The Bull, The Bear, and The Baboon

Harry, a stock broker who lost everything in the dot com crash, turns to foreign exchange currency trading where he quickly learns there is more money in training than in trading. Selling students dreams of independence and wealth, and selectively showing his own trading history, Harry is again living the high life. But seven students soon realize that Harry is selling lies, and everyone will have to pay the price—including Harry.

The Bull, The Bear, and The Baboon looks inside the currency trading market through the eyes of seven people, each with different reasons for becoming a trader. Their individual stories and the ways in which they interact and influence each other provide the reader an eye opening portrayal of the trading world. Both entertaining and informational, this book reads like a suspense novel and, at the same time, offers practical advice to both the novice and experienced investors. It is a captivating narrative story in what is typically a nonfiction, educational genre.

Ron, an entrepreneur and self-made multimillionaire, needs a new challenge. Michelle, an unemployed recent college graduate is seeking income. Joey, a compulsive gambler, sees a new game he can play from home. Each succumbs to Harry’s sales pitch and enrolls in a course that will change their lives—and the lives of four others who band together to form the “Gang of Seven.” The Bull, The Bear, and The Baboon recounts each person’s situation, examines the reasons their trading strategies failed, offers specific steps that investors should take to avoid losing all their money, and outlines a trading edge to significant profitability, even when one is right only half the time.

Inspired by the overwhelming number of swindlers that fool the average individual entering currency trading, this book is written for mainstream audiences, weaving very real trading cautionary points into the technical pitfalls, disciplines, and psychology related to trading.

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.