A guy in one of my classes today told me that he started trading foreign currency online about a month ago and has already made $4000. I forgot to ask what his initial investment was, but I can’t imagine that it was much since he’s a student. Is he full of shit, or can someone who isn’t a retard make money this way?
Someone who isn’t a retard can make money that way, yes.
Someone who isn’t a retard can lose money that way too.
Just as with any trading.
Of course! I’ve made millions by trading currency and hardly had to lift a finger! For just $49.95 plus S+H, I’ll reveal my secrets to you and you too can make millions! Guaranteed!
I was just reading about it on Wikipedia. Sounds like a bad idea to me.
Mike, I would, however, be interested in paying you $300 per year for your newsletter.
Don’t waste your money on these two-bit forum shysters. For $1650 I will sell you a complete money making system that has been proven to work.
sure he has.
click these links first.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/237/RipOff0237111.htm
This shit has a lot of names, so it may be called something different, but its the same old pyramid scheme.
Trade anything you like on margin – gold, pork bellies, gasoline, or euros – and you can make a lot of money, but your odds are similar to roulette “even” bets, and you can only double down if you work for Societe General or Barings.
So you might as well head down to the local Indian casino and at least you can get some free food and drinks for the high-rollers…
There’s a reason why arbitrageur is such a fancy word, and that’s because only big-time swells like George Soros have enough funds lying around to profit from the market’s extremely tiny margins, or the muscle to put the squeeze on hapless central banks. The individual investor has better outlets for his money.
But if you’ve got a few reams of your company’s letterhead lying around, I’m setting up a fund in Macau with my good friend Ned Obabango, former Deputy Warlord of the Afro-Marxist Republic of Jenga…
It is possible to make money in forex the smart way…but I think that’s more on the institutional side and is well outside the realm of 99.9% of the people who invest in them.
That said, all you need is to get lucky a few times and you can be sitting on a lot of cash…course, you can easily lose that much as well :)
There are a few basement operations in Ginza that do nothing but hire foreign students and English teachers as ‘professional forex traders’. I knew a guy who went in for an interview, and apparently it’s really sketchy – you get no salary and you’re expected to go out and convince your friends and family to trust you with their money.
That probably has nothing to do with your friend, though. Just sayin’, there are definitely shifty people out there using forex as a a kind of pyramid scheme.
There’s a guy I know who has been investing slowly in the Iraqi Dinar. “It’s incredibly cheap now,” he tells me. “One day, when the region has stabilised, and democracy has flowered the exchange rate will skyrocket and I will make millions.”
After doing more reading, I definitely don’t want anything to do with this.
And for the record, the guy didn’t try to get me to start trading. If anything, he was annoyed when I asked what he was doing after seeing charts and graphs all over his monitor. I’m nosey like that.
No one in Turkey holds on to US dollars. The yields on a 2-year Turkish Lira note is something like 20%, and the US dollar has FALLEN compared to the Lira over the past two years.
During this period of US dollar suckage, those with the opportunity to hold foreign currency in a foreign bank account should do so.
A guy in one of my classes today told me that he started trading foreign currency online about a month ago and has already made $4000. I forgot to ask what his initial investment was, but I can’t imagine that it was much since he’s a student. Is he full of shit, or can someone who isn’t a retard make money this way?
Wait 6 months and check back with him. Odds are, he won’t be as thrilled.
There is actually some econ theory that pertains to Forex:
Long term exchange rate differences between two currencies is approximately equal to the yield differences between investing in each country + transaction fees. (Otherwise there would be an arbitrage situation)
Ie.
US Bank yields about 4.5% APR. Japan Bank yields about 0.1% (utter crap).
Thus given $1 - > 100 yen rate currently :
$1000 now will be $1045 in one year
100000 yen will be 100100 yen in one year
Thus the new rate exchange rate in one year should be about $1 -> 95.8yen.
So in the long term an investor will experience zero net profit between inversting in these two currencies.
not if he knows a lot of suckers.
I knew someone who managed a $3 million foreign currency portfolio. Why did he get out and in to culinary school (and smoked lots of pot, dude had a 4-foot glass bong)? He worked 14 hours a day watching the currency exchange market.
I’m not trying to discourage you from trying out the currency market, but from quitting your job to become a personal finance manager focusing in foreign currency. Then again, that guy did make really good macaroni and cheese.
It’s very hard to be successful at foreign exchange arbitrage for very long. There was an article in the WSJ not too long ago about Japanese housewives losing their family’s savings when the dollar started to plumet.
Clearly they should’ve put their money in gold.
Women: Know your limits!
I’m not even joking. I can’t find the WSJ article but here is the NYTimes version:
Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators.