that I could not fix it by shaking the game, or reinsert-ing the batteries backwards, or praying to God, I hid the device away deepin  my  closet,  behind  the  winter  blankets  and  underneath  my  T-ball  uni-form. I put it there for two reasons. First, so my parents would not discoverthat I had broken an expensive toy when I celebrated a home run by spik-ing the game to the floor as if it were a football. The second reason? I knewthat  underneath  the  protective  and  magical  cloth  of  my  T-ball  uniform,there was a chance that the baseball gods would heal the toy and bring itback to life.
I learned soon enough that this was not a useful method for fixing myproblems.  When  my  parents  divorced  later  on  that  year,  it  became  clearthat simply hiding my father underneath my T-ball uniform was not goingto keep my parents from yelling at each other (and in any case, the gamewas still using that space under the uniform). But hiding my problems, orstoring my biggest challenges away in a closet, became one of my most fre-quently utilized methods for approaching difficulties in my life.
But when I purchased the Amazing Forex Profits software, I took con-trol of my financial situation. I was doing something. This felt really good.I knew that my wife would be skeptical, so it was important to hide my de-cision from her at first. This small deception would turn out to be an in-consequential necessity on the road to riches. When she understood howmuch money I could make, it would seem less like a lie and more like asurprise.
Surprise is actually a good word to describe how we both felt about
the results.
I BECOME CONVINCED OF MY GENIUS
A week passed; it was far more difficult to open the trading account than Ihad imagined, especially considering that I needed to fax the forex brokercopies of my passport, utility bills, and everything except the results of aprostate exam. During this time, I watched as the Amazing Forex softwarelived up to its name. During the hours at work alone (as I stayed late everyevening and kept an eye on it during the day), it was racking up hundredsof point gains every day. This was nearly too much for me to bear, as I real-ized how much in dollar terms this could mean.
Knowing that the forex broker (Universal Currency Brokers, based inFlorida) would alert me by e-mail when the account was opened, I decided
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In Search of Amazing Profits
7
to dedicate this unintended downtime to becoming more capable with mye-mail so that I would know immediately when I could fund my account.Scott even took an entire day to teach me to use a BlackBerry, so that Icould receive the e-mail no matter where I was. The more I used e-mail, thecomputer, the Amazing Forex software, and the BlackBerry, the more I re-alized how powerful all this technology was. Perhaps I could run the soft-ware on the BlackBerry and trade no matter where I was. The possibilitieswere endless. This claim of reaching financial freedom through trading didnot seem unrealistic at all.
Tuesday,  March  16,  2004,  at  precisely  12:06  P.M. Eastern  StandardTime, I received the e-mail. I was in the conference room with the insur-ance litigation team, who were debating the merits of charging Wakemanclients in 6-minute increments versus 15 minutes. I was thrilled to be inthe meeting, because it was easy to keep an eye on the BlackBerry, avoiddoing  any  real  work  in  the  office,  and  then  make  a  short  presentationabout how it was possible for our attorneys to bill a bit extra for adminis-trative time by classifying “filing” as “research.” I was near the end of mypresentation  when  my  BlackBerry  buzzed  and  I  knew  that  the  momenthad arrived.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to take this,” I said, excusing myself, “our daughter
is in the emergency room and I’ve got to check on her.”
Every attorney, especially the ones with small children at home, wasquick to excuse me for this important break. Of course I had told a whop-ping lie, but once again, this was a minor indiscretion on the way to a moreimportant goal: my own enrichment.
Outside  the  conference  room,  I  read  the  blissful  news:  The  tradingaccount  was  open  and  I  could  fund  it  with  my  credit  card  at  any  time.I dropped into my cubicle, took out my credit card, and called the forexdealer.
It only took a few moments, but I was so wrapped up in funding the ac-count with $1,000, that I didn’t realize that I was being watched. John Mur-phy, a young attorney who did lots of work with contracts, stood near theentrance to my cubicle.
“I heard you reading out your credit card numbers,” he said. “I didn’t
mean to pry, but is everything all right?”
