ottawa
Robert Half Canada	Robert Half Canada: Accounting Manager	Ottawa
Robert Half	Robert Half: Event Coordinator	Ottawa
Procom	Procom: Architecture - Bi (Business Intelligence) Developer - Senior	Ottawa
Franklin Empire	Franklin Empire: Inside Sales Representative - Commercial & Industrial	Ottawa
Robert Half Canada	Robert Half Canada: Front End Developer	Ottawa
Aerotek	Aerotek: Manager Of Software Development	Ottawa
Calian	Calian: Clinical Psychologist– Psychological Services For The Rcmp/Psychologue Clinicien(Ne)- Services Psychologiques De La Grc	Ottawa
Arise Virtual Solutions	Arise Virtual Solutions: Home Based Customer Service Agent	Ottawa
Hub Group Trucking	Hub Group Trucking: Cdl-A Truck Driver - Local Home Daily	Ottawa

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in ON. Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Company Name	Title	City
First Student Canada	First Student Canada: School Bus Driver - Kincardine / Port Elgin, On	Arran-Elderslie
First Student Canada	First Student Canada: School Bus Driver - Kincardine / Port Elgin, On	Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh
Maverick FX	Maverick FX: Remote Forex Trader Job In Atikokan, On Full Time	Atikokan
Maverick FX	Maverick FX: Remote Foreign Currencey Trader Job In Atikokan, On Part Time	Atikokan
Maverick FX	Maverick FX: Remote Foreign Currencey Trader Job In Belleville, On Part Time	Belleville
Manpower	Manpower: Temporary Construction Flaggers	Belleville
First Student Canada	First Student Canada: School Bus Driver - Scugog, On	Bowmanville
AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah	Aaa Northern California, Nevada & Utah: Tow And Battery/Light Service Driver	Gore Bay
Manpower	Manpower: Warehouse	Guelph
Sport Clips	Sport Clips: Hair Stylist - Licensed / Apprentice On302	Guelph
Magna International	Magna International: Team Leader - Epp/Mould	Guelph
Magna International	Magna International: Maintenance Team Leader	Guelph
WorkatCSJ	WorkatCSJ: Work From Home Customer Service	Guelph
Flex-N-Gate Corporation	Flex-N-Gate Corporation: ShippeMaterial Handler	Kitchener
Flex-N-Gate Corporation	Flex-N-Gate Corporation: Summer Students - General Labour	Kitchener
Sport Clips	Sport Clips: Hair Stylist - Licensed / Apprentice On301	Kitchener
Home Depot	Home Depot: Part Time Merchandising (13 Month Contract)	Kitchener
Robert Half	Robert Half: Data Entry Clerk	Kitchener
ULINE	ULINE: Warehouse Associate	Milton
Magna International	Magna International: Millwright	Milton
SIGNATURE IRRIGATION	SIGNATURE IRRIGATION: Irrigation Installation Technician	Milton
ULINE	ULINE: Warehouse Associate - Nights	Milton
ULINE	ULINE: Order Picker	Milton
Sport Clips	Sport Clips: Hair Stylist - Licensed / Apprentice On304	Milton
Manpower	Manpower: Part-Time Warehouse Sorter - North Bay	North Bay
Procom	Procom: Sqa Services	Ottawa
Fortinet	Fortinet: Gui Software Developer	Ottawa
Aerotek	Aerotek: Embedded Software Engineer	Ottawa
Robert Half	Robert Half: Office Manager	Ottawa
Accountemps	Accountemps: Accounts Payable Clerk	Ottawa
Procom	Procom: Developer	Ottawa
Robert Half Canada	Robert Half Canada: Accounting Manager	Ottawa
Robert Half	Robert Half: Event Coordinator	Ottawa
Procom	Procom: Architecture - Bi (Business Intelligence) Developer - Senior	Ottawa
Franklin Empire	Franklin Empire: Inside Sales Representative - Commercial & Industrial	Ottawa
Robert Half Canada	Robert Half Canada: Front End Developer	Ottawa
Aerotek	Aerotek: Manager Of Software Development	Ottawa
Calian	Calian: Clinical Psychologist– Psychological Services For The Rcmp/Psychologue Clinicien(Ne)- Services Psychologiques De La Grc	Ottawa
Arise Virtual Solutions	Arise Virtual Solutions: Home Based Customer Service Agent	Ottawa
Hub Group Trucking	Hub Group Trucking: Cdl-A Truck Driver - Local Home Daily	Ottawa

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in ON. Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Ok, so I want to get into trading as I've been stalking this trader for a while now on social media and honestly it seems too good to be true.
I've done intensive research into his life but I can't quite see why or how he is making so much money... let's start with the basics, he grew up in a city 30mins away from me, he failed school dropped out and apparently started trading at an early age of around 18. Heres where it gets weird: him and 2 of his (what seems like) childhood friends created and owns a company, let's call it "GO-forex" and the company seems to be a signal giving forex company (I'm not sure how it all works) but apparently he sends messages to other forex trades when to make trades. Apparently he does this for free as he gets paid by "another company" to do this as his job.
What's sketchy is the way he recruits people and how the business model works, basically when I asked if I could work for him he said "you need more followers" on Instagram. I looked at his workers, a group of 10-15 people and they all had 5k+ followers on Instagram an continuously keep posting things like motivation, why forex is the best, flexing and importantly, telling people to get on this free forex signals thing. That's how I found out about him, a mutual friend was working for him promoting forex lifestyl and that but suddenly left and became a mechanic... what's also sketchy is that he keeps saying "minimum £300 is what the broker will take for you to start and you can withdraw money at any time" I know a broker gets commission and stuff but whats going on here? He posts daily messages he gets from his customers making £90 or £120 and them thanking him, and his always like "join now!!!". I think the app he uses is metatrader and he always flexes when he makes a lot of pips, making anywhere between £1000 to £7000 profit per day.
He is also constantly promoting his masterclass and shows that he is into real estate investing too. I really have no clue what is going on with this, what's the business model? Does he make more money off the company or trading himself? Is he faking it till he makes it? Is he secretly the broker? Is he stealing his customers money and using it for his own trades? Why does he want to give people signals? Why is his business so reliant on social media? Is he a fraud?
I have too many questions but not any answers. He is living the life I always wanted yet he looks like he hasn't worked hard or isn't that smart....

