In less than 10 days, hundreds of forex and options traders will gather in Las Vegas for the year's hottest conference, the Forex & Options Expo. Built from the ground up to serve the trading community, the Forex & Options Expo is scheduled to take place from September 13 through September 15.
By now, many investors are aware of the many prominent speakers that are coming to the event. However, some may not realize that their professional backgrounds are as varied as the topics that they plan to discuss.
"My professional background is in financial services in London," said Huzefa Hamid, the founder of TheForexRoom.com. "I worked for an assortment of firms, some large, such as Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a bunch of smaller ones too."
As a trader, Hamid started off trading his own capital, beginning with U.S. equities and equity options. "After a few years of that I moved to Forex," he said. "Early in my trading career, I gravitated towards technical analysis as my prime lens to view the market."
Hamid said that two books -- "Technical Analysis" by John Murphy and "How I Made $2 Million" by Nicolas Darvas -- greatly affected how he chose to trade.
"Trading is a lonely business, and in order to feel a sense of connection, I started writing a blog," Hamid explained. "I had about 15 followers at the beginning, all friends of mine. I was calling live trades on my blog and my friends were following along in their live accounts and making money. I began enjoying this as much as the trading itself."
As the blog grew, Hamid said that he wanted something more structured. "This ultimately led to my work with DailyForex.com and the birth of TheForexRoom.com," he said. "I got access to DailyForex.com's international readership, support, feedback and other incredible resources. TheForexRoom.com gave me and my trading partners a way to call the trades we were taking for ourselves in a secure and structured environment."
Boris Schlossberg, the managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management, comes to the expo not only as an expert in technicals and fundamentals but as the author of two books.
"One is 'Technical Analysis of the Currency Market,' which is sort of a beginner-to-intermediate guide to how to use technical analysis for the currency market," he said. "It is also very much a book about the psychological aspect of money management and other aspects of trading that I think are valuable."
Schlossberg's second book, "Millionaire Traders: How Everyday People Beat Wall Street at Its Own Game," was written in conjunction with his partner, Kathy Lien. "It's not so much a book about trading as it is a book about traders," Schlossberg explained. "It's a whole slew of interviews with retail traders that trade all sorts of instruments from forex to futures to equities to options, and their individual stories."
"One of the reasons why I like it was, instead of interviewing hedge fund managers who manage institutional money and who operate with larger size, larger access, and a lot more tools at their disposal, we wanted to find people who were successful with the smallest amount of tools, the least amount of computing power, and still being able to beat the markets with their own wits," Schlossberg continued. "Those stories were very encouraging and inspiring. I liked writing that book a lot. I actually like to read my own book from time to time because the stories are still quite interesting and fun."
Larry Gaines, the Founder and CEO of OptionsontheOpen.com, started his career by trading tanker cargoes of foreign crude oil for a large publicly held international oil company in the 80s. "[I] went on to become the Executive Vice President for of one of the largest international oil trading companies in the world," he said. "In this position, I managed their international oil trading and marketing for over ten years from their corporate office in Bermuda."
During his tenure, Gaines said that he traded and managed "billions of dollars worth of oil, foreign exchange, and financial market derivatives." He said it was "not unusual for us to trade over a billion dollars in a single day."
"My trading group was one of the first to trade over-the-counter options on cargoes of foreign crude oil and we traded millions of barrels of north sea Brent crude oil options," said Gaines. "I launched Options On The Open to share my trading knowledge and experience to teach people how to achieve higher trading profit margins with smaller capital investments and less risk by using options and futures after seeing a real need for a professionally run service. To help members achieve a more disciplined and systematic degree of trading success I developed a highly accurate, price cycle trading system known as the 'Power Cycle Trading Model.'"
In August, Derek Frey, the Founder and Chief Market Strategist of Carnac Investment Advisors, LLC, told Benzinga about his transition from an aspiring Olympic athlete to a full-time trader.
"I picked up a book about trading the markets when I was 15 and was instantly in love," said Frey. "At the time I was training for the Olympics as a ski racer and I decided that trading would be my backup plan should Olympic Gold not be in my future."
Soon after his 18th birthday, Frey destroyed his knee. "And with it, my shot on the Olympic team," he said. "So I began trading my $3K account. My first trade was in cocoa; it made a little over $600 in less than three days and I thought I was king of the world."
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(c) 2012 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Tags: Forex & Options Expo
Posted in: Options, Forex, Markets, Trading Ideas, Best of Benzinga
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