Top Forex Traders: Who Are The Top Forex Traders?

Whether you are completely new to Forex trading or an experienced trader on the foreign exchange markets, all Forex traders share one key aspiration: to become a successful trader.

In order to provide you all with some inspiration, in this article, we take a look at six of the Top Forex traders who were able to become extremely successful in the currency markets.

Furthermore, we will also provide you with some tips to help you become a successful Forex trader yourself. So, who are the most successful Forex traders in the world? Let's find out.

How Many Forex Traders Are Successful?

Before we start our list of the Top Forex traders, how many people who enter the currency markets actually go on to become successful Forex traders?

You may have heard different statistics from different sources stating that the number of people who become the richest Forex traders is extremely small, relative to the number of unsuccessful ones.

However, accurate data on this exact topic is difficult to come across because of the decentralised nature of the Forex market.

The data that is mostly available from Forex and CFD firms indicates that it's not common for people to become incredibly successful Forex traders, as most people stop trading as soon as they begin losing money above a certain threshold.

However, there is very little doubt that the most successful traders are part of an elite and small group.

Trading Skills Shared by Successful Traders

By looking at this elite group of successful and famous traders we can see that they have some things in common.

• Discipline: the ability to create a trading plan and stick to it
• Risk Management: understanding the potential risk of every trade and implementing the right trading tools to minimise this as much as possible
• Courage: the confidence to trust in their work and analysis
• Shrewdness: the ability to judge how perceptions are shaping market trends at any time

It might seem challenging to develop all of the characteristics listed above. However, in the long term, these are some of the most important traits for trading.

Whilst it's guaranteed that you will make mistakes and, consequently, losses - one important thing is that you learn from these mistakes in order to grow and develop as a Forex trader.

So, let's dive in and find out which professional traders display these characteristics and others, on our list of the most successful Forex traders in the world!

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The Top Forex Traders in the World

1.    George Soros

We start our list of the Top Forex traders in the world by looking at one of the most legendary figures in Forex trading history, George Soros. In any debate over who is the greatest Forex trader of all time, Soros is likely to feature prominently.

Soros is regarded as one of the greatest investors in history, well-known for using his exceptional understanding of economic trends to identify market inefficiencies and exploit them with large, highly leveraged trades.

He sealed his legendary status in 1992, when he reportedly profited more than $1 billion from short-selling the British pound (GBP), earning himself the title of “the man who broke the Bank of England” in the process.

Prior to Soros’ windfall, the UK was participating in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which effectively guaranteed that the government would pursue a policy to keep the value of the pound within a certain limit compared to other European currencies.

At the time, the rate of inflation in the UK was high and interest rates were over 13%, leading Soros and other successful Forex traders to believe that the ERM was keeping the UK’s currency artificially high.

The UK eventually withdrew from the ERM and allowed their currency to once again float, which caused the value of the pound to drop, in what is now known as Black Wednesday.

By this time, Soros had amassed a huge short position against the pound worth more than $10 billion, in what will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest Forex trades ever and secured Soros’ status as one of the Top Forex traders on earth.

Soros once said: “I am only rich because I know when I’m wrong”. This quote reflects an important aspect of being one of the Top Forex traders: being able to admit when you are wrong.

For a successful Forex trader, being able to admit when they are wrong and moving swiftly to rectify the mistake is a crucial skill and, in the long-run, helps successful traders minimise their losses.

George Soros has made his way to the top of the list as one of the Top Forex traders to follow and, with an estimated net worth of $8.6 billion, is definitely among the richest Forex traders in the world.

2. Paul Tudor Jones

Easily one of the Top Forex traders ever is Paul Tudor Jones, who is one of the most successful and richest traders in the world, with an estimated net worth of more than $7 billion.

In 1976, upon graduating from the University of Virginia he began trading cotton futures at the New York Cotton Exchange, a job he subsequently lost after falling asleep at his desk following a night out partying with his friends!

He subsequently became a commodities broker and, in 1980, founded his own firm, Tudor Investment Corporation, which trades and invests across a range of assets, including currencies, commodities and equities.

One of Jones’ earliest and greatest successes was predicting and shorting the Black Monday crash in 1987, which we spoke of in the previous section, tripling his money and earning a reported $100 million in the process!

3. Stanley Druckenmiller

This successful Forex trader is actually connected to the previous entrant on our list of the Top Forex traders. Stanley Druckenmiller worked alongside George Soros at Soros’ Quantum Fund for over ten years and considered him his mentor.

