In this episode, Kevin Jefferson, a West Point graduate and seasoned financial expert, delves into his transition from a corporate role to becoming a self-taught Forex trading expert. Kevin shares his expertise in financial advising and Forex trading, highlighting his development of the Forex for Dads program, which provides fathers with a clear path to financial freedom. He simplifies complex Forex concepts and strategies, making them accessible and actionable. Tune in to gain valuable insights from Kevin’s journey and learn effective Forex trading techniques to achieve financial success.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Kevin Jefferson @helpmademillionaire on Instagram and visit his website fmtrades.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1
In this episode, Kevin Jefferson, a West Point graduate and seasoned financial expert, delves into his transition from a corporate role to becoming a self-taught Forex trading expert. Kevin shares his expertise in financial advising and Forex trading, highlighting his development of the Forex for Dads program, which provides fathers with a clear path to financial freedom. He simplifies complex Forex concepts and strategies, making them accessible and actionable. Tune in to gain valuable insights from Kevin’s journey and learn effective Forex trading techniques to achieve financial success.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Kevin Jefferson @helpmademillionaire on Instagram and visit his website fmtrades.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1
Welcome to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the mentor, and on this episode I have the honor of hosting Kevin Jefferson, a distinguished expert in financial services and Forex trading with over two decades of impactful contributions. Kevin is also a West Point graduate who successfully transitioned from the military leadership side to pioneering financial strategies that empower businesses and governments alike. So join us as we dive into his journey and explore the intricacies of global financial markets. Let's go. Thank you, kevin, for joining Money Focus podcast. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. The first thing I always ask my guests is to open up with talking us through your career journey, professional journey and, ultimately, how you started your business. So the floor is yours, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here with you and your viewers and the people that you serve. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here with you and your viewers and the people that you serve. I guess I'll take it back to college, because I think that one of the questions I get often is did you get a degree in finance to go into the area that you served in? And I did not.
Speaker 2:I graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. I was an English major actually literature and philosophy major and I minored in information systems. I knew that computers were important, computer science was going to be important and I was gearing up to be a systems engineer or do something just to make sure I could get paid when I got out of the Army. But my first goal was to go into the Army and serve as an officer. I was a field artillery officer and served here and overseas, over Kuwait and kicked up some dirt and made it back safely. But I knew that I really wanted a career beyond the army. But one of the things as far as West Point and how it was involved was our mantra and our motto and our focus and our ultimate goal, even after we graduate and leave. If we leave the military or if we stay in or whatever is, we commit to a lifetime of service to the nation. And so in my mind, because I really had a fascination with finance, I felt that that was the best way that I ultimately would be able to be of service to others and, quite candidly, to people in my community. And so when I got out of the military, I went to work for Georgia Pacific out of Atlanta. Actually, when it was when it was not a company and a great program that I went through, they had a fast track management program where they were taking former officers and NCOs and bringing them into leadership positions to help grow them in the company.
Speaker 2:Specific uh, before I even got into finance was not only did I learn the ins and outs of business, because we learned everything from customer service to design, to sales, to shipping, to supply chain management, all that stuff and I just learned how you can make money with something that that seems so innocently simple. Right, you don't think about brown boxes, cause I was in their corrugated division. They now they have a million different products, million different products, but my division that I worked in was corrugated, the brown box division. Most people call it cardboard, but that's not correct. And so I'm riding for all the corrugated producers out there and say it's corrugated board. But nevertheless, when you get that brown box, whether you get in the U-Haul, you know truck, or you're going to Home Depot or you're picking up something, or even you know your Eggo waffle boxes, those things. Those were being made, you know, by companies like that. You don't realize the power and the value that's in that. And so you know these boxes that people buy, which aren't inexpensive, but it was a billion dollar industry. And so the first lesson I learned going into business was that you don't have to have the sexiest thing, you don't have to have the most innovative and cutting edge product. You just have to know how to create something and meet demand and find a way to create value and create margins along the way. And it was a really great intro into corporate.
