There’s nothing new about the fact that Forex is the biggest trading market in the entire trading industry. It generates over 6 trillion US dollars per day, spreading around the globe and penetrating all countries that exist right now.
When people enter the currency market, the obvious goal they strive towards is to place banger trades and win millions. Granted, it is definitely possible to not only turn Forex into your daily income source but to also use it as a source of significant wealth, it is nonetheless important to realize that every 9 out of 10 traders are bound to lose when trading currencies.
With this obvious fact in mind, it is safe to say that Forex trading isn’t everyone’s game. People spend years polishing their trading skills and knowledge, experimenting with different strategies, and choosing those that work best for them. In that process, they stamp their right to be called the most successful Forex trading millionaires with huge capital and worldwide fame.
Yet it is also important to point out that not all traders prefer to show off their success. In fact, it is an exception to find a Forex millionaire that doesn’t shy away from the limelight. And those that we’re about to discuss in this article have certainly chosen the second path – all the more reason for us to respect them and their achievement in this industry.
In each section of this article, we’re going to take a quick look at the trader’s background, their capital gains, and then describe their trading psychology that has proved effective over the course of their career.
Bill Lipschutz
Bill Lipschutz is one of the top Forex millionaires that has been making hundreds of millions of dollars annually in his prime years of the career. Bill was born in 1956 in Farmingdale, New Yor, where he was also raised until he went for Cornell University in Ithaka, NY. He received two bachelor’s degrees in this university, one for Architecture and one for Finances.
The pivoting point in Bill’s life occurred during his college years, when his grandmother passed away who left his grandchild $12,000 worth of stocks for over 100 different entities. Ultimately, Bill liquidated the whole portfolio in order to consolidate everything into one location, even though it cost him huge amounts of commissions.
Occasionally, Bill was making investments with this money into different assets, learning everything about finances along the way. And his initial success quickly materialized: he turned the inherited $12,000 into a vast $250,000 investment capital.
Unfortunately, however, his fortune retrospectively proved to be very short-lived: one inefficient investment decision robbed Bill of his whole investment capital – a life lesson that he always used in all of his future investment decisions.
During his studies for the Master’s degree, Lipschutz started a job at Salomon Brothers – a prestigious American investment bank at the time. Soon after that, the company established a foreign exchange department where Lipschutz became one of the top members.
In fact, Salomon Brothers made huge gains thanks to him, who was already included among the top teenage Forex millionaires in the world. By 1985, Bill’s annual earnings estimated at around $300 million. And in the period of 1984 until 1990, he was the principal trader for this division, soon after to become the director of the whole company.
From 1995, he’s been working as a Director of Portfolio Management at the Hathersage Capital Management.
Bill Lipschutz’s secret of success
One of the biggest pieces of advice Lipschutz gives to his listeners is to be fundamentally passionate about trading. The process of exchanging assets should be your main motivator to enter the market, not the possibility of a considerable profit. As he suggests, this mindset is the best guarantor that the money will keep flowing to your account, yet as a by-product, instead of the main goal to strive towards.
As for the trading strategy, Bill’s advice is to take your time and open only one trade at a time. One of the main secrets of Forex millionaires, according to him, is to remain inactive during the times when it is absolutely needed, instead of going for two, three, or more simultaneous trades. With just one position open, a trader develops a sense of consistency, which is ultimately more valuable than fleeting profits.
Another useful tip from Lipschutz is to have a sound risk/reward analysis of your trades and ensure that your possible gains are significantly higher than possible losses. A good middle point for him is a 3:1 ratio, where you’re getting three times as much profits than the losses that you may experience.
George Soros
George Soros’ name is famous to anyone who has ever had anything to do with the finances. This is “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” during the Black Wednesday in the UK; this is also the man that is ranked #162 on Forbes’ Ranking of Billionaires, far outperforming the Forex millionaires list.