What? - Goals

• Waking up early and going to sleep early - I've managed to wake up at 0830 daily to be in time for breakfast and PT one hour later, but that's too late. I need to wake up one hour early at worst, 2 hours earlier at best, because I need to do other stuff in the morning and I'd like for there to be more time between my eggs and my training, without booking a later PT session. In order to do that, I'd need to go to sleep between 2130 an 2230.
• Language-learning - I'm learning German, scoring 500 points daily on Duolingo and also using other sources for my learning. I need to dedicate 20% of the same time to Dutch as well and 5% to Japanese. I'm learning Japanese because I like anime and I want to watch them raw. Nothing too serious about, unlike with German and Dutch. I always forget that I have other languages to learn and spend too long on German. To speak in terms of time, this roughly means 2.5 hours daily on German (for the Duolingo part), which I have no problem keeping up. 1 hour daily on Dutch, which I'm always procrastinating, 15 minutes daily on Japanese.
• Studying - part of the remaining 9 hours of the day (ideally 3-4 hours) need to be dedicated to prepare for a cultural exam that I have to take. This exam is about 13 subjects. I can comfortably get about 75% of the score, but in order to get a good ranking and move to the next phase I need to get 99-100% right. I haven't studied anything right now and I have about 3 more months. I'm not good at studying school subjects: I have no method, no scheduling ability and no planning ability.

Who? - What of kind of buddy am I looking for?

• Age range: 18-30
• Timezone: my timezone OR +2/-2
• Area: please, Europe only. Not because I have anything against Africans but for reasons listed below.
• Means of communication: Discord or Telegram. Ideally, Wire.
• Gender: preferably M. Preferably means Fs are okay too, even if they are not the preference.
• Honesty. If I have to keep you accountable as well, you need to be honest about what you did and what you didn't do.
• Someone comfortable with the idea of having a buddy that is a social misfit. Being a misfit, in my case, also means I'm bad at interacting and making small talk. A long motivational speech could be met with an "okay" as an answer by me.
• If we share some hobbies, it might be easier to relate to one another. One of my interests is learning languages, sports are another. For more hobbies, you'll need to ask privately, as I'm already uncomfortable about writing this much.
• I don't get along with superficial people and I don't believe that acquaintance = friend.

Optional - More about the most suitable buddy

• Ideally, you should learn when you need to be pushy about getting results from me and when you need to be nice. That comes with time, though.
• If you're good at planning/scheduling (organisation and structure in general), that would be a great plus.
• Ideally, we'll also transition from accountability buddies to friends. That's why the geographic limit. The closer we are, the easier it is. I'd love to visit Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Austria for some weeks or even move there and work there.

​
Please, PM me if interested. Thank you in advance.
P.S. I neither have a personal Whatsapp account nor a personal Facebook. Instagram is personal, which means I don't give it to strangers and acquaintances who are not at least co-workers. No, I'm not going to download KIK or Snapchat, sorry. I don't like Reddit messaging system either.
P.P.S. I'm not looking for a group, sorry. I'm not very good with groups. Handling more than 1 person is difficult, more than 4 is impossible for me. I'm not looking to do forex trading and financial stuff like that either.