Speaker 2:I actually had an opportunity to join Amazon in the midst of that and I remember, you know, just showing the conservative Virgo and the African-American in me when they reached out to me. One of the headhunters reached out for me to join Amazon. I remember knowing that they were not profitable, and this was 1999-ish 2000. And so it was just one of those times where I was like I don't know if I need to, as a black man, go to a company that ain't making no money. As a black man, go to a company that ain't making no money. And so I, you know, I was like let me stay at Georgia Pacific, where everything is, you know, is all kind of taken care of, you know, is going great. I don't have any reason to leave. But they were paying way much, you know, much, much more money. And I guess the longer it showed up, if I go in there, maybe, you know, maybe this would be, maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Speaker 2:But when I, uh, I've got with George Pacific, I had moved to Alabama, and this was in the time in the nineties, where you still had bookstores and you had Barnes and Noble and things like that, where they were much more prominent. And so, um, I remember on weekends I would go to Barnes and Noble and start studying about not finance like as a subject, as a financial you know analyst or anything like that, but how to become a financial advisor, how to become a financial planner, and I knew that that was kind of the role that I wanted to operate in, and so I would spend weekends just studying, you know, about ADB forms and how do you get paid to be an advisor. And, coincidentally, in was it 2001? Yeah, 2001,. I got a call from Merrill Lynch to ask me to come and interview to be a financial advisor with Merrill, and so this was actually November of 2001. So when you think about the time frame, it really was kind of an interesting time frame to want to go and be a financial advisor.
Speaker 2:The markets were bad because of September 11th. You know, everybody was scared, nobody knew what the future held, but that was a level of conviction that I had when I decided to go down that path and try to learn how to do that, and so it was really one of the best things that happened for me, because I got into the industry at a place to where I could confidently say that I had to learn what would motivate people to take action and I had to learn how to create value where there seemed to be no value. And I think that you know, even a year or two earlier, where that was the you know, the dot-com era, for those who don't necessarily remember or were alive at the time. The dot-com era was where, you know, everybody thought that the internet was the future. It's kind of like AI right now in in, in, in the electric cars. Everybody kind of sees what it can become. But sometimes we rush it in crypto, even to more to my industry. But people can see the potential of NFTs and all these things, but we haven't really settled into how it. How it augments the human, the human experience, right, and so that was what the 90s were. How it augments the human experience right, and so that was what the 90s were.
Speaker 2:As far as the internet, everybody thought everything was going online, that the malls would disappear, and they were about 30 years too early. Now malls are disappearing, but it was about a half a generation late. But the same thing, ai won't take that long and the things that we're in won't take that long, but we've seen this before. So, but the point was in the nineties there were people who were trading, you know, day traders, who were trading equity stocks and all those things, and they thought that they could hang the moon. And then when the market takes, I remember you know everybody was closing shop and you know and going back to work, and so I say that, as a financial advisor, I think one of the benefits I had working for me was I did not think I was the greatest, I did not pick anything for anybody, and I also hadn't lost anybody any money, and so it was a great opportunity for me to create value and do some different things.
Speaker 2:And so in 2001, 2002, when I was with Miro, they had some really high and they still have some really high what they call assets under management goals, to where you have to bring in millions and millions of dollars a year and you don't really necessarily know everything that you need to know, but you know that you need to bring in clients, and so I would reach out under these conditions, understanding that people were scared. I found that my niche was with business owners and entrepreneurs, because in Huntsville, alabama, there are a lot of businesses, there are a lot of government contractors, there's a lot of government contractors, there's a lot of people offering services that complemented government contractors, and so there was still a lot of industry that needed to go forth wiring, harness, manufacturing companies, all kinds of companies and what I call business owners, because this is how you know understanding how things are related and correlated can allow you to add value. Because the market was down, interest rates were down and, just like interest rates up now to slow the economy, interest rates were down to stimulate the economy. And so I will call them about the interest rates on interest rates on their business lines of credit and say you know, how would you like to explore getting a better rate on your line of credit? And no business owner in his right mind is going to say I'm not interested in saving money, particularly in a time where every penny counts right. And so where we started creating conversations around how to redirect corporate dollars from going to the government and creating employee retirement plans, 401k plans and healthcare plans and things to help the business shore up, not only financially but from a goodwill standpoint. And so it was really one of the best opportunities, one of the most serendipitous situations for me, because I was able to really craft a career out of creating real value.
