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Turning profits in the forex market are not as easy as most people believe, but once you make it, you make it big. There are a few select individuals who by virtue of their business savviness and skills, have gained vast fortunes and legendary status. Their technique, discipline, and strategic choices turned the forex market upside down and reshaped it into what it is today.

Like every clever businessman, they have made their fortunes silently and kept a low profile, avoiding the spotlight and any potential scandals. But their methodologies have already become common knowledge, and every single person who wants to make money should model their trading moves after them. Without further ado, here are five forex strategies that worked for famous heavyweight traders.

George Soros

George Soros is a famous hedge fund manager, business, and philanthropist. Born in 1930, he began his business career at Singer and Friedlander in London, in 1954. He is considered one of the best investors in history along with Warren Buffet. Born with an acute business sense, his investment style is based almost entirely on instinct. He keeps himself informed to market changes and fluctuations and exploits them to his advantage with highly leveraged bets.

As a result, Soros is famous for gaining $1 billion in a single day, in September 16, 1992. He broke the Bank of England by short selling $10 billion British pound sterling. Short selling is a method that involves either selling a security that the owner has borrowed or does not own. The short seller bases his action on the belief that the security’s price will decline, allowing the individual to buy it later at a lower price and turn a profit.

He intuited that the Bank of England was not able to buy enough sterling to raise the value of the currency due to a lack of foreign reserves and knew that raising the interest rates to cover this hole would be a political disaster for the government. Soros, with a keen business sense, has mastered this particular method and became rich as a result

Bruce Kovner

Born in Brooklyn in 1945, Bruce Kovner made his debut in the forex market late, in 1977, at the age of 32. In a move considered by many to be very bold for an investment rookie, he decided to borrow $3000 against his MasterCard credit card to buy soybean futures contracts. After his investment grew to $40,000, he watched it drop to $23,000 and then decided to sell.

Later in his career, he said that this nerve-wracking experience taught him a valuable lesson about risk management. He eventually founded Caxton Alternative Management in 1982, which became one the most successful hedge funds in world history, with over $14 billion in assets.

Stanley Druckenmiller

Stanley Druckenmiller was born in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to a middle-class family. In 1977, he started his financial career as a management trainee at a bank from his hometown. After building a successful career as an employee, he left and formed his own company, Duquesne Capital Management. George Soros hired Druckenmiller to manage his money, a job in which both him and his career flourished.

Like most of the other famous investors, he became rich before the best forex trading platform came to market. Although now everybody can have a slice of the pie, back then Stanley Druckenmiller just had a similar investment philosophy and trading style as George Soros – he was and is a top-down investor who holds a number of stocks short, another group long, and uses leverage techniques to his advantage. In fact, the two businessmen have such a high professional chemistry that they have both become famous for breaking the Bank of England.

Bill Lipschutz

Bill Lipschutz started his career early, while he was attending Cornell University in the late 1970s. After inheriting $12.000 worth of stock from his deceased grandmother, he decided to invest it, and his portfolio eventually rose to $250,000. However, due to an uninspired trading move and a sudden shift in the market, he lost everything.

Like Bruce Kovner, he realized how vital risk management is when it comes to forex trading and took that lesson to heart. As he became more interested in the financial market, he left his architectural degree behind and decided to focus solely on his business career. At Salomon Brothers, he joined the company’s forex department, and by 1985, he was making almost $300 million for his employers with smart investments.

Andrew Krieger

Rounding up this list is Andrew Krieger, another successful businessman, and philanthropist who has made his fortune on the forex market. Due to his professionalism and work ethic, the Banker’s Trust increased his capital past the standard limit of $50 million to $700 million. This allowed him to profit on Black Monday, a financial clash that took place on October 19, 1987.

As many other successful forex investors, he used leveraging and risk management techniques to his advantage. Believing that the New Zealand dollar was exposed to short selling, he gained a short position bigger than the country’s money supply by applying a leverage of 400:1 to his trading limit. This was an inspired move through which he gained $300 million for his employer. Personally, he netted $3 million from the trade.

Conclusion

Success stories are good motivators, but what people tend to overlook is that behind them, there are ambitious, hard-working people who perfected their techniques to reach that high level. George Soros, Andrew Krieger, and Bruce Kovner are a few businessmen who, through their self-confidence and incredible risk management skills, ended up becoming millionaires and billionaires on the forex market.