Intro.
This might be a long one. I hope someone reads the thing, I put like 3 hours into writing it. A brief story of my life and how it all led up to this moment, where I am disillusioned with my self-image, my life choices, and certain aspects of the world, and have no idea what to do next. Warning: this whole thing might be a little depressing to read.
Childhood.
I am a 20yo Russian male. During my childhood, I was made to believe that I am capable of doing something great and doing better than anyone. At the same time I developed a very non-conformist life stance and very often rejected things and ideas simply because they were too popular for my taste, and I couldn't feel special whilst enjoying them. Of course, in turn, society rejected me, as it does with anyone who doesn't play by the rules. Oh well.
My only redeeming quality was that I considered myself pretty smart. Which is even easier to assume, when at the same time you think that you're different from everyone else. Now, I know that to some extent, I was indeed smarter than most people in certain areas. Unlike most people I knew back then, often with bare minimum efforts I was able to maintain near perfect grades at school. I was also enjoying learning new things and reading more than an average person. So, let's just say, I had a basis to assume I was a smart dude.
I wasn't happy and content with my life, though. I never had real friends, because I only hung out with people when they were my classmates/roommates/co-workers, and after we parted ways, I rarely if ever contacted them afterwards. I always enjoyed doing things you usually do in solitude more, because when I was alone, I wouldn't be afraid that someone could hurt me for being different. Because of that, I was never in a romantic relationship.
High School.
Still, life was going okay. By the end of school, I kind of accepted my social deficiency and I wanted to focus on improving the world and become a successful person - for myself. I was facing a dilemma, though. Despite the fact that I was doing great in school, the idea of having to invest four years of my time into studying something really specific, and then having to work another 20-30 years on the same job was terrifying, because I had no idea what I liked to do! Nothing seemed interesting to me, I didn't have a passion for doing anything... Thanks to my video game addiction, which made me lazy as fuck, probably. I also needed to meet my criteria for success with my future job, which included being financially successful. I grew up in top 1% income family, so... I always felt the pressure to outperform or at least match my parents' income.
Enter trading. My dad discovered investing several years ago (we don't live in US, so most of the people aren't as financially savvy, so he never thought about investing before then). I was always curious about financial independence and markets, but now I was seeing it all done in front of me, I realized that it might be a good opportunity to make a lot of money and become successful without being socially adept, which is something absolutely required in business or politics. So, I asked my father to open a brokerage account for me in the US, and started swing trading (trading in weekly/monthly time frames). I could only trade slow and small because of the trade restrictions put on accounts <$25k and <21yo in the US. Still, it was going well, but in hindsight I was just lucky to be there during a great bull market.
Even before I thought trading and more importantly investing were the ways smart people make money. I thought simply because I was conventionally smart, I had a talent or an innate ability to pick innovative stocks and do venture investing when I grow some capital. I truly believed in that long before I was introduced to financial markets, I believed that my surface level understanding of multiple areas of cutting edge and emerging technology would give me an edge compared to all the other investors.
US Community College and Return Back.
In the end, I've decided I want to go to a US community college and study finance and become a trader and later an investor, but I didn't want to work for a fund or something like that (lazy ass). I wanted to use my knowledge and skill and my own money to grow my net worth and make a living. I didn't really like the process of trading, I just needed the money to live by while I was trying to figure out what else to do with my life. Because I thought I were smart, I thought this would come easily to me. Boy was I wrong. From the nicest of conditions in my hometown, I was suddenly moved into a foreign setting, on the other side of the planet away form my family and mates, with a video game addiction and laziness that ruined my daily routine and studying as well. The fact that I didn't like my major was not helping. My grades fell from A- in the first quarter to C+ in the last. I gained +30% from my normal weight. I was stressed out, not going outside and sitting at my computer desk for days at a time, skipping all the classes I could if they were not absolutely essential for my grades, living on prepared foods. I never got out of my shell and barely talked to anyone in English, all of my friends were Russian speaking. I wasted an opportunity to improve my speaking, although aside from that my English skills satisfy me.
By the end of community college, last summer, I was left with B grades that wouldn't let me transfer anywhere decent, and the extreme stress that I put myself through started taking a toll on my mental health. I was planning to take a break and go back to Russia for several months, and transfer back to a US uni this winter. Needless to say, you can't run from yourself. It didn't really become much better after a few months in Russia. I didn't want to study finance anymore, because it was boring and I was exhausted. I still had the video game addiction, still was lazy and gained some more extra pounds of weight. I was not sleeping at all, extremely sleep deprived for months. Because of this and lack of mental stimulation I started to become dumber. And all that was happening where I didn't really have to do anything: not study or work, just sit around the house and do whatever I wanted. Turns out, these conditions didn't help me to get out of the incoming depression.
Finally, around November, when I already sent out all of my transfer applications and already got some positive answers from several universities, I knew I didn't have much time left at home, and I had to leave soon. But I really, really didn't want to go back. It was scarier than the first time. I was afraid of new changes, I just wanted for the time to stop and letting me relax, heal... I was having suicidal thoughts and talked about it with my family and my therapist. They were all supportive and helped me as much as they could. But I was the only person who could really help myself. If I wanted to breathe freely, I had to admit defeat and not go back to the US to continue my education. It was extremely hard at first, but then I just let go. I decided to find a temporary job as an English tutor and give myself time to think. Then I remembered that I had a bunch of money in my trading account. I still thought that I was pretty smart, despite failing college, so I figured, why not try move it to Russian brokers who don't have trading restrictions, and do it full time? Which is exactly what I did. And I started to study trading all by myself at a fast pace. I was now trading full time and it was going sideways: +10% in December, -20% in January. Then, something incredible happened. I was already in a shitty place in life, but I still had some hope for my future. Things were about to get much worse. I'm in the late January, and I discovered for myself that the whole financial industry of the world was a fraud.
Brief Explanation of My Discoveries.
In the image of the financial industry, there are several levels of perceived credibility.
In the bottom tier, there is pure gambling. In my country, there were periods when binary options trading and unreliable Forex brokers were popular among common folk, but these were obvious and unsophisticated fraudsters who were one step away from being prosecuted. There are also cryptocurrencies that don't hold any value and are also used only for speculation/redistribution of wealth. There is also a wonderful gambling subreddit wallstreetbets where most users don't even try to hide the fact that what they are doing is pure gambling. I love it. But the thing is, this is trading/investing for the people who have no idea what it is, and most people discredit it as a fraud, which it, indeed, is. These examples are 99% marketing/public image and 1% finance. But these offer x10-1000 returns in the shortest time span. Typical get-rich-quick schemes, but they attract attention.
Then, there is trading tier. You can have multiple sub levels here, in the bottom of this tier we would probably have complex technical analysis (indicators) and daily trading/scalping. I was doing this in the DecembeJanuary. At the top would be people who do fundamental analysis (study financial reports) and position trade (monthly time frames). Now, there is constant debate in the trading community whether technical analysis or fundamental analysis is better. I have a solid answer to the question. They work in the same way. Or rather, they don't work at all.
You'd ask: "Why you didn't discover this earlier? You were in this financial thing for several years now!" Well, you see, unlike on the previous level, here millions of people say that they actually believe trading works and there is a way to use the available tools to have great returns. Some of these people actually know that trading doesn't work, but they benefit from other traders believing in it, because they can sell them courses or take brokerage fees from them. Still, when there are millions around you telling you that it works, even a non-conformist like me would budge. Not that many people actually participate in the markets, so I thought that by being in this minority made me smart and protected from fraudsters. Lol. All it took for me to discover the truth is to accidentally discover that some technical indicators give random results, do a few google searches, reach some scientific studies which are freely available and prove that technical and fundamental analysis don't work. It was always in front of me, but the fucking trading community plugged my ears and closed my eyes shut so I wasn't able to see it. Trading usually promises 3-15% gain a month.
A huge shock, but surely there was still a way for me to work this out? Active investing it is!
The next level, active investing, is different from trading. You aim for 15-50% yearly returns, but you don't have to do as much work. You hold on to stocks of your choice for years at a time, once in a while you study the markets, re balance your portfolio, etc. Or you invest your money in a fund, that will select the stocks of their choice and manage their and your portfolio for you. For a small fee of course. All of these actions are aimed at trying to outperform the gain the market made as a whole, and so called index funds, which invest in basically everything and follow the market returns - about 7-10% a year. And if I ever had any doubts in trading, I firmly believed that active investing works since I was a little kid (yes I knew about it back then). And this is where the real fraud comes in.
The whole Wall Street and every broker, every stock exchange in the world are a part of a big fraud. Only about 10-20% of professional fund managers outperform the market in any 15 year period. If you take 30 years, this dwindles to almost nothing, which means that no one can predict the markets. These people have no idea what they are doing. Jim Cramer is pure show-business and has no idea what's going on. Warren Buffet gained his fortune with pure luck, and for every Buffet there are some people who made only a million bucks and countless folks who lost everything.
Wall Street. They have trillions of dollars and use all that money and power and marketing to convince you that there is a way to predict where the stocks are going without being a legal insider or somehow abusing the law. They will make you think you can somehow learn from them where to invest your money on your own or they will make you believe that you should just give it to them and they will manage it for you, because they know how everything works and they can predict the future using past data.
They won't. They don't. They can't. There are studies and statistics to prove it countless times over the span of a 100 years. But they will still charge you exchange fees, brokerage fees and management fees anyway. And they also manipulate certain studies, lobby where and when they need it, and spread misinformation on an unprecedented scale, creating a positive image of themselves. And everyone falls for that. Billions of people around the globe still think it's all legit.
Passive index investing is the last level. You just put your money in the market and wait. Markets will go up at a predetermined rate. If there's a crisis, in 10 years no one will even remember. Markets always go up in the end. But passive index investing can only give you only 7% inflation-adjusted returns a year. Not enough to stop working or even retire early, unless you have a high-paying job in a first-world country. I don't.
Despite all that, to put it simply, this is the only type of investing that works and doesn't involve any kind of fraud or gambling. It's the type of investing that will give you the most money. If you want to know why it is like that and how to do it, just go to financialindependence. They know this stuff better than any other sub. Better than investing, trading or any other sub where non-passive-index investing is still discussed as viable strategy.
Back to me.
My whole being was fucked over, my hopes and dreams and understanding of success and how this world works were shattered. I realized, I had no future in financial industry, because only middlemen make money in there, and I quit college needed to get there. Frankly, I wouldn't want to work there even if I had the opportunity. The pay is good, but the job is boring and I wouldn't want to be a part of this giant scheme anyway. But even if I wanted to go back, I also couldn't. Russia is in a worsening crisis and my parents could no longer afford a US university and now with coronavirus it's even worse. Good thing I quit before it all happened. I learned a valuable lesson and didn't lose that much money for it (only about 10% of my savings). God knows where it would lead me if I continued to be delusional. But now that my last temporary plans for the future were scrapped, I had no idea what to do next.
The future.
With the reality hitting me, I would lie if I say it didn't all come full circle and connect to my past. I realized that I was stupid and not intelligent, because I was living in a made-up world for years now. But even if I were intelligent, pure wit would not give me the success and fortune that I was craving, because trading and active investing were a no-go for me, and business/politics require a very different, extroverted mindset, different education and interest from my own. My only redeeming quality in a hopeless introvert world, my perceived intelligence was taken away from me and rendered useless at the same time.
Besides, failing at that one thing made me insecure about everything and now I think of myself as an average individual. So, if 8 out of 10 businesses fail, I shouldn't start one because I will probably fail. And if most politicians don't get anywhere, why should I bother? If average salary in my country is X, I shouldn't hope for more. I stopped believing in my ability to achieve something. First, I failed at education and now I failed... Professionally? I don't know how to describe it, but my life recently was just an emotional roller coaster. I just feel like a very old person and all I want calmness and stability in my life. I was very lazy before just because, but now I feel like I also don't want to do anything because I feel I would just fail. It feels better now I don't have to worry about trading anymore and I got rid of that load... But I am still miserable and perhaps worse than ever, maybe I just don't understand and feel it because I've become slow and numb. The only positive thing that happened to me recently, is that I finally started losing weight and about 1/4 of the way back to my normal weight.
As for my future, am looking at several possibilities here. So far the parents are allowing my miserable life to continue and they let me live with them and buy me food. I don't need anything else right now. But it can't go on like this forever. The thought of having a mundane low-paying job in this shithole of a country depresses me. I will probably temporarily do English tutoring if there's demand for such work. My old school friends want me to help them in their business and my dad wants me to help him in his, I and probably should, but I feel useless, pathetic and incapable of doing anything of value. And business just seems boring, difficult and too stressful for me right now. Just not my cup of tea.
I am also looking at creative work. I love video games, music, films and other forms of art. I love the games most though, so I am looking into game dev. I don't really like programming, I have learned some during school years, but the pay would probably be higher for a programmer than an creator of any kind of art. However, I think I would enjoy art creation much more, but I don't have any experience in drawing and only some limited experience in music production. And I am not one of these kids who always had a scrapbook with them at school. Having to make another life choice paralyzes me. I am leaning towards art. I don't feel confident in my ability to learn this skill from scratch, but I think it's my best shot at finding a job that would make me happy.
So perhaps, when this whole pandemic is over, I'll go to Europe and get my degree, get a job there and stay. American Dream is dead to me, and Europe is cheaper, closer, safe and comfortable. Just the thing for a person who feels like they are thrice their real age.
Outro.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Special thanks if you read the whole thing, it means a whole lot to me, an internet stranger. But even if no one reads it, feels good to get this off my chest. I actually cried during writing some parts. Holy shit, this might be the longest and smartest looking thing my dumbed down head could manage to generate since college. I hope that you're having a great day. Stay healthy and be careful during this fucking pandemic. All the best.

