Today is not 8^th March (International Women’s Day), but I want to do a piece to all the young girls on their way to being young adults and finally graduating to womanhood. I speak to all the girls with an African dream of excelling at their studies because education does open your eyes to the infinite world of opportunities. Be it in arts, finance, sports, engineering, you name it. Like one of my favorite girl band Little Mix says it, “we got the power”. The moment you realize that you alone are responsible for your own decisions, then you don’t give up your power to anyone, not to your folks, your boss or even your life partner.

I remember growing up as a teenage girl. I attended Pangani Girls’ High school Nairobi, Kenya. I was interested in business studies. At the back of my mind, I knew one day I wanted to be my own C.E.O. I did not know how but I admired the iconic female entrepreneurs and those in leadership positions, especially those who looked like nerds in glasses and those with a gap in their tooth like mine, lol. I could also watch the likes of Oprah Winfrey on the television and their stories of owning a wide closet of shoe collection would be my measure of success back then. I still have a goal of being on the Forbes African Woman one day.

I want to tell you that’s it’s possible to be your own woman and liberate yourself. In whatever field you aspire, as a career woman or not, pregnant or not, housewife or not, employed or unemployed, single, dating, in a complicated relationship or married. In your Afro hair or straight, it really doesn’t matter and who really cares? Heck, even your age doesn’t really count. The only thing you need to do is to identify your passion and have the guts to follow through it, work your ass off and eventually get what you want.

Imagine a possibility of waking up one day, not having to deal with traffic or commute. Working at the comfort of your home or at the beach, wherever you are as long as you have access to internet, sort of like a digital nomad. Not having to deal with bossy attitudes at your place of work or waiting for a monthly salary. Do you know your worth? Giving yourself an opportunity to write your own paycheck from the Financial Markets. If this sounds like something you’d be interested to learn, Sylvia’s Traders Lounge has got you covered. Just reach out to us using the contact information, I’ll be glad to get back to you.

But that’s not where the fulfillment comes from. True joy is derived from doing what you’re passionate in, not having to take a vacation from your work at the same time leaving you with enough time to spend with the people that matter in your life, your family, your kids, your close circle of friends. Being able to give your resources and time to those who owe you nothing in return. The freedom and independence you get cannot be compared to any amount of monetary reward or benefits in the work place. Yes you can, believe in yourself and be willing to do what it takes to get to your liberation.

Building on to the discussion topic for yesterday, it’s important to write a piece on common sense, and this applies to everyone, whether you’re a trader or not, but I have to do it. Economics is built on theories, Keynesian models and so forth. I don’t want to get into much details. The same theories have justified the use of credit, banking institutions are willing to offer loans against security provided you have the ability to pay, nothing wrong with that. I have a problem with consumer spending habits, especially the use of credit cards, basically, spending money you haven’t earned. Putting yourself in an endless cycle of debt repayment schedule with interest rates on top of that for something you should have avoided by paying in cash. Common sense.

One of the greatest men I respect, the former president of the United States, Mr. Obama, had to spend a substantial amount of time in office repaying his student loan debt. You know you have an obligation to pay upon receiving your first job, but why do most people default? YES, those constant Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) reminder alerts, we complain about them, I once complained about them, but then I realized it’s my responsibility to settle that before I am declined access to financial services by some lending institutions for something I can make partial repayments on. Common sense.

The global economic recession and melt down majorly caused by the mortgage use, I like how one economist put it, institutions devising a model to “make” you own a house now and allocate an insignificant amount of money you should pay over a duration of time you can’t explain. Yes, we know you want to raise your family in a good home, that’s okay, but why put your kids/beneficiaries at the risk of repaying a loan you took God forbid you die while you can rent or build a house making small installments from your own earnings? Common sense.

The constant urge to keep up with the Jones, competing with your peers, buying the latest model of a car, taking your kids to schools you can’t afford, don’t get me wrong, invest in your kid’s education, it’s the best inheritance you can give to them, and you owe it to them for bringing them into the world, but don’t do it to show off or feel obligated to do so because you want to be at par with the rest of the world. Common sense.
I can go on and on, but let me stop at that for today, I don’t want to get into using a perfume or a deodorant, lol.

