Hey everyone!
We’re bringing the good old days back with the revival of our Member Feature project!
We’re gonna have weekly features where you get to know more about some of our highly engaging contributors. We’ve asked them interesting questions about their forex trading experiences, and as always, we’ve injected a couple of non-forex related questions to spice things up!
This week, we’re kicking it off with none other than @eddieb!
If you’ve been reading through different forum topics, it’s highly likely that you’ve come across one of his helpful threads including the Newbies Guide to Becoming a Forex Trader and the Bitcoin and Altcoin Thread. Hailing from England, Eddie has been with us since 2014.
Certainly, he’s gone a long way from being a “total noobie” (as he called himself in one of his earlier posts)! He’s even shared his trading experiences with the community through threads like Gap Trading: Brainwave or braindead? And Balls of Steel. Still, we’re so psyched to get to know more about him!
Without further ado, this is Eddieb!
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are your interests, favorite pastimes, etc.?
I live in London, England, although I’ve travelled around a bit. I am married to a beautiful, highly intelligent woman, and have 3 children. I’ve always enjoyed participation sport, and am very much into nature and travel.
2. What are 3 interesting facts about you?
The only person outside these forums who knows I trade is my wife. I have always enjoyed learning new things - before forex I had taken 2 degrees, learnt French to a reasonable standard, learned conversational Mandarin, and self-educated how to design, build, and optimise websites. I was unsure what to try next and my wife suggested forex as she had a friend whose husband traded, so I Google forex and here I am.
3. What is your most memorable trading experience?
About 9 months after going live the whole Eur/Chf black swan event happened. Luckily I was on the right side of a eur pair trade so did well out of it, but it was quite an eye opener to the risks in trading
4. Forex trading is not an easy business. What motivates you to continue trading when in a trading slump?
Unlike most traders, I don’t trade to make money (although that’s nice and shows progress), I trade to self-educate. So when I do hit a sticky patch it throws me a challenge to trace the cause and attempt to eradicate it.
5. You are the holder of a really helpful thread for newbies: “The Newbies guide to Becoming a Forex Trader.” Here, you’ve shared different tips and techniques that will really guide newbies. But, if you could only give one piece of advice to new traders, what would that be?
I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone with zero knowledge of forex would consider diving straight in with a live account. We don’t do this in other walks of life, so why do some think forex is different?
As I’ve said many, many times, learn your craft before trading. Study at the school here, demo, read the threads and ask questions, but please don’t trade live until you understand forex better and have successfully trialed a strategy.
6. What motivates you to continue helping new traders on our forums? (Thanks for that, by the way. We really appreciate it!)
I hate to see people being scammed or misled, albeit it innocently sometimes. Older members advised me when I first joined, so helping others is the least I can do.
7. What’s that one important thing you’ve learned from spending a lot of time on the BabyPips community?
There is more than one way to skin a cat. We all need to find ways of trading that suit us as individuals, we can’t just copy and paste someone else’s ideas. We need systems that suit our own situations, constraints, and aspirations.
8. We know that you’re quite the bookworm. Do you have an all-time favorite book that you would recommend to the community? If you do, what makes this one special?
It’s not often I read a book twice, but I am currently re-reading Douglas Bottings excellent authorised biography of Gerald Durrell (young Gerry of the tv series “The Durrells” and fiims based on some of his books.
Gerald Durrell lived a most extraordinary life and had some very unique experiences, all of which is captured in this funny, sad, entertaining, and inspirational book.
9. If your life was a book, what would its title be?
At grammar school, my class was instructed to write a pen picture on the person sitting next to them. For 10 minutes we all sat at our desks beavering away, after which we took it in turns to stand and read aloud our work. After I had read my description of the boy next to me, describing him in as much detail as I could cram into the allotted time, it was his turn to reveal his work on me. He stood, cleared his throat, said “Eddie is the most happy-go-lucky person I have ever met”, then sat down again. The class went quiet as we waited for the teacher to bawl him out for writing so little, but instead the teacher simply said “Excellent, and accurate”, then moved on to the next person.
So, there’s my title, “Happy-go-lucky”
10. What is the most interesting place you’ve been?
China. Every time I go there is something new, strange, wonderful, or unbelievable that I haven’t seen before. It may be the sheer grandeur of Beijing, the gob-smacking scale of the terracotta army in Xi’an, standing in Shanghai with beautiful European-style buildings behind me while the view in front of Pudong is like something out of a Sci-fi movie. China should be at, or very near to, the top of everyones bucket list
11. What are you most looking forward to in the next 5 years?
I’m putting plans into place that will, hopefully, allow me to retire or semi-retire so that I can spend more time travelling and learning new things. I would like to relocate, current favourites are either China or South of France, both of which I love visiting.
I agree that you’ve been a very helpful member 
Thanks for the patience in answering silly questions from newbies like me. 
So glad that I got to know more about you! :))) You give me the vibe of such a loving husband. 
Why is your wife the only person who knows you trade forex? And hmmm, if you don’t trade for the financial freedom or money, you gotta have a regular job, right? 
(I don’t think I see it here in the interview.)