Ok, so I want to get into trading as I've been stalking this trader for a while now on social media and honestly it seems too good to be true.
I've done intensive research into his life but I can't quite see why or how he is making so much money... let's start with the basics, he grew up in a city 30mins away from me, he failed school dropped out and apparently started trading at an early age of around 18. Heres where it gets weird: him and 2 of his (what seems like) childhood friends created and owns a company, let's call it "GO-forex" and the company seems to be a signal giving forex company (I'm not sure how it all works) but apparently he sends messages to other forex trades when to make trades. Apparently he does this for free as he gets paid by "another company" to do this as his job.
What's sketchy is the way he recruits people and how the business model works, basically when I asked if I could work for him he said "you need more followers" on Instagram. I looked at his workers, a group of 10-15 people and they all had 5k+ followers on Instagram an continuously keep posting things like motivation, why forex is the best, flexing and importantly, telling people to get on this free forex signals thing. That's how I found out about him, a mutual friend was working for him promoting forex lifestyl and that but suddenly left and became a mechanic... what's also sketchy is that he keeps saying "minimum £300 is what the broker will take for you to start and you can withdraw money at any time" I know a broker gets commission and stuff but whats going on here? He posts daily messages he gets from his customers making £90 or £120 and them thanking him, and his always like "join now!!!". I think the app he uses is metatrader and he always flexes when he makes a lot of pips, making anywhere between £1000 to £7000 profit per day.
He is also constantly promoting his masterclass and shows that he is into real estate investing too. I really have no clue what is going on with this, what's the business model? Does he make more money off the company or trading himself? Is he faking it till he makes it? Is he secretly the broker? Is he stealing his customers money and using it for his own trades? Why does he want to give people signals? Why is his business so reliant on social media? Is he a fraud?
I have too many questions but not any answers. He is living the life I always wanted yet he looks like he hasn't worked hard or isn't that smart....

$1,000 being my max budget, it'd be nice to spend less so I can use the extra money towards programs or equipment. After my own research from similar posts, I just need some input between these 3 laptops.
MacBook Air (not sure which gen), MacBook Pro (Read most people favored the 2015 Retina), and Dell XPS 13/15.
I need a daily laptop for everyday use (school, personal, etc.) but as of recently, I need something good for Video Editing (YouTube) and I'm looking to get in to Stocks/Forex and I'm not sure if the Air can handle all of that. Additionally, I was going to settle for the 13" and although it's better for traveling, it seems a bit small to use at home on a desk.
I'm leaning more towards the MacBook despite owning Dell/HP my whole life and being familiar with Windows. I pretty much own all Apple products, phone, watch, and pods. Even though I'm more comfortable with Windows, I've always had problems with Viruses amongst other issues with HP. It seems like Apple never gets viruses and I wouldn't need to pay for a software. Furthermore, It seems to me Apple Laptops (can't say the same for iPhones) are reliable. Lastly, I've been reading 2016-2018 MBP having a lot of issues, one being their batteries swelling up and keyboard functionality.
Any advice/recommendations would be appreciated. Doesn't have to be on this list, this is just what I've come up with. If you have something better such as another product or different model/year for MBP let me know. Thank you!
​
Edit: I'm clueless to specs. Looking up used MBP's I see Catalina, Mojave, bunch of different hz like 2.2, 2.8, etc. The ones found I've found used on eBay have drastic price differences (most likely due to specs or upgrades) Some breakdown of what these mean would be great.
Edit: I don't/won't game so lighter laptops are preferred.