I  nodded.  “Yeah,  thanks.”  Dang!  He  knew  that  I  was  lying  about  my
daughter going to the hospital. I probably owed him an apology.
“Well if you need anything, let me know. Did you have to pay out-of-
pocket expenses for the ER?”
Hooray!  He  had  no  idea  I  had  lied!  “Yes,”  I  told  him,  adding  another
small lie to my growing list of Minor Indiscretions on the Path to Riches.
“If you need anything, let me know. Your insurance ought to cover it. Iknow we’ve got problems with the benefits here, so I will see what I can doto help.”
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
I thanked him, then I thanked God that I hadn’t been caught, and thenI totally forgot about John Murphy and the ER and the lie. It was time totrade.  I  booted  up  the  Amazing  Forex  software  and  my  trading  account,pinned the “Out to Lunch” sign outside my cubicle, and made sure my com-puter monitor was still positioned so that only I could see it.
Barely had I signed into Amazing Forex (Login: SUPERTRADER_2000,
Password: G$TRICH) that I noticed Scott standing behind me.
“You got your account set up?”Just hearing his voice was disturbing. Right now I needed privacy! Theclock was ticking down, and I only had 37 more minutes of lunchtime tomake as many trades as I could.
“Yeah, Scott. Got it set up. I am going to check it out now, see what’s
going on, you know, during my lunch.”
He nodded. “Gonna make some coin at the office! Nice.”“No,” I replied, showing some frustration in the tone of my voice, “I amgoing to just take it easy today and watch.” I didn’t mean this either. Thelying  was  coming  easier,  and  right  now  I  was  grateful  that  I  could  use  aplausible distortion of the truth to distance myself from unwanted intru-sive eyeballs.
“Well, then I might stay and watch.”I sighed and realized that arguing with Scott would steal precious trad-ing time. “You can stay but just keep quiet. I am trying to learn this and it’snot easy for me.”
“Looks like you have a buy alert on the Gee-Bee-Pee,” he replied.He was right. There it was, my first order alert! I quickly toggled to mytrading platform, hit the GBP/USD quote, and up popped an order window.Without  a  moment’s  hesitation—for  there  could  be  other  trades  justwaiting to be taken—I clicked the okay button and boom! My trade wasopened with a slick whooshing sound. There, in the open trades window, Isaw it, but I was already down $50! How could that be?
“How could that be?” I found myself saying out loud.“You already suck at trading,” Scott said. I considered poking out hiseyes with a pen, but that would also rob me of precious time that could notbe wasted.
I toggled back to the Amazing Forex software screen. It told me thatthe  GBP/USD  trade,  the  one  that  I  had  just  taken,  should  be  negative  5points  (or  $50,  since  I  had  traded  for  $10  per  market  point)  right  then.Phew! Knowing that the Amazing folks were experiencing the same quickloss helped ease my mind. I faintly remembered that nearly all trades in thesystem started off unprofitable. Good. I planted my feet firmly on the floorunder my desk and waited for the next order to appear.
Then my cell phone rang. The ring tone told me it was my wife, Gini.
Scott had set that up for me so I would not miss her calls.
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In Search of Amazing Profits
9
“You gonna get that?” Scott asked, knowing it was my wife. This time Iconsidered taping his mouth shut, but all I had was clear office tape andthat would not do the trick.
I took the call, if only to appear that I was cool and calm, even thoughmy palms were sweaty as I opened the phone. My nerves were rattling as Ispoke.
“What’s up?”“Hi sweetie,” she happily chirped. “How’s your day?”I answered that it was going fine in the tone of voice that a husbanduses when he wants to tell his wife that she has called at a bad time, butdoes not want to actually say that she called at a bad time.
“Is this a bad time,” she asked. “I wanted to know what you wanted for
dinner.”
“Anything is great.”“Any-thing,”  she  replied,  speaking  slowly  as  if  she  were  writing  itdown. “Got it. I will check at the market for Anything. Want to say hi toyour son?”
