Refer a friend

Patrick Victor doesn’t like to refer to himself as a Forex guru. And yet, he is the brain behind No Nonsense Forex, a channel on Youtube that has amassed over 249K subscribers. Victor is an investor and an educator who insists that Forex market news and common charting tools are “mostly useless”.

He takes this unabashed approach to talk to beginner and seasoned traders about what they should be doing but especially emphasises what they should not be doing. His refreshing approach to Forex trading has also won him 20.9K followers on Twitter too. Victor has been associated with Blueberry Markets for some time now. And we thought we’d let you in on some of his ‘non-guru’ trade secrets.

Has the landscape of Forex trading changed at all since the time you began?

I started in 2009 but went pro in 2014.  There is less volume nowadays, without a doubt.  The year 2014, for example, did have a big drop-off in the summertime, but overall, the first half of the 2010s was one big party when it came to Forex volume.

Also, news events were more impactful around that time. Australia was still very tied to China; Canada was much more tied to oil; people still believed all those ridiculous Chinese economic reports back then and Abenomics was in full swing.

The Eurozone too always had something crazy going on.

What currencies are you betting big on post the Covid-19 Pandemic? Has Covid had any impact on the Forex landscape?

This is actually going to be the focus of my next video. But since you asked, I’ll give a sneak preview here. This is not from a trading standpoint; this is more of being bullish on their futures overall. You want stable currencies which can survive a global economic meltdown, and not be too tied to the USD. This is my criteria. To me, the frontrunners are NZD, SGD, and to a lesser degree currency like CLP and RUB. Most other currencies are either backed by governments who make horrible decisions, are in financial bubbles of their own, or countries that will not be operating from a position of strength when the transition comes.

You speak about money management and trade psychology in your videos as being pivotal to success in this space as a Forex trader. Can you explain this?

This is hard to answer without writing an entire book (which I did). Money management and [trading] psychology are not exciting to people, chart tools are. The punchline however is that money management and [trading] psychology is where almost all the money lies. Money is very exciting.

What should be the top two or three main priorities for a brokerage to succeed? You mentioned Blueberry Markets having a clean user experience as one of them. Can you mention some more?

The first is to make things easy. If you don’t, people will screw it up and blame you for it. Then if something negative happens within your Forex trading ecosystem, be able to clearly explain why, and do it immediately.

They need to have help available and make sure I can clearly understand the person who is helping me. If I can tell that your customer service is poorly trained and following some kind of premade script, I will pull my funds out the next day.

There is absolutely nothing worse than having something happen to your trade/money, you don’t know why it happened, and you are not getting the help you need right at that moment. This is the worst combination ever. Your mind starts creating the most horrible (and often ridiculous) scenarios possible and the broker is the villain in every one of those scenarios.

I learned in my restaurant days — the only thing that yields a higher guest retention rate than giving them a great experience is when you can successfully recover when something goes wrong.  You put the guest on Cloud 9 when you do that.

Why is Blueberry your top choice of broker to work with?

They are always there for the client, always there for me and have a very fair compensation structure. My subscribers rave about them.

What are the typical issues that customers have with brokers? And how can they go about resolving them?

Onboarding seems to be an issue for some. Not sure how you get around that. Some clients also don’t understand widening [Fprex] spreads, and how they can knock out your stop losses, even though the spot price never officially got there. Some [Forex] brokers are more egregious with this than others, but very few seem to provide any education on this matter. They put it in their terms and conditions and think they’re covered.  Again, traders love to vilify the broker when things don’t go their way, and they will leave because of a thing like this, so I would take it a bit more seriously.

How important is it to choose the right Forex broker?

If you are going to be a serious trader, it’s the biggest decision you’re probably going to make.

How critical is reputation when choosing a Forex broker? You mentioned high ratings as one of the criteria.

It depends. Most brokers don’t score well on review sites. Are they really that bad? Usually not. You have to look a bit deeper. I also affiliate with brokers who receive mediocre grades depending on where you look.

Look at most of the negative reviews, and it becomes obvious it was a screw-up or ignorance on the client’s end. This is why I still felt confident affiliating with those brokers. Despite this, Blueberry still manages to receive stellar reviews everywhere. It’s quite remarkable when you think about it. I think it goes back to being able to recover from problems, and having clear communication before those problems occur.

How easy is trading on MT4?

Once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy.

In your experience, how important is customer care in this business of Forex brokerage? Does Blueberry win out in comparison to some others?

I have friends who are airline pilots. Airplanes mostly fly themselves these days, but there is an old saying they all love to mention — “You don’t really need a pilot until you need a pilot”.  Most people can go years without needing any form of help at all. But when they finally do, a broker better deliver. Blueberry is #1 here because they prioritise customer service, whereas most brokers prioritise other things which matter far less.

What are the top issues that new Forex traders have to navigate through when first starting out?

Emotions are a big one — on both the high side and low side. A complete lack of structure is another. They think two months into trading that they can just eyeball the market and be able to pick the right direction, insanity. I’ve been at it 11 years, and I would never be so stupid to pretend like I knew how to do something like that.

What advice would you give to new customers entering the trade now?

Just know the Forex market moves differently than other markets and relies much heavier on technicals. This is a really good thing because you have a much greater measure of control over things because if you want to, you can eliminate a lot of frustrating externals that you cannot control.

What is the age profile of your followers? Which age group is the most enthusiastic to trade? What kind of backgrounds do they come from usually?

I only know what my YouTube and blog metrics tell me. 25-34 is the biggest age group. Females make up about 8%. But there are no enthusiasm metrics, I’m afraid.

How do brokerages from different countries work? Do you deal with some other country brokers too?

It all depends on the regulatory bodies. There’s a reason why nobody wants to come to the US despite it being the world’s largest market. The hoops you must jump through are nothing short of ludicrous.

Being prepared for a financial crisis in what you talk about in one of your blogs. Can you elucidate a bit on this?

It’s probably the worst kept secret out there. You are supposed to let recessions happen organically, they’re healthy. Not only have we not done that, but we also played God with the money supply as if there were going to be no repercussions as a result. Math and economics are still undefeated in the long run. We will pay for the excesses and misgivings of the last 10 years.

How critical is an education in the Forex space?

Forex is simpler than other markets, but there is still a lot to learn.  You can’t just wing it and expect good things to happen, especially long term.

Do you have any tips for people starting out now?

Put a trading system together and test it thoroughly before you trade real money.  You’d be amazed at how many people don’t do this.

Are there any geographies that are more actively trading Forex than others?

Definitely. In the English-speaking world, the US and UK are huge of course, but places like Nigeria and South Africa are absolutely nuts about Forex trading too. The next tier down would be places like Canada, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Germany. In the non-English speaking nations, to my knowledge at least, Brazil and Japan are active. On the other end, Scandinavian countries are way less active than I thought they would be.

What are the top things to watch out for in this space right now?

Volume finally coming back once this house of cards called the global economy falls apart.  You never want to celebrate others’ pain and suffering, but it’s going to be a breath of fresh air in the Forex world.

Read more interesting Forex discussions here.

About The Author

Join us on Telegram
and get real-time
alerts on
Forex,
Indices, Gold, Crypto
and Share CFDs

Join now for free
telegram cta
bbjam graphic

Sign up to
Blueberry Jam

Back up your trade positions with insights
and how-to-guides, straight to your
inbox every week

Thank you. You have successfully subscribed to Blueberry Jam!