This is a post I made about 5 years ago and I'm reuploading it for visibility. Check back often as this will be getting reformatted and edited over the coming days to make sure it's upto date.

Price Action Attack Map	N/A ------------------------------
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=520423	FXLester's guide to price action
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=2331	James16's guide to price action
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/58037-price-action-matters.html	"Price Action That Matters by Aaron Kruger
https://www.forex4noobs.com/	Forex 4 noobs price action battle plan!

GAMES	N/A ------------------------------------------------------
http://chartgame.com/	Personally, i think this is pure genius! I love it, it's an amazing way to brush up on your chart skills and it's actually pretty cool to see how things went. It throws a random chart at you and you have to day trade it, it'll tell you how you did versus a buy & hold strategy and... well it's just really really good!

BLOGS	N/A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://jkonfx.com/	Technical & fundamental news on currencies. I would advise newer traders not to trade solely on external opinions because that won't cement your own methodology or reasons for trading. Excellent website for if you want an overview of the markets and daily reports. Also includes a trading journal and a lot of media attention.
http://www.stocktradingtogo.com/	A good blog for new traders/ investors. Lot of ‘top 10 lists’ to flick through.
http://www.tradingheroes.com/	This is absolutely amazing! I can't put a value on this! It's one of the best gems of the internet. Podcasts interviewing successful traders, some are notable such as 50pips, Walter Peters & Chris Kapre.
http://www.nobrainertrades.com/	Found this when doing the podcast link below, it's actually really good high quality stuff. Blog based with plenty of educational material.
http://www.chatwithtraders.com	A weekly podcast that interviews successful traders. Thank you gumballfrank for this.
http://ftp.traderkingdom.com/	Not had much of a chance to check this out, but first impression are nice!
http://www.forexlive.com	Heavily oriented towards fundamentals. Good news portal submitted by WinterTires thanks!
http://www.tradeciety.com/	Heavily visually oriented perfect for beginners! Lots of infographics and info. Submitted by gumballfrank
http://orderflowforex.com/	A blog that focuses on Personal Development as a trader. Absolutely essential. It'll help to focus you on your journey to trading omnipotence!

ONLINE SCHOOLS & LEARNING PORTALS	N/A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://theinnercircletrader.com/Tutorials.htm	Best tutorials in the world by a secret trillionaire.
http://www.tradimo.com	A superb website dedicated to training people to become better investors traders for free.
http://www.babypips.com	One of the best free online schools which tracks your progress and teaches you heaps on information. The forum is the gem, where many people keep trade journals and put up their strategies. Don't copy them but borrowing concepts and ideas is good.
http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/forex-forum/forex-military-school-complete-forex-education-pro-banke	Unbelievably thorough! Education on forex trading, literally everything is covered.
http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school	Very wide ranging resource that focuses mainly on technical analysis.
http://www.investopedia.com	This should be a given, but seriously – this place is the Wikipedia of trading/ investing.
http://www.swing-trade-stocks.com/swing-trading-basics.html	Actually a really good learning resource that mentions psychology and momentum among other things.
http://thepatternsite.com/Psychology.html	Really good information on trading psychology – something that often goes unnoticed with beginners.
http://www.finvids.com/	Cool little website with videos on candle patterns and chart patterns.
http://www.fxacademy.com/	Appears to be a free trading academy. Not tried it personally, but it looks really good. With plenty of videos for visual learners.
http://forex-strategies-revealed.com/intro	PEOPLE IN NEED OF A STRATEGY CHECK THIS OUT List of strategies, literally everyone you'll ever need.

ARTICLES OF INTEREST	N/A -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://orderflowforex.com/2014/11/trading-books-proper-orde	There's a lot of information out there, it's overwhelming. You might think "Where the hell do I start?!" well here's your answer! The books you have to read... and in what order! Super important for beginners.
http://www.stocktradingtogo.com/2009/05/14/trading-psychology-stages-investor-emotions/	An article on the ’14 stages of investor emotions’ knowing who you are and what is happening to you can lead you to make more calculated decisions.
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/	Tim Ferris, author of The 4 Hour Work Week interviews Tony Robbins to find out the success behind the worlds best investors. Talking about morning routines, peak performance & mastering money!
http://www.tradeciety.com/category/trading-blog/	Best trading & investing blogs and articles as picked by tradeciety.com
http://www.forextradetracker.com/blog/understanding-forex-jargon-a-glossary-for-beginners	Forex jargon glossary for beginners. Submitted by gumballfrank
http://orderflowforex.com/order-flow-trading/what-is-order-flow-trading/	What is order flow trading? Essential for beginners

FORUMS	N/A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/	Excellent learning resource, main focus is to help avoid people getting scammed.
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/	Massive forum for beginners to talk to more experienced traders – very active community.
http://www.forexfactory.com/forum.php	Much like trade2win but more focused towards forex.
http://forums.babypips.com/	Another forum dedicated to forex traders. You'll find people keeping good strategies here, list them via most views first to find the real gems.

MISCELLANEOUS RESOURCES	N/A --------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=520423	Some beast called Lester showing you how it is! Read this!
http://theinnercircletrader.com/Tutorials.htm	If you watch all of these you're already a millionaire!
http://www.forex-warez.com/Free%20Download/	Every book you could ever want on trading, investing, market psychology, strategies etc.
http://www.forextradetracker.com/	SUPER IMPORTANT This website is paramount to your success, still in development but will provide users with an easy way to document trades. Success is determined by your willingness to follow through with the boring bits so keep this one in your bookmarks.
http://www.hotcandlestick.com/candlestick-pattern-flashcard-game.html	Super useful Flashcard game that helps you to remember important candlestick patterns.
http://www.hotcandlestick.com/forex_charts.htm	Important candlestick patterns that have appeared on the major currency pairs. Good for a quick overview.
http://www.freeonlinetradingeducation.com/chart-school.html	Website offering visual illustration & practical applications of popular candlestick patterns.
http://www.hotcandlestick.com/candles.htm	Glossary of candlestick patterns.
http://www.incrediblecharts.com/topic/Technical_Analysis	Another resource for learning technical analysis. Not particularly thorough but useful for basic concepts.
http://www.forexschoolonline.com/	Market overviews and trading opportunity videos provided, along with educational videos and the like.
http://www.tradersdna.com/education/	Another trading education site focusing more on forex.