“Not now,” I quickly answered. It was impossible to hold my cell phoneup to my ear and toggle back to the trading account. I tried, but all I man-aged to do was switch to a screen that showed my e-mail. Now I couldn’tsee anything!
“Okay, I just wanted to say hello and that I love you,” she told me, andI could tell that she wanted to talk more even though she was kindly will-ing to end the call if I insisted. Which is what I did.
“Not now,” I barked. “I gotta go.”I  immediately  felt  terrible,  but  I  hung  up  the  phone  anyway.  I  didn’teven give her a chance to respond; I was now sweating badly and havingtrouble keeping my right leg from bouncing on the floor, which is what I al-ways do when I am nervous.
Scott  didn’t  say  anything  about  the  way  I  hung  up  with  my  wife.  Iclicked on the trading software and up popped my account. I looked at thecurrent  profit  on  the  open  trade:  Three  hundred  dollars.  Three  hundreddollars!
Scott’s  jaw  dropped  down.  My  sweat  turned  cold.  I  heard  my  heartbeating,  and  my  foot  stopped  drumming  on  the  floor.  I  think  10  secondspassed, but to Scott and me time had ceased to have meaning, and I cas-caded into a deep trance.
I imagined quitting my job that day. I could see my wife driving a newsporty sedan, the kids happily cheering her on as she sped through the EZ-pass gate on the way to our summer home in the Hamptons; then I couldsee myself diving into an oval of midnight blue water, with reggae musicplaying in the background and leggy blondes sunning themselves aroundthe edges of the pool. This was the life! Trading had brought it to me!
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
Scott  knocked  me  from  the  daydream  by  gripping  my  shoulder  andshaking. “Dude, dude, you gotta take that money!” he told me, and he wasright. I had no idea what Amazing Forex said, but there was no way I wasgoing to miss out on three hundred bucks. I clicked once on the open tradewindow, and up popped a box that asked me if I wanted to close the trade.
“Darn right!” I said, speaking much louder than I should.“Woo hoo!” yelled Scott, happy for me and now much more interested
in the Amazing Forex software than he had been the week before.
I clicked a button and all of a sudden, my account value had gone from$1,000 to $1,300. Holy moley, I thought. This really is simple. This really isthe  answer  to  my  financial  problems.  In  less  than  a  minute,  I  had  madeenough to buy a new iPod for my wife. I determined that this was exactlythe present I would give to her to tell her all about the trading.
Scott wanted me to see what the software was telling us, so I switchedback to look at it. But something was wrong. The trade was still there, butit was showing a 34 pip loss, not a gain.
“What’s up with that,” Scott asked. “Did it go the other way?”I spent a moment looking over the screen for clues. It wasn’t hard to
find.
“Sheez, Scott. We bought when we were supposed to sell.”Scott was speechless.I  had  taken  the  wrong  trade!  Immediately,  I  checked  the  trading  ac-count again. Yes, the sweet profits were still safely secure in my “accountequity” window. This meant that Amazing Forex Profits’ suggestion to sellthe GBP/USD had been a horrible idea—but that we had mistakenly takenthe opposite trade and profited. As I watched the sell trade go deeper intoa loss, I actually felt happy.
I smiled. We had cheated the Amazing Forex software! We were victo-rious. It stood to reason, in my moment of complete insanity, that I couldbeat the software. I was that good.
Scott  agreed,  and  appropriately  took  credit  for  first  misreading  thesoftware’s recommendation to sell. I patted him on the back and promisedto  share  some  of  the  profits  with  him  over  time.  Maybe  he  could  be  mytechnology  right-hand  man.  Surely  there  were  other  programs  out  therelike  the  Amazing  Forex  Profits  software,  and  we  could  install  a  few  ofthem.
I determined that I owed my wife a phone call, instead of doing anymore trades. It was the right thing to do and she happily accepted my apol-ogy. I told her I had a surprise for her when I got home. She giggled on thephone, and I realized that my superpowers as a trader were only exceededby my Amazing Relationship skills.