Soros was born in 1930 in Budapest, Hungary. During the Nazi occupation of Hungary, he managed to flee the country and settle in the UK in 1947. After graduating from the London School of Economics there, he started working in various merchant banks, which kickstarted his business career.
Shortly afterward, Soros established his very first hedge fund called the Double Eagle. It was then renamed to the Quantum Fund and over its long existence, the fund collected almost 25 Billion US dollars in various assets. The next hedge fund that he founded, the Soros Fund Management, was actually funded by the first-year profits received from Double Eagle. Over the last 50 years, the Soros Fund Management has amassed more than 40 billion USD in profits.
As mentioned earlier, George Soros is the only millionaire Forex trading has ever known to have “broken” the Bank of England. Basically, during the whole meltdown of the UK economy in 1992, shortly known as Black Wednesday, Soros went short for 10 billion USD worth of pound sterling, which brought a 1 billion USD profit to him while the whole economy went south.
How George Soros became a millionaire through Forex trading?
George Soros’s name is associated with the change in the way people perceive trading. As a Philosophy master, Soros applied the famous Theory of Reflexivity developed by Karl Popper. According to the Reflexivity, causes and effects have a circular relationship and they both affect each other.
With this philosophy, Soros started exchanging currencies, as well as other securities, with short-term trades and ultra-high leverage rates. His strategy maintained that individual traders directly affect the market conditions and they often become the cause of periodic bubbles that form in this industry. That was actually what led him to make a billion in profit when the UK economy was falling apart in 1992.
Stanley Druckenmiller
The next person in our millionaire Forex traders list is Stanley Druckenmiller. Born in the Pennsylvanian middle-class family in 1953, Druckenmiller kickstarted his financial career in 1977 at the Pittsburgh National Bank. It was immediately apparent that he would have a very bright feature as in a very short period of time, in a span of a year, Druckenmiller managed to go from a mere trainee to the head of the equity research department.
He worked in the bank for four years, after which he established his own company called Duquesne Capital Management. It is safe to say that Druckenmiller’s trading career has gone to the new heights during that period as he was appointed the head of the Dreyfus Fund.
Another interesting thing to note is that Druckenmiller worked with George Soros at the Quantum Fund. They both participated in the 1992 UK financial crisis that made them the most successful Forex traders who became millionaires and then billionaires. The fact that they both “Broker the Bank of England” earned him huge fame and renown, being featured in “The New Market Wizards” and named one of the most influential people in the industry.
In 2010, amid heavy financial toll to the Duquesne Fund, Druckenmiller retired from the company, stating that the company’s inability to live up to his expectations encouraged him to take a step back. And that’s understandable: before his resignation, the hedge fund posted an average of 30% annual income rate and no losses in any year, yet the recent years was proved more disastrous with -5% returns.
Shortly afterward, Duquesne Fund managed to recover from the crisis, which led Druckenmiller to reappear return to the company, pay out all of his clients’ funds, and ultimately close down the fund, due to high stress of this job.
Stanley Druckenmiller’s way of making through the list of real Forex millionaires
The philosophy that guided Stanley Druckenmiller and made him one of the most influential millionaires through Forex trading was molded by his cooperation with George Soros. In this highlight of Druckenmiller’s career, he incorporated the strategy of top-down investments.
One peculiarity about Druckenmiller’s way of trading is his choice to put all eggs in one basket. If you google the top risk management strategies for trading any type of security, the first thing you’re going to see is portfolio diversification; this idea that investing in a bunch of different assets will help you limit market risks and increase the stability of your portfolio.
With the Druckenmiller’s strategy, though, the whole thing works exactly the opposite way: he advised to “concentrate bets’ on one particular asset class and go full-in with your capital. However, he does warn that traders should be like snipers – they should take a very precise shot at a precise time because mistakes here are not forgiven.
One more thing that Druckenmiller advises to the aspiring young Forex millionaires is to always leave the backdoor open – have an exit strategy or a plan B that can save you in case of an unexpected development.