In the rare occasion, I find myself at a dinner party. Shortly after introducing myself and exchanging pleasantries. The question always arises as soon as I share my profession. What do you think about Apple? Is Microsoft still a good company? What about Snapchat? Or Facebook? Is Bank of America a good bank to invest in? Is this a good company?

After I am forced to give a short explanation about why Apple will do well with the launch of their new phone. Or why Microsoft will dominate cloud infrastructure. People still feel a bit uneasy about pulling the trigger on an investment. Most of us do not think twice about buying a new pair of expensive sun glasses, or a pair of $1000 shoes, but for some reason, buying a few shares of Facebook makes the hair in the back of our necks stand up.

I do not blame you for feeling perturbed for investing in the stock market. We tend to remember the last famous crisis in 2008. The market was cut by 37% during that time. People lost vast amounts of money during those days, and that can make anyone feel uncomfortable placing their hard-earned cash in a stock. Still, if you would have stayed the course, and done absolutely nothing, you would have increased your money by double.

I understand it is hard to stay invested when you wake up every day and see your portfolio swimming in a sea of red. Most people would sell at this point. Most people would be wrong to do so. Once you sell you can never make up what you lost. This recent bull market is the prime example. Let me show you a chart of the historical returns for the S&P during the last 3 decades. I’ll let you be the judge.

Now that you have seen what happens during and after a down-turn in the market. You can adjust your expectations accordingly. You will not be able to make money on every single trade or investment you make. But you can identify when you have a winner or a loser. You can figure out if you should buy the recent dip or if you should sell the recent spike.

How can we identify a good stock from a bad one?

Often times we come across a product or service we like. I’m sure some of you own an iPhone, use Instagram or Facebook, shop at Amazon, or hunt for bargains at a Ross Stores or T.J. Max. The first and easiest step in identifying a good investment from a bad is being a customer. Pay attention to how their customer service department handles its customers. Pay attention to the quality of the product you’re buying and how satisfied you may feel after buying. Would you buy from that company again? If you like what you see, and enjoyed being a client. The next thing you should consider is, “Can I invest in this?”

Assuming the company in mention is publicly traded. We can easily find out how it’s doing. Pull out your smartphone or PC and type a quick search for the company’s ticker name. Once you find it, you can use any of the free financial sites out there to search for a chart of the company’s stock price and financial statements. For the most part, this information is available for the last 3-5 years. Read all the news articles and analyst reports you can find. Get yourself familiar with what others are thinking and saying about the company. I like to look at both aspects. The good and the bad. That way you will have the ability to make an informed decision. In this game, the more information you have, the better.

After reading all the news articles you could find and analyst reports. Stop, and think about what arguments you agree with and which arguments you do not. Weigh the negatives and the positives. If you feel like this company has a good future and you could find arguments to support that view. You are ready to dig a little deeper.

The aspects I like to look for in any particular company are as follows:

• Brand recognition and loyalty.
• Good customer service and customer retention.
• Innovative initiatives (is it still relevant today?).
• Competition landscape (the less competition, the better).
• Barriers to entry (can they keep others from steeling market share).
  • No recent legal and/or accounting issues.
• Can you understand the business?
• What about this company makes you excited?
• Is it diversified or does it dominate its industry?
• Does management seem honest and eager to continue innovating?
• Is it a disruptor or is it being disrupted? (stay away from the disrupted)

In the next part, I will go into what to look for in financial statements. That is usually what I like to do after I determine if I am interested in any particular company. Prior to digging into a company’s financial statements. Write down 3-5 reasons why you want to buy any particular stock. If you are not able to find at least 3. That means you should look for other opportunities. I will explain why this is crucial in my next post. Do your homework. 😊

Before we get into what it takes to make money in the stock market, and how. We must ask ourselves, “Can we beat the market?”

The so-called “professionals” will most likely tell you that you have no chance in competing against them and consistently beat the market. For the most part, they recommend you put your money into a Mutual Fund or an index that tracks the Standard and Poor’s 500 and let them do the heavy lifting for you. This is not to say these professionals can do better than the bench mark, they only believe that if they can’t beat the market, with all the resources available to them, you certainly would fail trying because you do not have anywhere near as much information as they do. Depressing, right?