Since then, Druckenmiller has developed an esteemed reputation for himself, successfully handling billions of dollars for Duquesne Capital, which he founded. Without a doubt, he has earned a reputation as one of the Top Forex traders in the world.

In addition to playing a part in Soros' well-known success on Black Wednesday, Druckenmiller established a record of impressive profits with Duquesne, leading up to his retirement and now has a net worth estimated at more than $3 billion.

Druckenmiller has said that his successful trading strategy for developing long-term profits is founded on the idea of preserving capital. He aggressively pursues profits during times when his trades are working well and cuts losses quickly when they aren’t.

Druckenmiller’s strategy focuses on the value of maximising opportunities when you are right and minimising your damage in situations where you are wrong. As Druckenmiller stated when interviewed for the celebrated book 'The New Market Wizards', "There are a lot of shoes on the shelf; wear only the ones that fit".

4. Bill Lipschutz

Amongst the Forex trading community, Bill Lipschutz is something of a legend, famous for his inspiring trading journey, which started while he was attending university in the 1970s.

Whilst studying, Lipschutz inherited $12,000 following the death of his grandmother. With this money, Lipschutz began trading and, remarkably, turned this modest sum into $250,000.

However, thanks to one wrong decision, Lipschutz lost the entire $250,000!

For many people, that would have been enough to give up trading for good, but not for one of the world’s Top Forex traders, Lipschutz.

He continued trading and upon graduating joined Salomon Brothers as part of a training programme. Soon afterwards, he was asked to join their Foreign Exchange Department and, by 1985, was making the firm an average of $300 million a year.

In 1995, he founded Heathersage Capital Management, which focuses on trading G10 currencies. Lipschutz describes Forex as a highly psychological market and, like many other successful Forex traders, he believes market perceptions influence price action as much as fundamentals do.

Lipschutz also agrees with Stanley Druckenmiller's view that in order to be a successful trader in Forex, your success is dependent on capitalising on the occasions when you are right. He once, famously, said of trading “You have to figure out how to make money from being right only 20 to 30 percent of the time.”

Lipschutz story of determination and ability to recover from such a devastating loss early in his career to become a successful trader earns him a position on our list of the Top Forex traders in the world.

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5. Michael Marcus

Michael Marcus is another of the Top Forex traders in the world, who is famous for reportedly turning $30,000 into $80 million within 20 years!

He is also one of the founding members of the Commodities Corporation Company. He was trained by the renowned Ed Seykota and went on to mentor another great trader by the name of Bruce Kovner.

Marcus stresses that one of the most important qualities of being a successful trader is patience. He also emphasises proper money management, once stating: “Always bet less than 5 percent of your money on any one idea. That way you can be wrong more than twenty times; it will take you a long time to lose your money".

During the Ronald Reagan administration, Marcus took advantage of the strong dollar to take large positions in the market, once claiming that he regularly held positions worth almost $300 million in Deutsch marks.

6. Andrew Krieger

Any list of the Top Forex traders in the world would be incomplete without mentioning Andrew Krieger.

Krieger graduated from the Wharton School of Business and, in 1986, joined the Bankers Trust, following a stint at Salomon Brothers.

Many considered him to be one of the most aggressive and well-known traders of that era, impressing his firm’s management so much that they gave him a trading limit of $700 million, fourteen times higher than the usual $50 million limit!

In the aftermath of the Black Monday crash in October 1987, in which most markets spiralled downwards by at least 20%, Krieger identified the New Zealand dollar as being overvalued.

He subsequently initiated a heavily leveraged short position against the currency which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, his short position was so large, that it was rumoured it actually exceeded the entire money supply of New Zealand at the time!

The New Zealand dollar subsequently fell by 5%, netting Krieger’s employers a profit of $300 million!

Top Forex Traders: Conclusion

In this article, we have looked at six of the most famous traders in the world. Looking into the Top Forex traders in the world can be an effective way of gaining some extra inspiration and motivation.

However, becoming a successful Forex trader yourself will require a lot of hard work. Perhaps the Top place to start is by ensuring that you have a solid education regarding the financial markets.

Remember that all the successful Forex traders on this list did not become rich and successful overnight. They all started somewhere, developed their skills and grew their trading balances over a number of years, and they all put in the hard work to become successful traders.

Hopefully, this article has given you some insight into the traits shares by the Top Forex traders in the world. As well as lots of hard work, successful Forex traders get to where they are with lots of practice, which clients of Admiral Markets can do with our risk-free demo account.

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