KIRKUS REVIEWS: “The book is packed with good advice, such as avoiding FX trading if you’re impulsive and hot-tempered or why “setting daily trading goals and expecting to achieve them is a fool’s errand.”

FORWORD REVIEWS: Five Stars (out of Five Stars): Excerpt – “At its best, this work hints at the moralistic financial tales of Balzac and Dickens, yet in its lower moments has occasional elements of daytime soap opera, with overblown descriptions of lithe, tanned bodies and sex in five-star hotel suites. However, the overall mix is compelling, informative, and a first-rate page-turner.”

Author Bio:

Winsor Hoang is the founder and CEO of CTS Forex, an automated, statistical, risk managed FX trading system that produces profits with just 50 percent winning trades. Winsor learned currency trading the hard way after enrolling in a number of supposed experts' FX training courses around the world. Applying the experts’ techniques, he lost most of his investment. Winsor remained convinced currency trading offered great opportunity—if one could manage risk and the role emotions play in trading. Using his statistical and automated system design experience at Nortel Networks, RIM, and Sierra Wireless, he began developing automated systematic solutions. In 2010, after seven years of development, testing, and trading his own money, he introduced CTS Forex to the market. Winsor has nearly two decades and more than twenty thousand hours of trading experience. His automated FX trading system continues to produce consistent returns, regardless of market movements.

KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW

In his debut work, a fictionalized account with names and personal histories changed, Hoang intends to show the many ways inexperienced traders in the foreign-exchange market can fail.

Ninety-two percent of all FX traders lose money after three years. Here, seven students who took two-day, intensive FX trading classes start an informal study group together. They all want to get rich, but they have very different personalities and backgrounds. Cynthia is a real estate investor and agent, Jane a housewife, Joey an immigrant from Hong Kong and an inveterate gambler, Ron a successful businessman, and so on. Hoang gets inside these characters—more like a journalist than a novelist—to show their motivations and reasons for success or failure. More importantly, Hoang ably shows that Harry, the FX trading trainer, is running a con game, and the deck is stacked against these would-be players. The FX trading world is analyzed with intelligence and clarity, showing how gurus like Harry fudge results and rely on hindsight bias and mathematical ignorance as they appeal to greed. Hoang explains the breathtakingly dishonest scams and tricks (slippage, price shading, shilling, etc.) that brokerage houses use to squeeze their customers and how they get away with it. The book is packed with good advice, such as avoiding FX trading if you’re impulsive and hot-tempered or why “setting daily trading goals and expecting to achieve them is a fool’s errand.” So far, so useful—but Hoang, it turns out, is also selling his company’s automated FX trading system. He does caution that this book “should not be viewed as a solicitation for the trading system” but then includes an invitation to join his free webinars. After being primed to distrust all hawkers and to remember that many long hours are required to master the difficult discipline of FX trading, readers may be wary.

Packed with useful, clear information about the pitfalls of FX trading, despite some self-serving advertising.

Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Rd., Austin, TX 78744

indie@kirkusreviews.