I am not here to tell you anyone can beat the market. It isn’t easy at all. If it were, Wall Street pros would be out of work.

I am here to tell you that you can beat the market only if you’re willing to do the work. If you’re willing to put in the time to learn through your own mistakes, as well as through the mistakes others make, your chances of beating the market will increase exponentially. In fact, retail investors have certain advantages that the pros do not have. These advantages are the tools that we will use to beat the market and put an end to the old myth that retail investors are incapable of beating the market.

As the manager of Fidelity’s Magellan fund, Peter Lynch was able to beat the market from 1977 to 1990, with average annual returns of 29.7% during that time, Peter Lynch became a Wall Street legend. Mr. Lynch believes that retail investors can beat the market by simply utilizing their own knowledge of the marketplace. Lynch states that by doing research, having patience, and resilience average investors can outperform the market. Lynch found some of his best ideas when he was out with his family, traveling or talking with friends and associates. As one famous story goes, one day his wife excitedly told him how much she liked L’eggs pantyhose, a new product she’d just tried out. After looking into the company’s prospects and liking what he saw, Lynch bought stock in the Hanes Company, maker of L’eggs, and his fund investors realized a 30-fold appreciation.

Peter Lynch is not the only one who has put this theory to the test. Dozens of portfolio managers in The Street have also successfully implemented this style of investing. From Warren Buffett to Jim Cramer, many have amassed vast wealth and success simply by using every day knowledge. In my investing career, I have adopted this method, making lots of money for my clients over the years. This is why I believe that you can beat the market as well. So, if you really want to learn and put some extra cash in your account, follow me through this journey.

In the course of the following months, I will share with you everything I know about picking stocks. From how to identify an investment, to how to valuate it, and determine when to buy or sell it. Check in to the blog often, you never know what new things you may find.

I still recall February 2015 like it was yesterday. One early morning, I rise up to beat the Thika Road traffic madness so that I can be in the office by 8:00am as is expected of every employee. That Tuesday mid morning, the PA to our then Managing Director steps into my office in the middle of a meeting and says, Sylvia….stop what you’re doing and join the rest of your colleagues for an emergency meeting. I was like, ” What the hell is happening”? So I join the other employees in a what seemed to be a very important ongoing session. The mid level management were still not in the room, so we all sit tight and wait patiently. The previous day, one of the bosses had asked us during our usual Monday staff morning meetings to carry our resumes again for the third time as the Human Resource Manager from the mother company would be visiting the next day. So in my mind I was like, I hope this “mama” is ready to give me a raise for being a competent employee for the past one year. Perhaps she was coming for a job evaluation. After all, these people have never reviewed our salaries upwards, not to mention the times I had to work overtime and take on extra work after their payroll manager was on maternity leave, all these without asking for an extra dime in a what was considered to be a start up in the local media industry.

In a few minutes, the managers accompanied by the CFO and a few executives from the head office join us and a guy in a very sharp suit stands up and addresses us in a less-than-ten-minute speech. His exact words were, “I am sorry to let you guys know that the PPO was successful but we simply can not afford to keep some of you as employees from next month moving forward. We have terminated your employee contracts and we will compensate you fully for three months pay. I have signed your termination letters, you will be entitled to a free counseling session after you clear with the company and receive your final cheques in two days time”.

The silence in the room was so loud, you could see the anger and disappointment written all over people’s faces including that of the Managing Director. In short, this CFO guy was saying, “Thank you for your services but I have to fire some of you. The Print and Radio department were shut down with immediate effect. So, in a span of 10minutes, people had lost their jobs. We were now waiting for the HR to call us one by one and issue the letters and if you were the unlucky one, get your stuff and head back home. The MD was so infuriated, he left immediately and asked his junior managers to deal with the B/S. I mean how do you just show up and fire half of my staff without my knowledge?