Speaker 2:And so, fast forward, I moved back to Texas. I'm from Dallas, so I moved back to Dallas in 2009 and I stumbled upon Forex trading in 2008. And now? So the reason this is kind of interesting is because I had a client when I, before I went independent, I actually became an independent advisor, went for Merrill, got recruited to Edward Jones and then I went independent. But I had a client named Sid Hutchinson this guy African-American gentleman in Huntsville who was a retired tailor tailor and we were at his house signing some paperwork for some bonds or something he was buying, and this is maybe 2004. So the market was kind of coming back and I remember him saying you know, I've never seen anybody who had a trade who wanted to work, couldn't work.
Speaker 2:And I remember that sticking with me because as a financial advisor, your trade is really sales and your trade is really, you know, you have customizing solutions and strategies, but really you're a salesperson and so it's really about personalities more than anything else. And so I remember that I wanted to have something that wasn't dependent so much on having a client come through the door to where I could generate income. And that was where I started on the journey of trying to learn how to trade equities trading stocks. And that was where I started on the journey of trying to learn how to trade equities trading stocks. And so I bought a book on trading stocks and it was it was literally like reading another language that I didn't know, and but I was.
Speaker 2:I was committed to that process, and so, through some life changes, I moved back to Dallas and, in 2008, I stumbled across Forex with CNBC, the cable channel. They had this thing called the portfolio challenge, and so what the portfolio challenge was is they would give you a million dollars of demo money, notional money, and you could build out a portfolio of your choosing, from ETFs to stocks to, you know, bonds, whatever you wanted to do, and the portfolio that grew the most or had the greatest performance over you know a period of time actually won a million dollars, and so I did not get to the point of where I was a million dollar winner, but it did give me access to Forex, because I competed in this competition for several years, even before I got into the financial advisory business. But at this point, I was a little bit more astute, and so I found Forex was one of the asset classes that they had added, and so I took a piece of the million dollars and put like maybe a couple hundred I don't know 100 to 200,000 in the Forex, and what I bought? And I think I bought the euro versus the dollar, because in 2008, 2009,. The euro was much more in greater demand, it was at much greater value than the dollar, and so I remember buying it and not really understanding what made 4-H work. And I looked at the portfolio a couple of weeks later and it had grown exponentially I mean, maybe nearly double. And so I was like, okay, what did I do? What was that that made it grow so much? And it was the 4-H component, and so the bug bit me.
Speaker 2:I got intrigued about it and I set off to the journey of learning about it and going through the perils of learning about it as well. You know, it's no different than any other skill set that you have. You know, whether it's real estate, whether you're in, you know IT, whatever it is, you do have a learning process, and you know when you. You know that learning process can be very expensive, and the more expensive it is sometimes, depending on how you, how, how you get to that expense, um, the faster you learn. And so, um, I, you know I had that, those bumps and bruises and, and you know, after a very tumultuous week, at one point, um, I had kind of a really a crossroads moment to where I had to lean in and get education and, uh, finally turning it around and saw success and was able to start teaching people how to do it. So I started my.