Bruce Kovner
Yet another American Forex millionaire famous for his cool demeanor and rational decision making, let’s take a look at how Bruce Kovner reached his own share of fame. Kovner was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. He attended Harvard University, studying political economy and occasionally engaging in sporadic activities such as taxi driving, political campaigning, etc.
It was shortly after that moment that Kovner discovered his passion for trading. In 1977, he opened his very first position, buying a soybeans futures contract by borrowing against his credit card. While that trade made him about 40,000 USD of profit, Kovner quickly found himself in a losing trade. This turned out to be a great life lesson for him as he waited for too long to cease the trade and sell the contract.
Kovner was then employed at Commodities Corporation – a company that amassed millions thanks to this invaluable employee, and the one that always maintained his cool-headedness. And even though he certainly wasn’t among the young forex trading millionaires in his time of youth, Kovner still managed to become one of the most influential millionaires that Forex has ever seen, mainly thanks to his company, Caxton Associates, established in 1983 and managing more than 14 billion USD in its prime years.
Bruce Kovner’s route towards the big buck
When it comes to the trading philosophy that paved the way for Kovner’s success, there are some elements that are similar to the strategies the above-mentioned traders have used over the period of their careers. For instance, like Soros and Druckenmiller, Kovner also used fundamental analysis and macroeconomic data to form his next steps in trading.
However, what’s also different about him is that he successfully incorporated both fundamental and technical analysis in his trades, the fact that ultimately opened the gates of the list of Forex millionaires 2020 for him. Basically, he observed and analyzed a bunch of credible economic reports and extrapolated commonalities between them, which should’ve translated into full-fledged market development, yet it hadn’t for the moment being.
For that reason, Kovner was more of an advocate of long-term trades that took full advantage of meticulously acted out analyses. He also heavily used various risk management techniques, including stop orders that helped him not go too overboard with losses.
Andrew Krieger
Last, but certainly not least, let’s talk about Andrew Krieger – one of the most aggressive Forex traders known in the industry. Just like Soros and Druckenmiller, Krieger was also a fortunate profiteer that got out richer than he was before from yet another financial crash of 1987 called the Black Monday.
After graduating from the Wharton School of Business, Krieger started his first financial job at Salomon Brothers. In a short while, he transitioned to a company called Banker’s Trust in 1986, which ultimately paved him the way to become one of the most successful, as well as aggressive Forex millionaire traders in the world.
As his popularity in Banker’s Trust increased, the administration allowed him a much larger trading limit that was usually allowed for employees; where others could trade only $50 million worth of assets, Krieger traded up to $700 million.
This is actually one of the most important facts about Krieger’s trading career; it allowed him to do a huge short trade against the New Zealand dollar during the Black Monday crisis of 1987. While most markets were going south during the crisis, Krieger predicted that the New Zealand dollar would depreciate even more than anyone had anticipated.
That’s why he shorted the whole money supply of the country, even exceeding the actual liquidity of the currency. Ultimately, this brought Banker’s Trust some 300 million USD. Personally for Krieger, this whole endeavor brought about a 3 million USD in a bonus, which was quite a small compensation for all of his efforts. Ultimately, this led Krieger to resign from Banker’s Trust and establish ties with George Soros – a billionaire amongst Forex traders millionaires.
How many millionaires trade Forex and how to be one yourself?
Foreign exchange is the biggest trading market in the entire industry. It attracts lots of people from all around the globe, enticing them to open new trades and seek for a huge profit. And while the majority of them are doomed for failure, there is a small subset of people who manage to succeed, and do that quite impressively.
But even in the list of successful Forex traders, there are those that make up an elite group of millionaires that have turned Forex into their passion – something that they do not solely for money but because they love it, while the money keeps on flowing.
Therefore, the most successful Forex market millionaires have a mindset that concentrates on the process of trading, as well as how to perfect it to take it to the art level.
So, if you do want to have a realistic shot in the trading business, you need to have strict discipline, focus on the trading itself, be flexible, be brave, but also have proper risk management mechanisms.
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