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CHAPTER  2
The FutureLooks Bright
After work that day, I bought my wife an iPod and hopped on the sub-
way, smiling the entire way home. Of course, I needed to make a lotmore money before I quit my job, but that day I felt as if I had already
given notice.
When I arrived home, I was so consumed by thoughts of trading that Iforgot to give my wife her surprise present. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’thappy to see her. I found her in the kitchen, and I wrapped my arms aroundher waist and hugged her tightly.
“Not  so  tight,”  she  said,  laughing.  “Caroline’s  in  there!”  Caroline  wasour five-month-old fetus, growing strong and healthy and on schedule. Mywife was starting to grow bigger now, and was as beautiful as ever. I kissedher neck and she turned around to face me.
“I am happy to see you, too. We’re late for our rent payment again. I
don’t mean to ruin the happy moment.”
I knew she loved me, and I knew she had to remind me that the rentwas late. Otherwise, I was going to pretend that it wasn’t happening. Wewere knee-deep, or deeper, in debt. I hated to face it. My usual response,as I said before, was to ignore financial problems and hope they woulddisappear. Once I got around to admitting there was a problem, I woulddwell on the depressing state of affairs until I had a knot in my stomachand a headache. That evening, admitting that the rent was late was, foronce in my life, not so terrible: I could face it, knowing that during 60 sec-onds of my lunch break I had made enough money to pay a nice chunk ofthe rent.
11
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
After dinner, and when the kids were in bed, I retreated to our small
family room and I opened my wallet. Here is what I found:
• Regular identification• Six credit cards
I  took  out  the  cards  one  by  one.  I  shifted  them  between  my  fingers.These would soon be history! My wife walked in and noticed what I wasdoing.
“I didn’t mean to worry you about the rent,” she said.“I’m not worried at all,” I replied happily and put the cards away.As I got ready for bed, I started to calculate in my mind everything thatwe  owed.  The  total  came  to  $24,000,  give  or  take  a  few  hundred.  Ourmonthly payments on the cards were low—interest rates were falling—sothat wasn’t so bad. Sometimes I paid our rent from one of the cards. Butwhat was going to happen when the introductory low rates ended? Whatwas going to happen when we ran out of credit? Without trading, we weregoing to be screwed. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have found trad-ing—it had come along at just the right moment. My wife was trying to beas supportive as possible. But I knew that a big talk was coming betweenthe two of us, and it was not going to be an easy one. I wanted to be opti-mistic. Ignoring the problems wasn’t optimism, though. I had been lying tomyself, living in a daze, expecting to ignore my problems.
But now I didn’t have to ignore them anymore. I could face them, three
hundred dollars at a time!
THE FIRST NIGHTMARE
At 2:00 in the morning, I woke up with my wife tossing violently at my side,and my golden retriever, Franklin (who slept in the bed with us), nudgingme to do something because he was worried but did not know how to help.I rubbed my eyes and looked at my wife, who was whispering somethingwhile she thrashed back and forth. It was obvious that she was having anightmare.
“We will pay you,” she said. It was eerie to see her speaking and tossing
around, with her eyes closed the entire time.“We will pay you. We will pay you.”She said it twice more, and then I put my hand on her shoulder to keepher from rolling over onto the floor, and spoke her name loud enough towake her up, but not so loud that it would scare her.
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The Future Looks Bright
13
She bolted upright in bed and gripped my hand that had been on hershoulder, and then let out a huge gasp for air. She was covered in sweatand trembling.
I hugged her. “You were having a bad dream.”A  few  moments  passed  before  she  could  speak.  “I  did.  I  did  have  a
nightmare.”
I got her a drink of water and sat on the bed next to her. She laid herhead on my lap. “I heard you talking in your sleep,” I told her. “I heard youtalking about paying someone.”
“I’m worried about money, Harry.”“I know.”Franklin was now awake as well and was up on all fours, panting and
ready to go to battle for my wife.
“It’s okay Frank,” I told him. “I’m all right. Sorry we woke you up.”“We can’t pay our rent,” Gini reminded me. She had only been awakefrom the nightmare for a few moments, but she was speaking clearly as ifshe  had  never  been  asleep.  I  heard  the  traffic  outside  our  open  windowthat was definitely not providing enough cool air. I kicked the sheets offthe bed.