Speaker 2:I didn't start my business initially. I've been trading for this is 2024, I've been trading for 16 years. I've been I was solely trading in, I guess for about 13 years and I didn't get to the point to where I was like like wanting to launch a course or do anything like that. But after my dad passed in 2015, I kind of leaned into using this skill set to honor his legacy and so I created something called Forex for Dads, to teach dads how to trade Forex so that they could really not have to get a second job, so that they could, you know, be better spouses or lovers or partners. They could be better dads and they could actually be better than you know, better, better, better human beings by having the you know, the time component to where they can actually operate in what I call the fullness of their humanity. You know, I think that's really the big.
Speaker 2:When you talk about real estate, when you're talking about Forex or whatever you're talking about as far as cashflow generation, it's really about the freedom, but it's not just about freedom for its own sake. It's about freedom, in my opinion, it's about the freedom to expand, you know, and so that's why I created Forex to dads was to give dads an opportunity to expand on a human level. You know where we had delivery room dads. You know when you're at your kid's incubator and you're promising, you know all these great things you're going to do for them, especially your first kid. You know you want to just go tear the world up for them.
Speaker 2:You know I got to divorce dads. You know I'm divorced, remarried but divorced, and you know, sometimes you've got the expense to come along with that. You know, up to and including, maybe, child support. And then you have the disillusioned dads to where they may be not making enough money and not have time, which is really bad, or maybe they're making enough money but they don't have the time, which is not great either, because now they can't really be who they need to be for their family.
Speaker 2:And so I started with that, and then it evolved to where we called the Forex family, because I had a lot of ladies who said, well, we want to be included, and so we expanded it to where everybody felt welcome.
Speaker 2:But we started that. You know, 2015 officially, and then 16, we kind of picked up with some boot camps and then we rolled it out online between 16 and 17, where we have an online course and what we call done with you training. So for those of you DIY, the do-it-yourselfers which you know you have a real estate who want to just learn how to do it and do it themselves. But then we had a lot of what we call DWI. You know, if you got a DWI, you shouldn't be driving, so you need some help. So we got the DWI which is done with you, where we had a lot of business owners who came to our courses and they said well, where you can actually learn, but then you can take your time doing that while we help you earn along the way. And so that's kind of brought us to where we are right now. And you know all the iterations of Forex that I've kind of gone through along the way just to kind of keep it, you know, spicy for me.
Speaker 1:That's part of the reason why I do it, not only to serve others, but to kind of make it interesting for myself. So I think that's enough for a nutshell. Can you give us a brief overview of what exactly Forex is For someone who has no experience in Forex investing? Can you give us an overview of what that is for the audience, please?
Speaker 2:Yes. So foreign currency exchange Forex for short is basically the best way to think of it is when you take a vacation. So let's say that you're taking a vacation from the US to a foreign country, you pick one. So let's say, we go to, we go to Europe, and so before you leave the United States, what you normally do is you'll exchange some US dollars for a euro, and you'll do that at the airport or at your bank or wherever, and that's that's basically the first part of a currency exchange, to where you've actually taken your currency and you've traded it for another country's currency. And now, once you come back, you will exchange what you have left over for US dollars. And the reason you normally trade for their dollars first is because the euro is less in demand in the United States than it is in Europe, and so what you want to do is obviously get the best exchange rate through supply and demand. So you'll buy some euro over here and then you'll kind of complete the turn. So what that is is when you're when you're taking a vacation and you make that exchange and then you come back, complete the turn. So what that is is when you're taking a vacation and you make that exchange, and then you come back home after that round trip. They call it a round turn in foreign currency trading, and so what happens is the difference in value between the currency that you have and the currency that you're trading for is there's a differentiation, and you're making money off of that change, or that shift in the difference in value between the two currencies.
Speaker 2:So back to the example of if you took a trip to Europe, if you traded your dollars for euro, depending on how much the euro went up or went down versus the dollar. First of all, your dollars go further when the euro is weaker, obviously. So that's one form of benefiting from currency trading. But, most importantly, the dollar or the euro may change in value in relation to each other while you're on vacation, and so when you come back home, you may get more or less dollars than you started with for the same amount, depending on if the currency fluctuated. So it's basically like a stock market, but it always involves two currencies against each other.
