The Bull, The Bear, and The Baboon

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.