US Venezuela Policy is About Oligarchy, Not Democracy

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the LARGEST in the world, totaling 297 billion barrels.
While ignoring (and even supporting) the atrocities of authoritarian regimes in places like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Uzbekistan, US oligarchs have targeted Venezuela for “regime-change” in the name of “democracy”.
Currently, the US is engaging in economic warfare against Venezuela to foment a coup and remove its democratically elected president Nicolás Maduro.
Without providing solid evidence, our corporate-controlled government and mainstream media portray Maduro as a corrupt, repressive, and illegitimate leader with little to no support.

Ask yourself:

Do I ever see officials from the Venezuelan government appear in corporate news shows to tell THEIR side of the story?
What people DO get to comment on Venezuela and what are their credentials and agenda? Are these people essentially public relations agents for the US-orchestrated coup?
Does corporate news provide me with historical background of US imperialism in Venezuela to put these current events in context?

What Corporate-Controlled Media will NOT Tell You

The CIA was involved in the failed coup against Venezuela's popular leader Hugo Chavez in 2002.
Venezuela is not a strictly socialist country; it has a “mixed” economy - not unlike Norway or other Scandinavian countries.
Venezuela is a DEMOCRACY - unlike US-allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
In 2012, Jimmy Carter went on record saying:
“As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world”
The opposition to Maduro knew they were going to lose the last election and so boycotted it in attempt to delegitimize the results.
The US actually tried to dissuade Maduro’s opponents from running!
Maduro invited international observers into the country in 2018 to monitor the last election but the opposition asked the UN not to send observers!
More than 80% of the Venezuelan population had not even HEARD of Juan Guaidó before Trump and the US state proclaimed him the “rightful” president.
Maduro’s approval ratings within his country are on par with opposition-controlled National Assembly. According to an October poll by opposition-aligned pollster Datanalisis, Venezuela's National Assembly, of which Juan Guaidó is president, has a disapproval rating of 70%.
Venezuela WANTS to sell its oil to the US – the US is their largest market and refines a majority of their oil.
US companies Chevron Corp, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Weatherford International all have operations in Venezuela, and are allowed to continue to engage in transactions and activities with PDVSA and its joint ventures through July 27.
“No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.” Organization of American States Charter

Why is the US Corporatocracy so Keen to Remove Maduro?

While Venezuela’s economy is not a strictly-state-run economy, its oil industry is nationalized and uses its revenues for the benefit of its citizens (especially the poor).
After years of crippling US sanctions Maduro stepped over a crucial line in October when his government announced that Venezuela was abandoning the US dollar and would be make all future transactions on the Venezuelan exchange market in euro.
Saddam Hussein also went off the dollar in favor of the euro in 2003 – we started dropping bombs on him the next month.
A similar decision by the Gadhafi government in Libya (2011) was quickly followed by a devastating US-orchestrated conflict - culminating in Gadhafi's capture by radical Islamists who sodomized him with a bayonet before killing him. Since then, Libya has gone from Africa's wealthiest country to a truly failed-state complete with a slave trade! To make matters worse, after the collapse of the Libyan government, its military arms were smuggled out of that country and into the hands of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria - enabling US-orchestrated chaos in those countries.

Who cares what currency a country uses to trade petroleum?

Answer: US oligarchy

The US dollar is central to US world economic domination.
Like all other modern currencies, it is a fiat currency – backed by no real assets to prop up its value.
In lieu of a “gold standard” we know operate on a de-facto “oil-standard”:
"After the collapse of the Bretton Woods gold standard in the early 1970s, the United States struck a deal with Saudi Arabia to standardize oil prices in dollar terms. Through this deal, the petrodollar system was born, along with a paradigm shift away from pegged exchanged rates and gold-backed currencies to non-backed, floating rate regimes.
The petrodollar system elevated the U.S. dollar to the world's reserve currency and, through this status, the United States enjoys persistent trade deficits and is a global economic hegemony." Investopedia
“The central banking Ponzi scheme requires an ever-increasing base of demand and the immediate silencing of those who would threaten its existence. Perhaps that is what the hurry [was] in removing Gaddafi in particular and those who might have been sympathetic to his monetary idea.” Anthony Wile

US Foreign Policy is about Oligarchy Not Democracy

Since World War II, the US has attempted to over-throw the 52 foreign governments. Aside from a handful of exceptions (China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.), the US has been successful in the vast majority of these attempts.
US foreign policy is not about democracy – it is about exploiting the world’s resources in the interests of a small, ultra-wealthy global elite.
This exploitation benefits a small percentage of people at the top of the economic pyramid while the costs are born by those at the bottom.

US CIA Coup Playbook:

How to Plunder Resources from Foreign Countries While Pretending to Support Democracy

1. Find a country with resources you want.
2. Send in an “Economic Hitman” to offer bribes the country’s leader in the form of personally lucrative business deals. If he accepts the deal, the leader will amass a personal fortune in exchange for "privatizing” the resources you wish to extract.

If the leader will not accept your bribes, begin the regime-change process.
3) Engage in economic warfare by imposing crippling sanctions on the country and blame the ensuing shortages on the leader’s “socialist” policies.
4) Work with right-wing allies inside country to fund and organize an “astroturf” opposition group behind a corporate-friendly puppet.
5) Hire thugs inside country to incite unrest and violence against the government in coordination with your opposition group. Use corporate media to publicize the orchestrated outbursts as popular outrage and paint a picture of a “failed state” mired in corruption and chaos.
6) When the government arrests your thugs, decry the response as the brutal repression. Use corporate-owned media to demonize the target government as a despotic regime while praising your puppet opposition as champions of democracy.
7) Work with right-wing military leaders to organize the overthrow the government (offer them the same business deals the current leader refused).
8) If a military-led coup cannot be organized, create a mercenary army to carry out acts of terrorism against the government and its supporters. Portray the mercenaries as “freedom fighters” and their acts of terrorism as a “civil war”.
9) If the target government has popular and military support and is too well-defended for your mercenaries to over-throw: label the country a “rouge state” and wait for the right time to invade. Meanwhile, continue to wear the country’s government and populace down using steps 3 – 8.
10) Escalate the terror campaign within the country to provoke a military response from the country against the US. If they won’t take the bait , fabricate an attack or threat that you can sell to the US population as justification for an invasion.
11) Once the government is removed, set up your puppet regime to provide the illusion of sovereignty. The regime will facilitate and legitimize your appropriation of the country’s resources under the guise of "free" trade.
12) As you continue to extract the country’s resources, provide intelligence and military support to the puppet regime to suppress popular dissent within the country.
13) Use the demise of the former government as yet another example of the impracticality of “socialism.”
What Can I Do?
Call your senators and representatives to voice your opposition to US regime-change efforts in Venezuela.
https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/
Please share this message with others.
Sources included at: https://link.medium.com/8DiA5xzx4T

