LESSONS LEARNED FROM WORKING AS A BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL FOR AUTOMATED TRADING PROGRAMS SPECIALIZING IN CURRENCIES, (EA’s for SPOT FX). PART 1.

Having worked from home for close to three years, it was about time that I stepped out of my comfort zone. I felt the urgent need to work within a team in the area of my passion and industry which is trading in the financial markets. In September 2019, my business partner and I visited one of our friends at his house. This visit was random on the day but we had purposed to meet earlier on to discuss the issues traders faced in regards to the regulation of the Forex Market locally. Bear in mind that only two brokerage firms at the time had met the pre-requisites for CMA Licensing in Kenya. The visit came at a time when some local trading professionals faced frustrations in the Kenyan market to run their business openly with some of them facing charges from the police even when it came to the bare minimum of running trading institutions to train people how to trade. This saw many people trade at the comfort of their homes.

Call it a match made from heaven, here I was finalizing on my higher education Master’s program from WorldQuant University to when three days later after the visit, I received a call from our pal’s friend asking if I could use a job as an educator in their training institute on Forex Trading. The company was specifically looking for a female trainer but I knew where my strengths lied so I immediately called my business partner and told him about the opportunity. Thereafter, I returned the call and we were invited for a 4:00pm interview on a Friday and had a conversation with their head of training who is now a very great friend and a contributor to our website and support in our bi-monthly webinar series in partnership with Scope Markets Kenya. I think he liked the both of us and we were incorporated in the company with my business partner joining their training arm and I joined the company as a business development executive in the automated trading department.

Education was and still is huge for us and the visit was to find a way to work without any interruptions from the regulator. This meant one thing at the time, aligning ourselves with brokers regulated by CMA at the time in providing education services to our clients which was a great choice. Among other things that were discussed during the visit was the use of automated trading solutions. The practical application of that concept to me was completely new despite the fact that I had studied about automated trading expert advisors in my Master’s Program at World Quant University. By this time I was working on my final dissertation and I had some knowledge about EA’s but from an academic and research perspective. What happened was that our friend had another pal of his at the house. Little did we know that what we were discussing was some form of vetting if you may call it so to one month later to work with my then new boss who specialized in quant trading services and had his office at Westlands in Nairobi.

I remember once having a sit-down with the boss on timelines before we took a Christmas break on the 20^th of December 2019. At the time along with my colleagues, we successfully managed to conduct three seminars on automated trading systems with two brokerage firms with the stamp of approval from Capital Markets Authorities. It was a very lean team with the day to day operations needing only six people on the daily and partially working over the weekends. I really loved that the company allowed each and every one to execute on their roles with minimal micro management and that allowed me to thrive on what I was good at which was, generating clients for the company and the brokerage firms we were in partnership then. I explicitly told my boss who was also my supervisor that my plan would be to serve in that position for three years. Anyone who knows my work ethic knows very well I am pretty straightforward when it comes to being transparent on my deliverables and for how long I intend to be part of an organization for as long as I am creating value. Little did I know that COVID-19 would end my role in the company on May 22^nd, 2020. However, I thrived and loved to work within a team, my colleagues were sort of my second family for the eight month duration.