I could feel my heart pounding. This was not something that I could or-
dinarily feel. Gini continued.
“And Judy needs a uniform for Girl Scouts.”“Can we use a credit card?” I hated to even say the words.She shook her head and I heard a sniffle. A street lamp sent light intoour room, and onto her face, where it reflected off a teardrop. She wipedher nose and sniffled.
“I don’t think we have any more credit.” She was probably right, espe-
cially since I had charged $250 to a credit card to buy her the iPod.
Out  of  credit.  Not  good.  Franklin  stirred  a  bit,  as  if  we  had  just  de-stroyed his plans to order some dog biscuits online. I spoke up. I needed totake control of the situation and stop playing like I didn’t care.
“I think I know a way we can get out of this.”She perked up a bit. It was obvious that she was so upset that any solu-tion seemed like a good idea, even if she had not heard it yet. I could havetold her that I was going to start a meth lab in our walk-in closet, and sheprobably would have gone along with it for a few moments. She felt as badabout not buying that Girl Scout uniform as if she had been unable to feedthe family. It was coming down to this: We were so far down the well thatwe could no longer see the light at the top.
“How?” she asked.“I might be able to do some trading.”Her head shot up. She wiped her nose and smiled. “Really?”Her eyes were brighter.
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
“What does that mean? Is it expensive?”“No,” I said as I chuckled. “In fact, so far it has been paying for itself.” Iexplained  the  late  night  commercial,  the  clandestine  purchase,  the  all-nighter at the office when I learned to use the software, and how I had al-ready started making money.“How much?” she asked.“Three hundred dollars.”She lifted her head from my lap. “Three hundred dollars?” I could tellshe was amazed. Well, that’s what the software promised! This was good!This was not a crazy scheme to ask for another raise, especially now that Iwas probably the highest paid (overpaid) file manager in any U.S. law firm.This was a way to make money on the side! This was being sensible! Thiswas what the provider does! He thinks of real solutions that make sense towives.
In that moment, I remembered the iPod and felt even more proud of
myself.
The obvious question came next: “What kind of trading is it?”I hesitated. My wife was excited and I didn’t want to have an endlessdiscussion of the risks associated with trading. Honestly, I had hardly lis-tened  to  the  risk  disclaimers  on  the  commercial,  and  thank  goodness  Ihadn’t paid more attention. I might never have bought it.
But I owed her the truth.“It’s forex trading.”“Flo-recks?” She was perplexed.“No,  forex,  like  ‘foreign  exchange,’  or  currencies.  It’s  like  trading
stocks, only you trade currencies.”
“Wow. I didn’t know they did that.” I was really happy that she did not
blow up the idea immediately. This emboldened me.
“Honestly,  neither  did  I,”  I  admitted.  “But  it  only  took  me  about  a
minute to trade today.”
“So you can do it at work?”“Well, at lunch. And after I get home.”“At night?”I nodded. “Yes, it’s a 24-hour market, so I can trade it anytime. It’s per-
fect for keeping my job now and doing this on the side.”
“Can you make that much every day?” she asked, perhaps now more
hopeful than I was. I decided a bit of restraint was in order.
“Well, not every day. Maybe that much. Maybe a bit less.”She was doing numbers in her head. “That’s like nine thousand dollarsin a month.” I could tell she was having trouble comprehending that I couldmake that much money.
“Well, there isn’t any trading on Saturday. So it’s less than that.”“Still,” she spoke, putting her head back down on my lap. “That is somuch money. We could be out of debt in a few months.” She then said noth-
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The Future Looks Bright
15
ing for a few minutes, and I knew what was coming next. Her head poppedback up: “Is this risky?”
I  shrugged,  trying  to  act  cool.  “For  a  beginner.  For  someone  whodoesn’t know what he is doing. Sure. But I’ve got the software, and I amgoing to play it safe.”