‘Venezuela’: Media’s One-Word Rebuttal to the Threat of Socialism

ALAN MACLEOD FEBRUARY 8, 2019
A recent Gallup poll (8/13/18) found that a majority of millennials view socialism favorably, preferring it to capitalism. Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States, while new leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC) policies of higher taxes on the wealthy, free healthcare and public college tuition are highly popular—even among Republican voters (FAIR.org,1/23/19).
Alarmed by the growing threat of progressive policies at home, the establishment has found a one-word weapon to deploy against the rising tide: Venezuela. The trick is to attack any political figure or movement even remotely on the left by claiming they wish to turn the country into a “socialist wasteland” (Fox News, 2/2/19) run by a corrupt dictatorship, leaving its people hungry and devastated.
Leading the charge have been Fox News and other conservative outlets. One Fox opinion piece (1/25/19) claimed that Americans should be “absolutely disgusted” by the “fraud” of Bernie Sanders and Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, as they “continue to promote a system that is causing mass starvation and the collapse of a country,” warning that is exactly what their failed socialist policies would bring to the US. (Back in the real world, while Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez identify as socialists, Warren is a self-described capitalist, and Booker is noted for his ties to Wall Street, whose support for his presidential bid he has reportedly been soliciting.) A second Fox Newsarticle (1/27/19) continues in the same vein, warning that, “At the heart of Venezuela’s collapse is a laundry list of socialist policies that have decimated its economy.”
The Wall Street Journal (1/28/19) describes calls for negotiations in Venezuela as “siding with the dictator.”
In an article entitled “Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and the Starving Children of Venezuela,” the Washington Examiner (6/15/17) warned its readers to “beware the socialist utopia,” describing it as a dystopia where children go hungry thanks to socialism. The Wall Street Journal (1/28/19) recently condemned Sanders for his support of a “dictator,” despite the fact Bernie has strongly criticized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and dismissed Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, as a “dead Communist dictator” (Reuters, 6/1/16).
More supposedly centrist publications have continued this line of attack. The New York Times’ Bret Stephens (1/25/19) argued: “Venezuela is a socialist catastrophe. In the age of AOC, the lesson must be learned again”—namely, that “socialism never works,” as “20 years of socialism” has led to “the ruin of a nation.” The Miami Herald(2/1/19) cast shame on Sanders and AOC for arguing for socialism in the face of such overwhelming evidence against it, describing the left’s refusal to back self-appointed president Juan Guaidó, someone whom less than 20 percent of Venezuelans had even heard of, let alone voted for, as “morally repugnant.”
This useful weapon to be used against the left can only be sustained by withholding a great number of key facts—chief among them, the US role in Venezuela’s devastation. US sanctions, according to the Venezuelan opposition’s economics czar, are responsible for a halving of the country’s oil output (FAIR.org, 12/17/18). The UN Human Rights Council has formally condemned the US and discussed reparations to be paid, with one UN special rapporteur describing Trump’s sanctions as a possible “crime against humanity” (London Independent, 1/26/19). This has not been reported by any the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN or any other national US “resistance” news outlet, which have been only too quick to support Trump’s regime change plans (FAIR.org, 1/25/19).
Likewise, the local US-backed opposition’s role in the economic crisis is barely mentioned. The opposition, which controls much of the country’s food supply, has officially accepted responsibility for conducting an “economic war” by withholding food and other key goods.
For example, the monolithic Empresas Polar controls the majority of the flour production and distribution crucial for making arepa cornbread, Venezuela’s staple food. Polar’s chair is Leopoldo Lopez, national coordinator of Juan Guaidó’s Popular Will party, while its president is Lorenzo Mendoza, who considered running for president against Maduro in the 2018 elections that caused pandemonium in the media (FAIR.org, 5/23/18).
Conspicuously, it’s the products that Polar has a near-monopoly in that are often in shortest supply. This is hardly a secret, but never mentioned in the copious stories (CNN, 5/14/14, Bloomberg, 3/16/17, Washington Post, 5/22/17, NPR, 4/7/17) focusing on bread lines in the country.
Also rarely commented on was the fact that multiple international election observer missions declared the 2018 elections free and fair, and that Venezuelan government spending as a proportion of GDP (often considered a barometer of socialism) is actually lower than the US’s, and far lower than most of Europe’s, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The London Daily Express (2/3/19) demonstrates that redbaiting works equally well on either side of the Atlantic.
Regardless of these bothersome facts, the media has continued to present Venezuela’s supposedly socialist dictatorship as solely responsible for its crisis as a warning to any progressives who get the wrong idea. So useful is this tool that it is being used to attack progressive movements around the world. The Daily Express (2/3/19) and Daily Mail (2/3/19) condemned UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his “defense” of a “dictator,” while the Daily Telegraph(2/3/19) warned that the catastrophe of Venezuela is Labour’s blueprint for Britain. Meanwhile, the Greek leftist party Syriza’s support for Maduro (the official position of three-quarters of UN member states) was condemned as “shameful” (London Independent, 1/29/19).
“Venezuela” is also used as a one-word response to shut down debate and counter any progressive idea or thought. While the panel on ABC’s The View (7/23/18) discussed progressive legislation like Medicare for All and immigration reform, conservative regular Meghan McCain responding by invoking Venezuela: “They’re starving to death” she explained, leaving the other panelists bemused.
President Trump has also used it. In response to criticism from Senator Elizabeth Warren over his “Pocahontas” jibe, he replied that she would “make our country into Venezuela” (Reuters, 10/15/18).
The weapon’s effectiveness can only be sustained through a media in lockstep with the government’s regime-change goals. That the media is fixated on the travails of a relatively small and unimportant country in America’s “backyard,” and that the picture of Venezuela is so shallow, is not a mistake. Rather, the simplistic narrative of a socialist dictatorship starving its own people provides great utility as a weapon for the establishment to beat back the domestic “threat” of socialism, by associating movements and figures such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jeremy Corbyn with an evil caricature they have carefully crafted.