Eventually, people are sent home but for some reason, my letter is hidden till Friday, because they have to do their internal controls and be sure that the accountant(me) does not leave with any company money. I begin to connect the dots. That’s why they had sent me an auditor to come and have a sit down meeting with me just before they relayed the news. I am cleared. I tell the auditor that I will be there the next Monday to hand over, as was expected of me. Before I leave, I insist to have a word with the manager. I had a good working relationship with him, so I thought he owed me an explanation at the very least. I mean how do you just show up with a letter and three months advance payment and exchange that with termination of my services? Like really… It’s like saying to me, “That’s the end of your career”. Considering that this was my first job immediately after campus. We all know what tarmacking means for the Kenyan graduates. I walk up to his office and there he is, somewhat depressed, I boldly ask him to tell me the truth. At that moment in my life, I was seeking for an honest answer, I wanted to know why he would let them fire me, I wanted to understand why I was sent home, I was in denial especially because the year was still relatively new.

This guy forgets that he is my boss and at that moment, he spoke to me like one of his daughters. He told me his next action plan, that he has written a letter to the CFO asking him to buy the whole company: including his staff and be totally independent from it. At that moment I’m thinking, ‘Damn you!…..The things money can do. Money is good”. He asks me as his accountant to estimate the value of the company and give him feedback within the shortest time possible. He also assures me that my job is not lost, my efforts are not forgotten and that I should expect a call from him any time within a month. I am obviously shocked by his response, one minute I am fired, the next minute I still have my job. So I tell him, I need some time to think and process all that information, it was too much to take in. I go back home and the first person I talk to about it was my mum. As I was telling her, she noticed a smile on my face. She told me that it has been a while since she last saw me smile. She welcomed me with motherly love and told me, “It’s going to be alright”.

I mean it was like I was relieved that I had lost my job, and in all honesty I was. It was one of the most toughest jobs I had to deal with in my life. It was stressful sometimes. I called in sick on some days. I had to deal with endless calls from suppliers who were not getting paid on time. I had to deal with negotiating for the company’s working capital as though it was my own company. I had to deal with all the financial challenges a start up encounters within its initial stages. Sometimes, the management would give me a thumbs up and a mention me during the usual staff meetings. That was their way of saying, I appreciate your job, and that, that kept me going, not the salary because it meant nothing.

One month later, my former boss calls me for a meeting. He says to me that the company was in transition and that he would like me to continue offering my accounting services as they figured out how to to be totally independent. If only this guy could read my mind, he wouldn’t be offering me a second chance. So I sit there and listen and have a cup of tea. When my turn to speak comes, I start negotiating for a pay rise. It was the most reasonable thing for me to do at that time. You can not fire me and expect me to come back and work for you with the same terms and conditions. At that time, I had a chance to be proud of my achievements and rightfully ask for fair compensation. However, my request could not go through as he was not the only guy with a say when it came to matters of remuneration.
The other senior manager tells me, Sylvia you’re a young girl, if you were to come back, we would still pay you as we were paying you initially, it’s not like we have started to make profits a month after you left. Those words ignited a spark in me, deep down inside, this guy was saying to me you’re coming back to the original position and for the same remuneration I paid you before I fired you. So I did what my gut told me, I walked out. Then called the manager and told him, I appreciate your gesture but I can not work without a pay rise. He asks me how much are you worth? I can pay you from my own pocket……and at that moment I’m like damn you, the things money can do….money is good.

Long story short; I said no to the job offer and decided to go solo. During that one month that I was at home, I took some time off to think and ask myself tough questions. I asked myself, the very same question my boss asked me, “How much are you worth?” It was not an answer I could figure out by myself in one day, so at the end I resolved that no employer can actually pay me what I consider to be my worth. It was a combination of job satisfaction, passion, flexibility in terms of my time, the freedom to work, sleep and meet people at my convenience, the patience to know that I can make it if I put my mind to it and work towards achieving my own goals and aspirations.

It was my wake up call, my entrepreneurial journey. Two years later, I am a happier girl, it’s challenging YES, it’s also very rewarding YES, YES, and I can not trade my last 12 months experience for anything. I have gone through some milestones I wouldn’t have if I was still an 8-5 employee, I have learned how to value time and money, I have made new business partners, I have made new mentors and fellow entrepreneurial minds, I have gathered the courage to know that I can determine my own paycheck.

This note is dedicated to all the Kenyan youth going through a hard time trying to find jobs, there is hope, you just need to believe in your gut!!!

