Travails of a Money/Fund Manager

i suppose the purpose of this thread was abt professional trading, fund managing and money management rather than abt what my total experience in forex is...if anything wrong was said abt fund management or hedge funds and you had pointed that out to me, i would have been very happy to accept that...but of course, u can only find mistakes in things that you know....so cant expect you to find mistakes with hedge funds etc... cos u dont know anything about it...

but i can see that u are good at keeping track of days/months and years...maybe you are an accountant....keep going...

No, I don't keep track of things like that. Your thread piqued my interest so I read some of your earlier posts, as I normally do if I begin to follow a thread. When I questioned the discrepancy, you called me Holmes and acted like you didn't understand the question, while everyone else understood it perfectly.

I can't really question what you've written about running hedge funds, professional trading, and managing money as you haven't written much about those things and have been vague in your answers to those who've asked.

Yes, your thread is about professional trading, hedge funds and being a money manager. Since it's your thread, I thought it was also about anything else you wrote as well. My mistake. I apologize and will leave you to it.

All the best
Bill

as i keep saying, i dont keep much track of my posting history and thats why i asked...and u cant generalize saying that everyone else understood...pls speak for urself...

as far as i know, i have answered the questions to the point...if there is anything else u want to know, ask and i will answer...

digging up ur history reveals a lot abt ur credentials....or the lack of it...i dont want to discuss it over here...as i said, i dont wish to write more on this topic anymore....c ya...

Okay, I'll stay on topic and be a good sport.

What are some of the personal qualifications needed to run a hedge fund in India--licenses etc?
Do you need a minimum amount of capital? Here it is quite high. Do your investors need to tie up their capital for a minimum amount of time or is their capital semi-liquid? Do they need to invest a minimum amount?

What is your tax situation? Do you need to provide investors with P and L statements of a specific type to comply with you country's regulatory bodies? When doing business in the U.S., government compliance is sometimes as much, if not more time consuming than the actual running of the business. Doesn't matter if it's a lemonade stand or a hedge fund, the burden of compliance is often heavy. Our hedge funds are less regulated than many other investments, and are considered high-risk and only for savvy investors who are financially well-off. "Hedge Fund" doesn't conjure up the same image as the word "hedging". Is it the same in India?

How long would it take to start a hedge fund if you already had your willing investors on board? Is the startup expensive, aside from the capital needed to actually invest. What would an attorney typically charge to set up your fund and ensure it was compliant. And what about ongoing costs--yearly fees to the government and such.

I don't expect you to answer all this--just whatever you feel like. I'm mostly interested in understanding how thing's are done in other countries, any other country, not just India.

Also how big is your fund? How many people if any are you employing to help you run the fund? Do you have an administrator? Auditor? Did you incubate first?

Looks like a very good site.

Owned

Billflet and tradestar, congrats you both made me laugh this morning


ns_karthik, you should stay I'm sure you have very interesting things to share with us. Your start is a little rocky but you've got a special mind and I'm pretty sure that this tread could become very interesting. Regardless of your actual personal performance, I'm pretty sure most of the traders here would like to achieve what you described. Discussing that endgame is always welcome and refreshing compared to different trading strategies/etc.

I disagree, there is no reason why there should have been any discrepancies with the stories.

Why does he say 9 years of experience when his early posts seems to suggest that he only has about 4 years experience?

If you are a manager after 4 years you should be proud of it. There was no need to put covers over our eyes. It does not make you look smarter in any way.

People in FF can be very sharp. We are all traders (i hope). We compete with each other everyday for a profit. We do appreciate good advice, but we don't like being hoodwinked. And since we are all sharp people (I hope) who try to backstab one another in the market every other minute, we are bound to ask these questions. That is how we learn and stay alive in the business.

If you cannot answer those questions, people will discredit you. Simple as that.

I don't know how it's possible for strange people to keep forming these fake internet egos with obvvvvvvious flaws in their intellect.. I mean seriously it's like a daily occurence!

His intentions for starting this thread are clear: to get more suckers to join his FAWS(Forex Account Wiping Service), but he FAILED.

anything more?? check out my full history guys...i ran one of the most successful threads in FF with over 200 thousand visits and contributed so much to so many people answering queries and all and here i am being made fun of by silly newbies...shows how much this forum has degraded...u will not get any more replies from me on this thread...so u newbies can continue playing with ur words over here.....enjoyy...

am sure some newbie (trading a micro acct with $100 in it but who has lot of posts and lot of vouches with i-give-u-one-vouch-u-give-me-one strategy) is going to come in here and say i backed off cos i couldnt answer all these questions...u can assume whatever u want but that will not wash away the truth...anyway, u guys have done a good job of spoiling what could have been a good thread....but it happens....

