There are a lot of things that come to mind when people think of success. They think about wealth, they think private jets, lots of estate, giants mansions and a shit load of money. For this reason, you can definitely say that the world has a whole lot of successful people. In fact the world currently has about 2, 825 billionaires as of 2020 and 46.8 million millionaires. If we are considering money in terms of success, then we can safely say without a doubt that those that fall within this wealth range are the world’s most successful people.
Today, Forex trading has served as a great leeway for many individuals to be classified as successful and wealthy. The reason for this is that the Forex market is so mainstream that it attracts about 9.6 million people into the markets everyday, with the daily trades volume reaching $6 trillion according to some estimates. That is why people can make a name for themselves by participating in this activity. The forex market has, over the years, experienced some of the most successful forex traders with the most outstanding outcomes.
While most successful traders are often away from the limelight working behind the scenes, working on their profits, some traders research how they could potentially become successful and try to learn from those who have already made it in the Forex trading business. Because they are the ones who have helped to shape the trading industry and the financial world at large through their lengthy career performance and trading philosophies. In this article, we will be discussing the three most successful forex traders in the world, and their journey to where they currently are. But before ranking this high on the list, it was not a day’s job for these traders, they have gone through the highs and lows of life, and were consistent to accomplish such a level in their career. It is said that the Forex market does not have a lot of successful traders, because 90% of them fail. Meaning that just about 10% of traders actually attain this level of success, which is quite small given the large number of people participating in it. The top three Forex traders we are going to discuss now transcend this group, they are considered the Forex trading elite.
George Soros
The list of top Forex traders will be nothing without mentioning George Soros. He is considered one of the most legendary and most successful FX traders in history. People often refer to him as the greatest Forex trader, the reason why we said this list would be nothing without him. He ranks 30th on Forbes’ world billionaires list and was born in Hungary in 1920, and later escaped the Hungarian Nazi occupation to England in the advent of the WW2. With his Philosophy degree, he viewed the markets differently when he started applying the Popper’s Theory of Reflexivity in trading which gave him a clear understanding of the fundamental value vs the true value of market instruments, which is the cause and effect theory. He created several hedge funds, from Double Eagle which he later renamed Quantum Fund which has brought him over $24.9 billion in management assets, Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund has made him over $40 billion over the past 50 years. His hedge funds commonly adopted macroeconomic analysis in order to create a macro trading scheme that uses the concept that individuals influence the market fundamentals directly.
He understood the market concepts to its fullest, knowing the price difference between selling and swapping stock. He used this strategy to trade, speculating only short-term and placing bets with high leverage on the Forex market. The turning point of his career was when he made a whopping £1 billion from the Bank of England in just a day from a short position. This happened in September 1992, before Black Wednesday. And he is today known as “the man who broke the Bank of England”.
Stanley Druckenmiller
Stanley was brought up in Philadelphia, in a suburban middle-class family. In 1977, he worked at a Pittsburgh bank, where his financial career started. His success was not long from then as he later created his company called Duquesne Capital Management which was very successful. For several years, he worked for George Soros, leading portfolio management at Quantum Fund for 11 years, and also worked with Soros on the infamous Bank of England trade, which is what brought him to the limelight and was a turning point in his career. It only got better for him as his book “The New Market Wizards” became best-selling after its release. The book has helped a lot of traders both old and new with trading strategies. Thus it is one of the crucial resources required for trading by each trader, especially giving the fact that Druckenmiller explained his methods in detail. During the later years of his career, he said that he was tired of constantly working to maintain the record of his success. After he survived the economic meltdown in 2008, he later closed his hedge fund. He is currently worth $4.4 billion.
Andy Krieger
After quitting his job at Salomon Brothers, Andy Krieger became part of Banker’s Trust. He immediately became a reputable trader and he was greatly rewarded by Banker’s Trust with an increased capital limit of $700 million which was more than the company’s standard limit of $50 million. This put him in a great position to make a lot of profits from the Black Monday crash of 1987.
His main focus was the NZD (New Zealand dollar). He believed that the currency was highly susceptible to short selling as there was global financial panic. One of the events that peaked his career was when he applied a 400:1 leverage on his then high trading limit, a trade in which he acquired profits more than the supply of money in Zealand through a short position. This made his employer $300 million in returns. He later left the company with over $3 million profits from trade. He also worked with George Soros at some point in his career.