“Can we lose the thousand dollars you put in?”“I don’t think so. I’m only going to trade when the software tells me to.There are people making a lot of money from this. I watched it for a weekand it was just as amazing as they say—it was really making some incredi-ble trades.”
Skeptical but satisfied, she told me she just wanted to go back to bednow. I told her that before she did I wanted to give her a gift. I went into thehallway, opened my briefcase, and brought her the present.
When  she  unwrapped  the  iPod,  she  threw  her  arms  around  me  and
kissed me. “Can we afford this?” she asked.
“We can now,” I laughed. And with that, we went back to sleep, peace-
fully and with hope of the brighter future that was now within our reach.
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CHAPTER  3
A Trip to theThirty-FirstFloor
Iworked in midtown Manhattan for 11 years. I worked at the law firm of
Wakeman, Butterman, and Bailey, and all I did—and I am not makingthis  up—is  file  stuff  away.  Motions,  briefs,  interrogatories,  settle-ments . . . you name it, I found a way to file it. This may sound like a boringjob, and that’s exactly what it was. It was like watching Brady Bunch re-runs while poking my eyeballs out with a fork. This is the type of job that aman will do anything to get fired from. And believe me, I tried. There weretimes when I wanted to eat my leg just to inject an interesting event intomy day.
While I never ate my leg, I did all sorts of other things to pass the time.I spent as much time as possible walking in between lawyers’ offices andthe filing area: We had 145 attorneys at the time, and I could waste a good25 minutes on the way to a lawyer’s office. I still finished all the work that Iwas supposed to do.
What got me the job in the first place was a pretty well connected fa-ther. Mine, to be exact. Harold Banes Sr. worked in the New York Metro-politan Transit Authority. He wasn’t an engineer. He didn’t dig tunnels or doanything cool like that either. He was a janitor. To put this into perspective,you need to pretend that you are in charge of cleaning up an area the sizeof a football field, only it’s made of secret passageways, it’s always eitherbelow zero or above 90 degrees, you enjoy the company of rats, and youconsider it a pleasure to call the police about once a week because some-one is living (or dying) in your work space. He’s retired now, but I imaginehe has nightmares in the same way as do Vietnam vets or abused pets.
16
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A Trip to the Thirty-First Floor
17
He  happened  to  work  the  same  station  that  just  about  every  singlelawyer from Wakeman, Butterman, and Bailey walked through every day.And  over  the  years,  he  spoke  to  every  one  of  those  lawyers.  He  becamegood friends with many of them, and when I graduated from high school, Ihad already worked three summers in the filing office of the firm, thanks tohis relationships.
I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time, but I didn’t know it. I thinkthey were paying me $15 an hour, back in 1992. That seemed like a ton ofmoney to me then. But I certainly didn’t protect the money as if I thought itwas a lot. I spent it like money was coming out of the fire hydrants, and Ilived like there would be a raise every year. And that was fine for a longtime because it was just me, and I was living at home.
Soon enough though, my high school girlfriend and I were deciding toget married, and soon enough after that, we were having kids. Three, to beexact, in the first seven years of marriage. And now we had one more onthe way.
Every day for the past 11 years, I had taken an elevator up to the 44thfloor  of  a  shining  Manhattan  skyscraper,  to  go  to  work  at  a  job  I  didn’tmuch care for, for people I didn’t really think about unless they were stand-ing in front of me, to earn about $300 less per month than I needed to sur-vive (until now, ha!). And on the way up in that elevator, I passed floor afterfloor  of  other  offices.  I  never  really  stopped  to  wonder  who  worked  onthose floors.
Anyway, when I got up to my cubicle, Scott was waiting for me just as
he had done every day, for the past five years.
Today, he looked worried. This wasn’t normal. He was about the mostlaid-back  guy  in  the  world,  but  right  now  he  looked  as  if  someone  hadcaught him smoking behind the front desk. For a moment, I worried thatthis had something to do with trading.
“You didn’t make any trades on my account, did you?”He shook his head. I felt relief wash over me. I did not want him touch-ing the account or the software. I didn’