Did you ever blow a bunch of money in the forex market and decide never again like Cramer?

Ron Des Laurier ‏@CycleViewCharts: did U ever blow a bunch of money in the forex market and decide never again like Cramer?

Answer:

Let me tell you something and listen very close. Ask yourself: who makes money in the markets? Who? I honestly have never met anyone who made millions trading on their own. Never. Zero. Everyone I know who has made millions trading did this:

– they had a fund so they were able to charge fees. If you get 20% of the profits off of $100 million dollars invested and your fund returns 10% then you just made $2 million from trading the markets even if you had no money at risk and even if you “just” returned what the market returned that year.

– they cheated

– they built and sold a company (or IPOed it) and held onto the stock for a really long time while the stock went up

– they built software to trade faster than the software next to them so they can make a trillion trades a second and steal a 1/10 of a penny from you on every trade.

[See, “Who Makes Money on Wall Street”]

Every market in the world returns somewhere between -20% and +20% a year on average and usually more like 5-10%. You can’t return 1000% a year consistently, which is what it takes to make a living from scratch in the markets. You just can’t do it. You need other people’s money. You need to charge fees. You need to hustle and sell and sneak around.

Now you ask about forex, and I’ll also throw in oil, commodities, gold, options. Other than options, who are the biggest players in all of those other markets. Foreign governments. It suddenly becomes YOU versus the collusion insider trading of the central bankers of Russia, China, Japan, the UK, and the US. Who will win? Will you beat them? Or will they beat you? Who should I place my bet on? Particularly if you don’t have a ten year track record beating them.

Almost everyone I know has lost not just a little bit of their money in these markets but ALL of their money in these markets. I hope I don’t add you to the list.