Speaker 2:The only way you can actually make an exchange you have to go out of one currency and go into the other. Now, the thing that makes it work, though, the thing that really makes it worth trading is that you have to realize that the dollar, or any currency that's a highly liquid currency is going to not change very much on a daily basis. And so what's changing with the currency market is actually fractions of a penny. And so if you're thinking about it, you know how can you make money off of fractions of a penny. That's why they have what's called leverage. And so in the stock market you don't have leverage in that respect, unless you, you know you can margin, but generally you don't have leverage in that respect unless you can margin, but generally you don't have leverage.
Speaker 2:You have leverage in options maybe, where you control a large amount of resources with a small amount of money, relatively speaking. You can do the same thing in Forex to where, in the I always use the analogy in the stock market a dollar literally has to go up by 100%, become $2. But in the currency market, $100, because of leverage, can operate like $100. And so if you have the power of using $100 instead of one, now that $100 only has to go up by 1% to become $2. And so you control a larger portion of volume of assets with currency, because that's the only way it makes sense, and through that trillions and trillions of dollars are traded a day through that little shift.
Speaker 2:And the reason that's important is because if the dollar shifted in value, if you think about it, if it shifted in value by two, three, four or 5% a day, like gas prices, even we would probably not be able to sustain industry. We probably wouldn't be able to go to work. We probably, you know, we would have to get pay raises, you know, every week, or you know, adjustments every week because the currency would be trading, would be fluctuating too, too, too volatilely. And so when you're trading pennies on the dollar, you can take very small, minuscule moves that people don't even notice, but you can leverage them up and make them worth more than they are intrinsically, kind of like options trading. And so that's what Forex is when you're using the currency markets to produce returns based on the differences in value multiplied by leverage.
Speaker 1:So what are some core principles that a Forex trader should you know, pretty much hold on to. You know what are some principles that you would recommend that someone grasp as soon as possible.
Speaker 2:So I would say, from a principle standpoint, probably the same principles you would be would take in any other investment, any other asset class, whether it's real estate, or there's stock trading, whether it's ETFs, whatever it is. I would say, in real estate, from a standpoint of, if you're like flipping or you buy an investment for the expectation of a gain, the first thing is just understanding how the market works, right, so understanding there's different vocabulary, like instead of points in the stock market you have pips, which is points in percentage, because you're talking about very fractional pieces of a dollar. And so you've got pips and you need to understand how much you know one pip of movement based on what you're buying and selling. You know what that equates to and it's not as hard as it seems. But you need to understand some of the fundamentals of how the market works. But once you've gotten to the point of fundamentally understanding how to take an opportunity, you know and that's through, that's not an overnight thing. But once you learn how to take a trade opportunity and understand what, what initiates what we call a high probability trade setup, what you want to do is similar to any other market.
Speaker 2:You want to have an entry strategy, entry strategy, you want to have an exit strategy, and you want those before you actually take a trade, because if you plan that out before you take a trade, you're much more logical than you are once you go into a trade. So it's like when you're in a casino, you can call everything right. You can at the craps table, you can call when seven and six is going to hit. When you're at the blackjack table, you can tell when somebody's going to blackjack because you don't have a dog in a fight. And so it's the same thing when you're trading. You want to make sure that you're entering your exit or set before you go in so that your emotion doesn't cloud your judgment. And then, once you you understood an entry and exit, just like a business, you want to know how much you want to buy in for and what points you want to exit. You also want to have what's called risk management.