Corporate Propaganda Blitz Against Venezuela’s Elected President: MSM Will Not Let Facts Interfere With Coup Agenda

Facts Don’t Interfere With Propaganda Blitz Against Venezuela’s Elected President Joe Emersberger
Guaidó, anointed by Trump and a new Iraq-style Coalition of the Willing, did not even run in Venezuela’s May 2018 presidential election. In fact, shortly before the election, Guaidó was not even mentioned by the opposition-aligned pollster Datanálisis when it published approval ratings of various prominent opposition leaders. Henri Falcón, who actually did run in the election (defying US threats against him) was claimed by the pollster to basically be in a statistical tie for most popular among them. It is remarkable to see the Western media dismiss this election as “fraudulent,” without even attempting to show that it was “stolen“ from Falcón. Perhaps that’s because it so clearly wasn’t stolen.
Graph: Approval Ratings of Main Venezuelan Leaders Nov 2016 - July 2018 Data from the opposition-aligned pollsters in Venezuela (via Torino Capital) indicates that Henri Falcón was the most popular of the major opposition figures at the time of the May 2018 presidential election. Nicolás Maduro won the election due to widespread opposition boycotting and votes drawn by another opposition candidate, Javier Bertucci.
The constitutional argument that Trump and his accomplices have used to “recognize” Guaidó rests on the preposterous claim that Maduro has “abandoned” the presidency by soundly beating Falcón in the election. Caracas-based journalist Lucas Koerner took apart that argument in more detail.
What about the McClatchy-owned Miami Herald's claim that Maduro “continues to reject international aid”? In November 2018, following a public appeal by Maduro, the UN did authorize emergency aid for Venezuela. It was even reported by Reuters (11/26/18), whose headlines have often broadcast the news agency’s contempt for Maduro’s government.
It’s not unusual for Western media to ignore facts they have themselves reported when a major “propaganda blitz” by Washington is underway against a government. For example, it was generally reported accurately in 1998 that UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq ahead of air strikes ordered by Bill Clinton, not expelled by Iraq’s government. But by 2002, it became a staple of pro-war propaganda that Iraq had expelled weapons inspectors (Extra! Update, 10/02).
And, incidentally, when a Venezuelan NGO requested aid from the UN-linked Global Fund in 2017, it was turned down. Setting aside how effective foreign aid is at all (the example of Haiti hardly makes a great case for it), it is supposed to be distributed based on relative need, not based on how badly the US government wants somebody overthrown.
But the potential for “aid” to alleviate Venezuela’s crisis is negligible compared to the destructive impact of US economic sanctions. Near the end of the Miami Herald article, author Jim Wyss cited an estimate from the thoroughly demonized Venezuelan government that US sanctions have cost it $30 billion, with no time period specified for that estimate. Again, this calls to mind the run-up to the Iraq invasion, when completely factual statements that Iraq had no WMDs were attributed to the discredited Iraqi government. Quoting Iraqi denials supposedly balanced the lies spread in the media by US officials like John Bolton, who now leads the charge to overthrow Maduro. Wyss could have cited economists independent of the Maduro government on the impact of US sanctions—like US economist Mark Weisbrot, or the emphatically anti-Maduro Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez.
Illegal US sanctions were first imposed in 2015 under a fraudulent “state of emergency” declared by Obama, and subsequently extended by Trump. The revenue lost to Venezuela’s government due to US economic sanctions since August 2017, when the impact became very easy to quantify, is by now well over $6 billion. That’s enormous in an economy that was only able to import about $11 billion of goods in 2018, and needs about $2 billion per year in medicines. Trump’s “recognition” of Guaidó as “interim president” was the pretext for making the already devastating sanctions much worse. Last month, Francisco Rodríguez revised his projection for the change in Venezuela’s real GDP in 2019, from an 11 percent contraction to 26 percent, after the intensified sanctions were announced.
The $20 million in US “aid” that Wyss is outraged Maduro won’t let in is a rounding error compared to the billions already lost from Trump’s sanctions.
Former US Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield, who pressed for more sanctions on Venezuela, dispensed with the standard “humanitarian” cover that US officials have offered for them (Intercept, 2/10/19):

And if we can do something that will bring that end quicker, we probably should do it, but we should do it understanding that it’s going to have an impact on millions and millions of people who are already having great difficulty finding enough to eat, getting themselves cured when they get sick, or finding clothes to put on their children before they go off to school. We don’t get to do this and pretend as though it has no impact there. We have to make the hard decision—the desired outcome justifies this fairly severe punishment.

How does this gruesome candor get missed by reporters like Wyss, and go unreported in his article?
Speaking of “severe punishment,” if the names John Bolton and Elliott Abrams don’t immediately call to mind the punishment they should be receiving for crimes against humanity, it illustrates how well the Western propaganda system functions. Bolton, a prime facilitator of the Iraq War, recently suggested that Maduro could be sent to a US-run torture camp in Cuba. Abrams played a key role in keeping US support flowing to mass murderers and torturers in Central America during the 1980s. Also significant that Abrams, brought in by Trump to help oust Maduro, used “humanitarian aid” as cover to supply weapons to the US-backed Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.
In the Miami Herald article, the use of US “aid” for military purposes is presented as another allegation made by the vilified Venezuelan president: “Maduro has repeatedly said the aid is cover for a military invasion and has ordered his armed forces not to let it in, even as food and medicine shortages sweep the country.”
Venezuela Accuses U.S. of Secretly Shipping Arms After Weapons Found on Plane with Possible CIA Ties | Democracy Now!
Calling for international aid and being democratically elected will do as little to protect Maduro’s government from US aggression as being disarmed of WMD did to prevent Iraq from being invaded—unless there is much more pushback from the US public against a lethal propaganda system.
​
When Is a Democracy not a Democracy? When It’s Venezuela and the US is Pushing Regime Change. Venezuela has as much right to call itself a democracy as does the United States. Until that is understood by enough people, the Trump administration will continue to devastate Venezuela’s economy with illegal sanctions and push it towards civil war.
Suggested Reading:
UN Rapporteur: US Sanctions Cause Death in Venezuela
Guaido is playing it fast and loose with the Bolivarian Constitution to justify a dictatorship
Trump’s Economic Sanctions Have Cost Venezuela About $6bn Since August 2017
How could Venezuela's president 'steal' the 2018 election from an unknown who didn't run?
In other news...
The Largest Protest Ever Was 15 Years Ago. The Iraq War Isn’t Over. What Happened?