Day 9 of #222daysofforexeducation

I don’t want to sound cliché, but you can either be passionate about trading, or don’t do it at all. About 1% of market participants in the markets are successful, do not factor in the market makers, the big corporate manipulators such as Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan just to mention as examples. Also, do not factor in the hedge funds and High Frequency Traders (HFT’s). So what does it take to be among the 1%? Pretty much your passion, some call it obsession. It’s passion that makes you wake up very early while others are sleeping to catch the Asian markets if you trade them, it’s passion that makes you sleep late to do your evaluation or analysis of your trades and record them in a journal for monitoring, it’s passion that keeps you going whether you have winning or losing trades, It’s passion that keeps you looking at charts if you’re into price action, it’s passion that keeps you glued to market news and websites such as Bloomberg, Marketwatch, Reuters if you’re a fundamentalist, it’s passion that causes you to take up literature related to Forex trading and read to gather more information, constantly reinventing yourself because the markets are dynamic, it’s passion that makes you listen to Forex podcast interviews from professional currency traders say for an hour daily, it’s passion that makes you find a mentor or pay for a trading coach, it’s passion that makes you take up Forex classes be it online or offline, it’s passion that makes you follow relevant personalities on social media and ignore the noise that comes from trading “gurus”. Passion is your driving force to your trading success, you either have it or don’t start trading at all. You can’t catch a break, and it’s a good thing. You will basically sleep, eat, move, think, talk trading and repeat the same the next day, got to love it beyond a hobby, it’s a serious business, be among the 1%.

Long story short, I attended a seminar from one guy, Greg Secker from the United Kingdom. He calls himself a wealth coach due to his long term career in Forex Trading but no offense, the three hour session was nothing more than a marketing campaign for his trading company. He literally showed us on screen how he would make $40,000 in a span of 4minutes trading live, then after the session which my friends and I thought it would be a dinner of some sort (hahaha), his colleagues told us, to sign up for his trading mentor-ship, we would need to deposit $2,500 immediately which was part of a minimum fee of $8,000 for his coaching and training to be a successful trader using his platform. I was like, did you guys do your marketing research on how much an average Kenyan earns? Looking back after months of doing my research online and reading lots of trading books, that’s nothing but bullshit, yes I said it, bullshit. He was trying to sell us a Holy Grail in trading which doesn’t exist capitalizing on the fact that employment is slavery, well to some extent, it is. Anyway, because my three friends and I combined salaries could not even get to what he was asking for, we went back home, somewhat surprised but I was hyped up, no kidding, to think that someone can make such an amount of money in less than 4 minutes was intriguing.

That seminar ignited a spark in me, and the flame burns up until now, to this present moment. So a friend I had invited to the seminar, a lawyer by profession is very good at research and digging stuff online, he would forward me countless books about trading and then he mentioned www.babypips.com and Walla, that was a match made in heaven, more or less like a good first blind date. So, I was hooked, for close to two years now, all I did was market research and continuous intentional study of what trading entails, my favorite authors being Nassim Taleb, John Murphy, Kathy Lien and Alexander Elder among others. I started watching trading documentaries and movies, if you haven’t watched Wall Street Warriors, get that done when you find some time. I also started to demo trade, what that means to those of you who are new to trading is, opening up a practice trading account with virtual money, not real time cash so as to learn how the markets operate with a key focus on currencies otherwise known as Forex. I started reaching out to trading personalities online and listening to trading podcasts by Aaron Fifield, very resourceful, go to www.chatwithtraders.com, heck, I even formed a Skype network of local traders, we would meet every Tuesday and Thursday to discuss trading, who knew that would be the start of something good? Yes, I love Chris Daughtry too.

Today, Sylvia’s Trading Lounge is a platform that is geared to educate Forex Newbies and Enthusiasts on how to trade from the basics, whether or not you have prior trading experience or not. I have partnered with different contributors with real time trading experience, to offer a training package that is affordable to all whether you’re a student or working professional. Coming from Africa and bearing in mind our wage rates, we have factored in a considerate amount of fee which is reasonable. The rate card can be emailed to you upon request. Our mission is to educate, to impact a life skill that would empower you financially, hence our our charges are subsidized. After all, our revenues are not accrued from marketing and sales, rather from trading income. If interested, sign up or get in touch with us using the contact information on the Contact Us section of the blog.

