Hi,

If you are reading this, you will have probably traced me through one of the various forums or websites that I am active on in the Forex community. I am Christopher Lewis, a Forex trader and analyst. My story is one that is probably a bit different than many others, mainly because I just “fell into” this line of work. To be honest, like most people I didn’t know you could “trade money” for most of my life. Honestly, I never thought about the value of the US dollar, and how it was calculated. I was obviously aware that there were other currencies, but how they interacted wasn’t something that I understood – or quite frankly cared about.

However, I had an uncle that was into investing. He actually was a horrible investor, but that is another story. To make a long story short, I was starting a construction business, and asked him to invest in it. I had done this before, and was successful, so whether or not I could do it was never a huge concern. He agreed to give me the start up money, but with one catch: pay me back instead of letting me hold onto a piece of the company. However, when it came time to pay him back, he changed his mind, and said I needed to put that money to work for some kind of retirement or investment account. He refused to be paid back, and said this would more than make up for the money he gave me – he was worried that I had no retirement or nest egg.

I originally started buying a handful of stocks, and then did the research. Needless to say, I didn’t make any money at first. After all, I didn’t know what I was doing! I began to do more and more research, but found myself drawn to currencies after all was said and done. With the leverage, and the limited amount of financial markets, it made sense to focus more on Forex than anything else. Besides, I have always considered myself worldly, and since the Foreign Exchange markets are about world events and international currencies, so I figured I would do quite well. Strangely, I didn’t make any money there either. I began to understand that there was real work to be done. I was hooked though, and decided that I would make this work one way or another.

In fact, I think it was the decision that I was going to make it no matter what that led me down the long and twisting path that I have been on. The first place that I found on the internet to be truly informative was Forex Factory. This forum is by far the largest, and has a massive amount of traders posting to it day after day, and I think that it is probably one of the finest sites on the net. However, I found that you have to be very careful on who you listen to – because there are a lot of amateurs willing to offer their help.

It was here that I became aware of a private trading group that was educational in nature. I joined this group after I had already made some progress. (At this point in time, I was a roughly break even trader.) After a short amount of time, I found myself going to all of the webinars that the leader was giving. However, as time went on, he was becoming less and less involved. One particular webinar, he didn’t bother showing up. I was in the “room” with several other people, all of whom had read my posts on the private forum as well as over at Forex Factory. These guys were all brand new to trading, and I was just entering the profitable phase. I started to “get it.” Because of this, I was peppered with questions for about two hours. It was a lot of fun.

The owner of the group got wind of this, and promptly offered me a private section of the forum to teach out of, and began to pay me for giving webinars every month. It wasn’t much, but it was something I enjoyed so I figured I was doing something right. However, as time went on, he was getting comfortable with me doing more and more, and I suddenly realized that I was making the man a fortune. Being someone who has been self-employed most of my life, it didn’t take long for me to understand that I needed to do something about that. I started my own private forum. This went well for about a year and a half. I continued to run the thing tirelessly. However, it was about this time that I learned something truly shocking from a friend at a large Forex broker in America: Most retail Forex accounts are $1000 or less. Since I was charging people $75 a month, I began to see that I was charging far too much for the common man. I was actually about half of what the original place charged, so I can only imagine how many of those people were losing money. In truth, I felt a bit sick to my stomach at the thought of someone having to make at least 7.5% a month to recoup the costs of my forum. That’s a lot of pressure on them, and a lot of guilt for me. It wasn’t worth it anymore. It was then that I did something unheard of. I stopped charging. (For the most part.)

I opened up The Trader Guy at this point, and uploaded hours upon hours of free videos. I had a version of Baby Pips, but in video format. I only then charged for some signals, etc. – something that was a bit different than an monthly educational service. I began to understand that it was only those that didn’t take the time to learn that should be charged for this service. After all, it was more or less a convenience fee at that point. I did charge a bit here and there for advertisers, but that was a rarity to say the least. However, things began to change for me at this point.

I started getting asked to do videos for other people. Analysis, educational videos, and simple signals. It was slow at first, but word of mouth got going, and the next thing I know – I am a full-time analyst. The business has been very good to me, and I love it. I have become a good trader, and a good analyst as well. My work is featured at FXEmpire, Daily Forex, Trade Acumen, and many other sites around the world, as well as the work I do for private clients. There are a lot of people that will claim to simply be “giving back” to the Forex community, but they are full of it. There is a business side to this market like anywhere else, and anyone that says they are doing that is someone you should run as fast and far from as possible. The other major red flag is the expression “The secrets the banks don’t want you to know about.” Bullshit. The banks aren’t concerned about your cute little $5,000 account. It’s very likely that the computer the trader placing orders for Citi is working from is worth more than your account.

Trading isn’t that hard to be honest. Its all a head game, and something that is able to be learned. However, you will find that there are a lot of bullshitters out there. I try to be as real as possible with people, and sometimes that gets me into trouble. Am I rich? Hell no. Why not? Because I didn’t start out that way. Do I make money trading? Yes. I have even bought some fairly nice things with profits. However, I cannot tell you how many people I have met that are trying to turn $500 into $1,000,000. That doesn’t sound very realistic to me, and it shouldn’t to you. However, if you are patient, you can make good money doing this. I will be as helpful as time allows, and try to demystify this market if you allow me.

Sincerely,
Chris