What is forex trading and what’s the hype about it right now?
Forex is short for foreign exchange, which is the trading of one currency for another. These trades happen on the foreign exchange market which is operated electronically through banks, brokers, and other financial institutions, Investopedia reports.
Christopher Raxton first got his experience with forex trading during his undergraduate career at Michigan State University when he came across TradeHouse Investment Group. TradeHouse is a community of financial leaders who educate people on how to properly invest in the foreign exchange market. The group champions itself for being all about financial literacy while giving its members access to resources and tools to earn money.
Raxton is 24 now, living in Atlanta and leading his own company called Money Team Investment Group. While he was in law school, he decided to switch careers when he found himself finding much success trading in the foreign exchange market. AfroTech talked with Raxton about his experience with forex and how he plans to grow his own venture.
So first, tell me how you got into the forex business?
At the time I first found out about forex from a coworker, I was working my internship at Quicken Loans. I was thinking like, alright, I’m going into my last semester at MSU, I don’t have a full-time position lined up yet so I’m not about to waste my time. I basically turned down the opportunity and it was crazy because back then, the organization [TradeHouse] was only 50 people.
Fast forward to March 2018, I did my last semester at Michigan State and I was working the front desk in Butterfield when I go on Instagram and see that same guy who was working the same internship as me living it up in Miami on a weekday. I was thinking, ‘Clearly, I need to be doing what he’s doing.’
I hit him up and he got me enrolled with TradeHouse. After my first time trading, I ended up making $1,000. I thought it was cap until I literally saw the money hit my Chase account. Soon after, I quit my job at MSU and started doing this full-time.
There are so many myths and jokes floating around about forex, why do you think that’s the case?
The reality of it is, you can’t fault people for thinking that way if they don’t believe something like making money with forex is realistic. Naturally, people are afraid of what they don’t understand. With our generation specifically, if it sounds too good to be true, we choose to automatically not believe in it.
It’s about thinking like the one percent, but most people our age aren’t willing to do that. Another thing is the lack of consistency and not taking accountability. For instance, someone will sign up and get started, they’ll win three trades in a row then they go and risk everything and lose it. Then they blame the system when in actuality, it was them not being disciplined. This behavior causes so much turnover in the forex industry, causing even more doubt about its realness.
What do people mean when they say working with forex investment groups are pyramid schemes?
Honestly, I love that question. In most jobs, you work your way up and typically, it’s going to take you multiple years to get a pay raise of a substantial amount. With working with forex investment groups, you’re doing the same thing but you control your pay unlike in a regular job. No matter how hard you work or how little you work, with a salary job, you get the same payment.
With forex investing, you get two streams of income, but what it comes down to is people are only looking at one side of the business. No one ever said you have to tell people in order to make money but some people promoted it so aggressively to the point that others thought that’s all that it was about. When it comes to being in this social media era, people feel like forex traders are begging them to sign up.
How will you continue to debunk the myths surrounding forex investing?
The beauty of it is, because of how much success we’ve created, there’s not even a need to debunk anything anymore. I’m keeping it a hundred with you so, at this point, stuff like that doesn’t even register in my brain anymore. If people don’t believe in the lifestyle and convert, they won’t be on the side where the money resides.
What are your plans to expand Money Team Investment Group over this next year?
I want to do more with scholarships and giving back to the community. I’m in the works of getting my foundation established so I can give back more to people who deserve it, especially young kids. I plan to continue to inspire people to show them we can be more than what society holds us to.