Of key importance to your trading experience is the Forex Broker you sign up with, I highly recommend Swiss Brokerage Firm and City Credit Capital (UK) ltd , the sign up links are:

https://www.swissmarkets.com/?campaign=1341&p1=&p2=9194&p3=4q4z2v1z#signup.

https://www.cccapital.co.uk/go/forexstl/ respectively.

For more information about the brokerage firm, check out the Partners Section. Now I know what to look out for when searching for a forex broker, and if I had the information prior to signing up with Big Options from the United Kingdom, I probably would have not signed up with them in the first place. The first thing you need to check out when doing your due diligence is whether or not the broker is regulated and by whom. Secondly, you need to ask about their leverage ratios, your ability to access your funds and make withdrawals and deposits, their customer service, if they’re available 24/7, markets don’t sleep, every day Monday through Friday, the London, New York and Asian Markets give us an opportunity to make money or lose it through Forex Trading with daily volatility averaging between 6 Trillion US Dollars. Forex being the most liquid financial markets globally.

The content of this blog will be based on real time trading experience from my contributors and I. Important to mention is my work in progress, my first book dabbed #222daysofforexeducation which I started working on it on 1st February 2017, every day, well on trading days, I share some educative post on forex trading, after all, the information is available online thanks to the internet, so I figured, why not educate the public on Forex Trading and reduce the ignorance associated with Forex myths that it’s nothing short of gambling. The book will be published and available for sale at a small fee by mid year 2018. I really hope this site educates and enlightens you matters trading, do enjoy the read. Cheers!

My Forex journey goes way back in early 2014, I had just graduated from Kenyatta University with a degree in Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Finance. I had got an accounting role in a local media startup which was later shut down due to the digital migration in 2015 (story for another day). During the one year that I served in the position of a Finance Assistant, I was itching inside, I knew deep inside that there has to be a way out of the corporate 9-5 job in (Kenya 8-5 and overtime with no pay for overtime in the private sector in the name of giving you “exposure”) with my major motivator being by brother who had successfully started his own company and was doing really well after one year of struggling. So I signed up with Big Options traders from the United Kingdom with an initial investment of $250 which was one of the mistakes I did early on and I will tell you why.

I knew that guys usually make investments in the markets but I had no clue of how it works. I was bold, and somewhat a risk taker. The fact that I was assigned a senior broker to help me manage the account gave me confidence that I would be in safe hands. I did not do any due diligence on the company, I had no idea that brokers had to be regulated. Looking back, I can now confidently say that the initial investment of $250 is rather too small an account to think of being a serious trader. Due to the eager nature I had and my curiosity to start trading, I lost all my money in a span of one week. Let me break that down to you, my trading account had what is to be a BUY and SELL signal, it was diversified, I could see currencies, commodities like gold, copper, and oil, and then there was an option of a trading robot. I was so impatient, I went ahead to click on the buy and sell signals without knowing what I was doing or even waiting for direction from my allocated senior broker, My account gradually dwindled to I think $140, then up by a few dollars and then down, all the way to zero in less than 5 days.

A panic attack, hahaha, you know losing $250 can be painful to a new graduate, especially because I would make less than $500 after tax deductions on a monthly basis in my accounting role, sad facts about the Kenyan Employment Law, industrial wages are like trying to live in Mars while on Earth, they aren’t followed and employers think they are doing you a favor by giving you a job, that sucks, I know. So I received a margin call from the broker asking me what really happened. He asked if I had used the option of a trading robot, I told him no. He also asked if I knew how to trade, I told him no, he asked if I was serious about taking up trading as a profession and I said yes. To my shock and surprise, he started bugging me with calls the next few days, that if I wanted him to manage my account, the least minimum trading capital I would have to allocate to my trading account was $5,000. Today, YES, that makes sense for a standard mini lot account whose threshold is actually $10,000. In my mind, I was like, where do you think I can get that kind of money, I’d have to save my salary for a couple of years to start trading. Then he asked me how much I make in a month, an ACCA qualified and a degree holder in Finance. When I mentioned my salary, he was like, you earn less than the immigrants in the UK who work as domestic workers, in fact, you earn less than a waitress in the United States for a day’s wages. I was like, where do I live? Yes, process that and get that to your head.