A recent newspaper report highlighted a trend of more retail forex traders in Singapore.
One of the reasons of the rising popularity is the growing number of forex instructors in Singapore.
Everyday, you will be able to see advertisements in the newspapers promoting forex training sessions. Some of their advertisements lure newbies by promising high returns.
“Turn $10000 into $1 million within three years!”
“XXX has been trading forex for the last three months and he has been making $10000 per month”.
Thanks to some of these irresponsible advertisements, many new traders have the unrealistic expectations that they can generate a lot of wealth through forex trading. They think that their pathway to the “Road to Millions” is set just by attending a 3-day trading course.
How wrong can they be.
If someone comes to you and tells you he can train you to be half as good as Tiger Woods in three days, I am sure you will laugh at him.
Yet when someone claims he can make you a profitable trader just by attending a 3-day workshop (with the results that would put many hedge fund managers and bank proprietary traders to shame), many people rush to fork out thousands of dollars to sign up for the workshop.
Learning to be a successful trader involves hard work over a long period of time.
Also, it is not how much you can make in a single trade (as some of the advertisements like to portray). Humans like to extrapolate a win and then salivate at the potential earnings. Hmm, if I can make $100 a day, then I can make $2000 a month.
Wins will always be accompanied by losses and it is about how consistent your results are over the long term.
Many traders are able to generate small wins over a few months (or even years), but one fine day, they will blow their account and lose all that they have made and more.
It is not easy to be a good trader. Statistically, out of every ten traders, nine will lose money.
The good news is that if you happen to fall into the ten percent, you can make a lot of money (9 times of what the other traders lose).