By Je’Don Holloway Talley
For The Birmingham Times
For most of his life, Jamell Short heard the saying, “It takes money to make money.” Once he really understood what that meant, it was “game on,” he said, especially after he made as much as $5,000 in one day.
“I was trading gold, closed out and withdrew those profits, reinvested $300, and started trading all over again,” Short said. “I was excited to know that I could take money I had and put it into the market and make more money because I understood the way the market works.”
Short is a foreign exchange (Forex) trader, who has been in the market for the past five years. He is currently in the process of starting an official site for one of his Facebook classes to expand his mentoring, teaching, and trading services.
The foreign exchange market involves the conversion of one currency into another currency. It is the world’s most traded market with, $5.1 trillion exchanged per day.
Short, 39, uses the Forex.com platform to trade currencies, such as the U.S. dollar (USD), European Union euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), and British pound sterling (GBP), as well as gold and cryptocurrencies 24 hours a day, five days a week, across banks, institutions, and individual traders worldwide.
Getting into the Game
Short got into financing after watching the 2013 box-office hit, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” a film about the stock exchange, a market where stocks are traded, … [allowing] investors to buy and sell shares of a company among each other in a regulated physical or electronic space.
The Queens, New York, native said he was attracted to the speed with which big financial gains were made. Although Short had walked along Wall Street, located in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, time and time again, he admitted not knowing much about the stock market. So, like a true millennial, he took to his smartphone and began his research.
“I had never heard of penny stocks, [common shares of small public companies that trade for less than $1 per share], before. But the second time I saw [the movie], I went on my phone and found out that I could find everything [the main character, Jordan Belfort, played by actor Leonardo DiCaprio], was doing through my telephone.”
Information that was once taught mostly in colleges and universities is now accessible by phones, Short said: “This information was not supposed to be for the average Joe.”
Many millennials are drawn to the Forex market because we live in a digital age, Short said.
“They’re interested in the digital dollar,” he explained. “It’s so popular because people care a lot about cryptocurrencies, and it’s the way of the future. Cryptocurrency is something that everybody is going to have to understand at some point, and that has young people excited.”
The article “What Is Cryptocurrency?” at the Forbes Advisor (www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/what-is-cryptocurrency/) describes cryptocurrency as “… decentralized digital money … [that can be used] to buy regular goods and services, although many people invest in cryptocurrencies as they would in other assets, like stocks or precious metals.”
“[Millennials] are learning how to increase their [money] electronically,” Short said. “They’re into gaming and electronics, their phones are always in their hands, and their attention span is short now, so it can’t take four years to learn anything anymore. They understand that by trading they can make $18 in a minute versus an hour.”
It can be a bit of a gamble, though, Short added.
“I can end up losing money [on an account] and have to close out and wait until it reaches another point and then get in again. … Sometimes I’ll have to take a large loss in order to make a greater gain,” he said, explaining that it is possible to lose a few hundred dollars just to turn around and make a thousand more.
Limiting Phone Calls
Short said he has to watch the market so closely that he has to limit his phone calls. “Sometimes I can’t go anywhere. I can’t drive because that’ll take my attention away, and before you know it an account that was in the positive will be in the negative,” he said. “This is the market, where money never sleeps, the dollar is always moving. When people understand the importance of the dollar and learn how to trade it with the click of a button, they can make money.”
Short learned that he could turn his cell phone into an ATM “at any given moment,” he said. “[Trading] was something I could do on my own, and I dove in headfirst.”
Instead of investing in penny stocks, Short learned about the Forex and began trading currencies in 2016.
“The first currency I invested in was [Spot Gold/U.S. Dollar (XAU/USD)]. I invested $50 and turned that $50 into $400 in five minutes,” he said, “I’ve been hooked ever since.”
After five years of trading, Short, who lives in Birmingham’s Center Point area, remembers experiencing growing pains.
“When I first started, it was discouraging because I didn’t have any guidance. By trading the way that I thought was right, I was blowing [money in my trading accounts] left and right,” he said. “I didn’t realize that I had to actually learn how to trade and take my time. Learning to accept losses and how not to stop after taking losses [was a process]. It takes patience and proper risk management.”
To gain more knowledge, Short found teachers who taught him how to do [trading] signals, ‘the information you need to take a trade on a given Forex pair or other trading instruments, such as the opening price and opening time, as well as how to set up charts and read ‘candles,’ [the bars shown on the charts] to indicate where [trading goods] were in the past. You can’t predict where [trading goods] are going in the future, but the [candlestick patterns] are what we use to determine whether to buy or sell,” he said.
Sharing the Knowledge
Short also sought professional guidance with the help of Pierre Robinson of “The Profitable Ritual,” based in Atlanta, Georgia, and learned a strategy to help with successful trading. “The Gold Ritual,” also known as “The Profitable Ritual,” is a basic way to learn about Forex trading by following three steps that involve timing, currency location, and expert chart comprehension. Short teaches this formula through a Facebook group he facilitates called “Pip’n Ain’t Easy.” The group name is a play on words, “Pip is short for ‘percentage in point,’ and that represents a tiny measure in change in a currency pair on the charts,” Short said.
When teaching current and prospective traders, Short believes in the principle of “each one teach one.”
“Everybody that I come across, I speak this language to them, asking them if they understand the value of money [because] the only way to make money is to make your money make more money. You have to learn how to make your money work for you, whether it be in real estate, things that appreciate in value, or investments,” he said.
Short became so successful that he was able to give up his day job.
“I did [tile setting] for four years before I stumbled upon Forex [trading],” he said. “Once I figured that I could turn trading into a skill set, I invested more time in studying and learning the industry to get more profits versus [working 60 hours a week doing tile setting]. I realized that I could make [my salary] in a couple of hours.”
The father of two sons and three daughters, including a stepdaughter, said he intends to pass this trade down to his children, so they can create generational wealth.
“Once I teach my kids and my family and they’re able to trade, then I’ll be able to sit back comfortably,” Short said. “Once you have this skill set, no one can take it from you, and you can generate income at any given time.”
For more information about Jamell Short’s classes or services, email Shortjae@yahoo.com.
DISCLAIMER — The Birmingham Times does not offer financial advice. The content in these articles is for informational and educational purposes only and merely cites the opinions of the sources quoted herein. In order to make the best financial decision that suits your own needs, you must conduct your own research and seek the advice of a licensed financial advisor if necessary. All investments involve some form of risk and there is no guarantee that you will be successful in making, saving, or investing money, nor is there any guarantee that you will not experience any loss when investing.