Speaker 2:So to bring it into real estate terms or terms that people may connect with more, if you're looking at a property and looking at currency, like a property, you want to buy in at a certain amount and then you want it to move a certain amount in your favor before you exit. And so if the spread which is what kind of? Increases the cost of owning the currency, you want the spread to be as low as possible, because that's more profit for you potentially. And so in the case of real estate, you want your interest rate to be lower. You want the cost of acquiring that real estate to be as low as possible, so you want your commissions and your spread to be as low as possible and that way it doesn't take as much on the upside for it to grow. And so, with currency, you want to find the proper places in the market to get in and get out. And then you want to make sure that it's worth your time. And so if you're putting a dollar of work into the market, you want to get at least a dollar plus of return out of the market, or more, maybe one, three, four, five Some people look for one to 10, you know return on their money.
Speaker 2:So, having an entry exit strategy, having a risk management strategy and then, most importantly, maintaining a solid psychology, because I think, just like in any other business, you have wins and you have losses, and you have to really understand that all of that is a part of the game, and the better you get with understanding what motivation drives you as a trader or as an investor.
Speaker 2:You know how greedy you are, how feel free, feel, for fearful you are, how much maybe other aspects of your life that you endure, maybe some traumas, maybe some things that you haven't dealt with All of that can play into your trading, because trading is truly a self-reflection. It's like a mirror to self, because the only person that controls you taking a trade or not taking a trade is you, and so it's really one of the best tools to help you kind of really grow individually as a person, because you have to own everything that you do with it. So those are principles of understanding that you know. If you can own it, you can really grow and be successful at it. Once you learn how to do it from a technical standpoint, successful at it once you learn how to do it from a technical standpoint.
Speaker 1:Cool. So walk us through some differences between forex trading versus trading stocks and bonds, identify some of the differences for the audience and maybe even point out some pros and cons, if you could, sure sure.
Speaker 2:So in the equity markets, you have whatever you have as far as your balance. So let's say, if you've got $10,000 to invest in equities stocks, if you will. The first challenge and not so much now because of technology, but the first challenge you run into is how do you pick the right stock to purchase, how do you pick the right portfolio? Now there's AI and there's different things there now to help you with that, but that's the first thing that the field is so much wider with stock market than it is with currencies. There are only a handful of currencies trading in the world today, and so you have a limited field to learn, which makes it easier. You don't have to pick every currency out there. I'm not trying to trade the ruble. I'm not trying to trade, you know currencies that I think are highly liquid and that they're not going to have the chance of the government being taken over tomorrow, you know. And so there needs to be an intrinsic kind of security with with what the currency represents in the country that it represents. But with equities, you have a much broader field. Currencies is much, much more concentrated. With equities, you have a one-to-one. Of course, you have the compounded interest, but one of the things is, stock prices can get to a point to where you can't afford it. Currency prices generally don't change very much, and so if you have $10,000 to put to work in the currency market, you can actually do more than you normally can in the stock market.
Speaker 2:Now, with the currency market, as I mentioned before, you have leverage, so that means that your money, your $10,000, could have the, you know, could have the power of leverage a million dollars. And so, with that being said, that's why you have to understand risk management very well in operating it, because you can, as well as you can, make a lot of money quickly, you can lose a lot of money quickly In a stock market. You're not going to have the swings as much. So you may earn 20 or 30% a year on an equity, but you can legitimately earn 20 or 30% a month in the currency markets and so, but any amount that you can gain, you can lose, and so you have to understand that. And so leverage makes currency trading a little bit more dangerous than stock trading, just like, you know, options is even maybe a little bit less dangerous. It depends if you own the, you know the equity, not to get too down the road with it, but options uses leverage as well, and so the gain potential is great, but sometimes the loss potential can be great as well. So that's one of the differences between equities, where you don't generally have that. So you're giving up some of the return potential but you're also gaining some, and not really safety, because equities can go to zero as well, but it can go to zero in currency trading, depending on how your leverage is set up with your broker. You can legitimately actually owe more than you go in. So that's one of those things to where you don't always come out at zero. You may come out at a minus and, depending on how cool your broker is, they may or may not make you pay that bill.
Speaker 2:Another benefit is the currency market is open 24 hours a day, about six days a week, essentially, where the stock market is not open that long.
