The 40 Future Forex Leaders under 40 campaign aims to identify the potential FX Industry leaders. Meet Constantinos Aristophanous, a future industry leader challenged by the Unknown.
6 October, AtoZForex – The Forex industry is well known for its size, major market participants and rapid change. Despite the Forex market is still in its infancy stage, the trading daily volume is about 53 times higher than the NY stock exchange. To keep this all operating smoothly, each of the market participants is responsible for their own part. One of the vital roles is in the hands of the retail brokerage segment, and the professionals working in this segment are often neglected or overlooked.
To give the credit back to those unknown potential leaders, AtoZ Forex team investigate, find and celebrate those professionals working behind the scenes of the Forex industry via the 40 Future Forex Leaders under 40 campaign. Nominating the current industry specialists that have the potential to become the Forex leaders in the market and are capable to influence the industry's future.
Meet Constantinos Aristophanous, a portfolio manager and a trader. Constantinos started his FX career back in 2013, leaving a promising career in banking to try his fortune in the Forex market. Since then he has co-founded AristionFX, a company offering professional technical analysis on various forex pairs, indices and commodities.
What inspired Constantinos to pursue a career in Forex and made him successful as he is today? See the highlights of AtoZForex interviewing Constantinos Aristophanous below:
Polina: "Contantinos, why Forex? What brought you to this industry?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "A phone call from my father.
At that moment my father was unemployed, previously working for a Cypriot airline company. A forex broker called him and offered to attend a one-hour seminar related to Forex trading. He attended the seminar and decided to deposit 5000 euros and to start trading for a living. He phoned me and told about it. When I came back home and opened his laptop, I saw the trading platform and questioned him if it was actually so easy to trade? Within a month he lost the whole account. Following this situation, I said to myself if money could be gained as easily as it could be lost then it’s a worthwhile challenge for me. If it was so simple to lose it must be simple to win. That’s when I started studying the markets, charts and trying to find patterns (I’m a mathematician and a Certified Technical Analyst, by the way). Forex is like a drug addict once you see it you can’t get away from it."
Polina: "May I ask, what is your dream?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "To retire at the age of forty-five and spend all my time with my wife and triplets, traveling and exploring new adventures."
Polina: "Retiring at the age of 45 is a indeed a good dream. What is your biggest motivation in life?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "I’m always trying to be recognized and aspired to achieve the greatest respect from my clients and to make them happy. These are the forces that have been motivating and driving me to reach my goals."
Polina: "Was it easy to get here? What was your biggest challenge during the first two years in Forex?"
He smiles.
Constantinos Aristophanous: "The biggest challenge during the first two years was to find and generate a consistent and profitable trading strategy that produced profits under live market conditions, as there are countless strategies that work only on demo accounts."
Polina: "What about your achievements? What makes you smile and say I did it?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "My biggest achievement as I stated before was the development of my trading strategy and the recognition and adoption from a well recognized and licensed portfolio management firms in Cyprus. My team is currently trading for the majority of its currency clients."
Polina: "Did you achieve this alone? Or was there someone pushing you up the success stairs?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "Well, there are a couple of people I would like to refer to. Kyriakos Kakofeggitis is one of them, I learned valuable skills in technical analysis and his firm helped me to achieve my CFTe diploma. Avraam Konstanti persuaded me to leave my job as a bank employee and together we co-founded AristionFX. Last but not least George Hadjinicodemou and Panayiotis Louka, without their help and devotion the portfolio management would not have been possible for me."
Polina: "In your opinion, what makes you different from other players in the industry?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "Simply I’m a trader, this is what makes me different. I’m not a dealer, salesperson, compliance officer nor an account manager who represent 90 percent of the industry. I’m a trader and it is the hardest, most challenging and best-paying job in the Forex industry because you are winning money by trading the Forex market which is nearly impossible and statistically 95 percent of all traders fail."
Polina: "What do you love the most about your current job?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "The challenge and unknown. Waking up every day not knowing what you will encounter and how the market will react. Will I survive today’s trading day? Will it be a profitable or a losing day? Should I trade today or take the day off? I can beat the market today. This is what I love the most, as opposed to the majority of employees that follow a steady routine on a daily basis."
Polina: "I guess this is not the final height of your career now. What is your ultimate career goal?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "As any portfolio manager would agree on, global recognition and a multi-million currency fund under management is the ultimate career goal."
Polina: "What is your vision of the Forex Industry?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "Well, brokerage firms are rapidly growing now, with the majority of them acting as market makers. This means they (brokers) act as casinos, taking clients’ trades on their behalf and not transmitting the orders through the real markets. Considering the above-mentioned and that all the major brokers are trying to obtain new clients (usually with money under 1000 or 2000 USD/EUR), the share of the pie will grow less and less and this will force the brokers to find alternative solutions to survive.
Furthermore, Forex Brokers will soon be looking for strong strategy and signal providers. Brokerages will control them and the forex industry as a whole will be represented by small clients following profitable strategy/ signal providers. In this way, all the firms will be generating greater volumes and bigger profits. Hence, brokers will have to define good traders and signal providers that trade profitably and consistently, whilst all other clients will be following those professional traders. This has already been initiated via social trading by some brokers. Whereas, others will gradually disappear."
Polina: "Lately, there's too much noise about Binary Options. What is your opinion in regards to Binary Options?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "For me binary options are like someone entering the gambling side or playing roulette: will your trade go up or down. So, Binary Options is only for gamblers.
Binary Options platforms aim to find and attract new clients. If a client wins the platform loses money. If a client loses the platform gains money. So the platforms want their clients to lose to make a profit. The regulators, especially the CySEC, have already begun to take stricter measures against binary options and it’s a matter of time that binary options brokers would be severely reduced."
Polina: "Having past the trader journey yourself, what is the biggest recommendation you can give to traders?"
Constantinos Aristophanous: "From a trader’s perspective, this (trading) is not for everybody, actually, this is only for the most determined, disciplined and unsentimental persons. It must be made clear that you cannot become rich from one day to another. You will fail at the beginning, at some point, you will lose hope and accounts will be lost. Only then you will be on the right path in achieving your goals."
Do you know any other Forex Industry experts qualifying the 40 Future Forex Leaders under 40 nomination? Contact us.