Who is the richest forex trader?

Question

I hear about all those people in the web who claim to be rich and earn a living in forex and finally try to sell you their "systems". What I dont understand is If their systems WORKS as they claim it works, they should probably be spending their time with their "system" and not trying to sell them...

So all this spam aside, Is there really some person(genuine) who has become rich and famous by only trading/investing in the Forex Market?

Answer 1

The short answer is no, Although there are a few investors like George Soros who made huge sums inthe FX market on a couple of trades most of the really welathy made their fortunes holding onto quality stocks. You are right that most FX ssytems dont work. If they did even a little then they would be worth millions, not 100 per month.

Answer 2

Maybe not by only investing in the Forex market, but there are traders that are famous primarily because of their forex trades.  George Soros comes to mind for me.  He runs a hedge fund, whose most famous trades were Forex trades.  He is worth about $8.5 billion according to Wikipedia.  He made an estimated $1.1 billion betting against the pound in 1992.  That trade is what he is most famous for.  

As for the system sellers...you are right.  What system sellers do is backtest systems, and over the backtest period, they perform wonderfully.  However, you can get a system to perform well over past timeframes by fitting it to the data (tweaking the parameters so that they perform well against known data).  Those systems don't work so well when faced with a period they weren't fitted for.  I believe there are some legit system sellers and builders out there, and that mechanical systems can work.  However, I haven't looked into it much myself, and I have never seen anyone advertising on the web who looked legit.

Answer 3

Those who claim that their system works, then sell you their trading system are fakes. As the saying goes, "Those who can do, those who can't, sell their trading secrets."

And, yes--there are people who make a living trading the foreign exchange market exclusively. I do not know who is the richest or the best, but you will find them quietly and sincerely helping out other traders in any popular investing/trader's forum on the internet.

Hope this helps,

Jim http://jsforex.blogspot.com