Speaker 2:So you have more opportunities to take trades, because you're talking about a global market as opposed to a US based market.
Speaker 2:So that's one of the big benefits that a lot of traders run into and why they want to trade currency or certain things like that because they have more opportunities to trade. Now the downside to that is, they have more opportunities to trade. And so when you have more chances to go, you know if you're in Vegas for three days, your opportunity to win and lose is limited. But if you're in Vegas for 30 days, then you know you just 10x the opportunity to win, but you 10x the opportunity to lose a lot more. And so the fact that the market is open, sometimes at least, to over-trading and doing things that aren't necessarily best as a trader in any market, and so some of the things that make it great, just like so many things in life, the liberties that you gain from certain things are also the traps and the pitfalls of it. So you've got to be mindful of managing yourself again, going back to self-management so that you can leverage the benefits of the currency market versus the stock market.
Speaker 1:Talk to us about the role that the US dollar plays in the international forex market and also, you know, if you can point out some strategies that people can use to kind of help protect them from the volatility of the US dollar, you know, because it's constantly going up and down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the US dollar really undergirds. It's the central currency to most, if not all, the major currencies. So everything is quoted in most cases. You know, when you talk about the major currencies they're quoted in dollars or vice versa. So the euro is versus the dollar. The only one that's not is that the Canadian dollars. You know dollars are quoted in Canadian dollars but the dollar really just kind of infiltrates the whole market so it kind of creates the liquidity for the market. Even when you're talking about currencies that are not trading directly against each other, the dollar still has a tie to those currencies. So if you have the euro versus the Canadian dollar, the euro CAD, they're connected but they're undergirded by the euro dollar and the dollar CAD and so it's really centrally involved in the currency markets in a lot of ways. And I think that to maybe hedge against the dollar. A lot of people.
Speaker 2:What people sometimes don't realize is that the dollar is actually considered a safe haven currency for a lot of people. You know what people sometimes don't realize is that the dollar is actually considered a safe haven currency for a lot of reasons and so when the markets or when the economy is down or the markets are down, a lot of times people, even globally, they will invest the dollar because of the government's claims, bank, their credit score. So the government, you know, always pays out and you know so it's the safest bet. That score, so the government always pays out and so it's the safest bet. That's why you can buy US government securities or treasuries and pretty much expect to make your money. So, because of the safety aspect, a lot of times the dollar is actually the safe haven. Now, when the dollar is losing value, then you just need some kind of asset. That is the antithesis of the dollar. And sometimes people go to gold, which is not the antithesis, it's actually a safe haven currency. But because it's a limited resource, unlike the dollar, it actually drives a value. Gold, silver, they drive up value as a better store of value because there's only a limited supply and so that's one way to offset the depreciation of the dollar.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, try to stay away from the assets that are heavily interest rate sensitive, like oil or economy or global events sensitive, like oil, and so on and so forth. You want to get into things that maybe are the antithesis of the dollar. So you may buy the euro because it's more, it's considered more of an aggressive currency. But you want to, you know, just do things that have maybe a limited. You know supply and demand is limited and there's a high demand for it when things get rough, as opposed to the flight to the dollar, which actually helps the dollar as well. But over time the scarcity aspect and the actual limited access that people have from a supply standpoint the gold, the silver and precious metals becomes a great place sometimes to store your value and actually still get appreciation.
Speaker 2:Gold this year is up significantly. Back in January, actually, I put out on my YouTube channel a gold buy play that I saw and said you know, if price got to a certain point it'd be great to buy gold and it's just continued to rise. And so you just want assets that when the dollar is dropping, you want to look at where the correlation is. Where the dollar is dropping, this asset tends to rise, and so you have to kind of do a little research on that, because sometimes you know it's bonds. You know treasuries, tips, treasury, inflation, protected securities because of interest rates recently were actually a good investment and still allowed you to stay in dollars if you wanted to. So you have, you know it just depends on the situation, but precious metals, from what I've experienced, have always been a good hedge against you know what happens with the dollar.
Speaker 1:What are some factors that someone should consider when they're picking a currency?
Speaker 2:First of all is the liquidity. Just like anything else, you know you want something that you can get in and out of if you need to. I remember some years ago, many years ago, people would talk about the Iraqi dinar and they were talking about that as something that they thought was going to pop off and they were going to become super rich and make all this money and that stuff is as worthless as wallpaper in an old house. You know so. You know you've got to have a solid government to back the currency. You know, financially you want liquidity and you want demand for the currency. So they need to be tied into the global economy, to where they're actually generating the GDP, to where the currency can actually drive value. And so that leaves you into really a small group of currencies like the Euro, the Australian dollar, which is generally tied to real estate and gold, the Canadian dollar, which is generally tied to oil, maybe the Japanese yen, which, even though they manipulate the currency, it can be pretty steady and it runs a lot, and you know, and then variations thereof. You know that pretty much just the major currencies that you know, if any country that you would normally travel to, that's, you know we consider. You know blue passport countries or red passport countries, some of which you probably would be OK. I wouldn't maybe be trading. You know money from Venezuela or the Real, or you know certain things. There's, you know certain certain countries in Africa that have currencies that are coming back, but a lot of times what you have is just the.
Speaker 2:The amount that it takes to buy is just so. It's such a lopsided difference. You know you really do better just buying. You know heavily weighted currencies. The peso has some opportunity as well as a lesser currency, but generally speaking I would stay with the majors the euro, australian dollar, canadian dollar, the British pound and maybe the Japanese yen is some, some combination of those together, because when you buy currencies from an investment standpoint, you're normally not just holding onto them.
Speaker 2:The way that we make money with them is actually by trading them, just like you do when you're taking a trip. So you want to get in and stay in it until it provides enough value for you that you want to be able to get out, and then you want to do that over and over again because currency shifts so much and they actually over time. When you look at it from a charting standpoint, the market literally just goes sideways. Now. It goes up and down in the short term, in the near term, maybe even over a year, over year, but when you look at over a large period of time, the market is pretty much in a channel, and so if you really want to gain value from it, I think the best thing to do is to trade it versus another currency on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:All right, Kevin. Well, I appreciate you, man, Go ahead and close this out with your final thoughts or advice for anyone that's looking to invest in Forex, and also let us know how we can reach out to you. Provide your website, your social media, just the best way to reach you.
Speaker 2:So the floor is yours, okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. So, just like anything, the best way to get involved is to go and learn and understand fundamentally what it is. I always tell people about the free site Baby Pips or Investopedia, to where you can go and learn about what the currency market is, what makes it work. Once you go on those sites, you'll get way more information than you probably need and some of it you know will be mathematical formulas which you don't even need to know so much to be successful. But you want to go and learn about the principles of what trading Forex is and how it's different than you know stock trading or options trading or things like that. Different than you know stock trading or options trading or things like that. And then you know. What I would say is you know.
Speaker 2:As far as our website, you can find us at fmtradescom F, as in Frank M as in Mike trades with an Scom, and on. There is our social media links and handles. But we're on Facebook as Kevin L Jefferson and the Forex fam F-O-R-E-X fam On Instagram, as at help made fam F-O-R-E-X fam on Instagram as at help made millionaire. I'm H-E-L-P. Made millionaire, and then LinkedIn under my name, kevin L Jefferson, and then we have the Forex fam. I'm sorry, follow my tradescom site, so just go to FNTradescom and then you can find us. You can kind of expand from there whatever, whatever social media handle of your fancy, or have you want to get in touch with us and learn about us from there?
Speaker 1:Well again, you know I really appreciate you joining the show and I'll make sure to include all your contact information in the show notes. So thanks again, kevin. Appreciate you, I appreciate you.