If you want to keep this thread in topic, why not answer billflets questions about taxation, regulations etc - as I'm too interested in how these work in country like india.

am no longer interested in running this thread and wasting my time (and others as well)...if u need to know anything and if u r seriously interested to know, PM me...i dont mind helping people who really want to learn but i hate people who cant trade properly but can only sit and question others....i dont have the time for them...

Mate, your grand entry is obviously miscalculated.

If you believe that saying you have 9 years of trading experience but after you're caught having only about 4-5 years and all you can say is "ok so it is more like 7 yrs....does it matter? didnt realise that i needed to be exactly right with such numbers..." is Ok you better think again.

Accuracy in facts is the only thing that matters in this business. The Internet is full of fx scams and you didn't think that you should be exact with your years of experience? You MUST be exact mate! Otherwise your trust factor is greatly damaged - which it is at this point.

well, if my yrs of exp is what matters more than the points i say, then the purpose of starting this thread is a waste...i need not prove my exp. to everyone and i earn much more than what i need and there is no necessity for me to scam others...but some newbies have seen so much cheating that everyone appears to be a cheat...if the fact that i traded for 5 yrs or 7 yrs or 9 yrs makes much more of a difference than the knowledge that i wanted to share, then it is a waste of time to be in here...now i know why no professional trader comes in here and why this place is full of newbies who pretend to be experts by increasing their post count (by posting nonsense) and by increasing their vouch count in collusion with others..

This is an attempt to steer things back to topic. (Even though mudslinging might be more entertaining).

I am a forex trader, also in the process of making a transtition to a money manager and am based in India too.

For the people who are interested in regulations in India-Here is the gist of forex trading in India.

Forex trading was almost unheard of in India until 2001-2002 due to a variety of factors-but i would consider these three as the most important.
1.Monetory policy- An individual could not remit money abroad over USD5000 per year.
2.Broadband Internet was unheard of. A huge percentage of internet connections were still dial ups.As a result, the average investor was not aware of the then $1.5 Trillion forex market, leave alone trade in it.
3.Mindset of the average Indian investor was to shy away from any risk and stick to bank interests/any other safe low yield haven.

It was only around 2004 then that the Reserve Bank of India increased the remitance limit first to USD25000 per year and then subsequently ammended it every year. (It now stands at USD200000 per year).
Meanwhile-the tech infrastructure picked up slowly as well with boradband penetration at a retail/individual level).
This also coincided with the global stock markets/commodities rally in the mid 2000's (2005-2008) and suddenly there were lots and lots of Indian brokers offering online trading platforms for retail investors.(stocks and commodities).
More and more people were coming away from decade OLD or in some cases generations of "save your money in the bank mentality" and were looking at speculative markets.

Just when things were looking up-RBI made an ammendment to their remittance circular in 2008 wherein "The remittance made abroad should not be for margin trading/margin calls in overseas exchanges or with overseas counterparty".
This still remains as a grey area. why would Reserve Bank of India or the government worry about trading in overseas exchanges?
Is it to ensure that the domestic exchanges thrive (domestic commodity exchanges are just 6-7 years old) or is it to ensure that people don't lose money to overseas counterparties? or was it broadly to protect investors from Refco like debacles.

In 2009-currency futures trading started in Indian exchanges, but it is vs Indian Rupee and volume/volatility is nothing to be excited about since RBI keeps a keen eye on price fluctuations.
So as things stand-
1.There is absolutely no clarity if forex trading is legal,semi-legal or illegal.
2.There is no regulatory body in India for Forex Trading.RBI-whose main job is setting monetary policy is the closest to being a regulator (but not)
3.Sourcing investors is tough, because of a lack of awareness about forex.As the thread starter has earlier posted-investors have been duped before by Ponzi schemes with forex as the bait and hence if someone has heard of forex it is usually a negative news.Also with no clear RBI directive most of the banks would not wire money if an investor indicates the purpose of remittance is Forex. (We still have to go to a bank and fill up forms for overseas remittance in India.Wire transfer is restricted to domestic transfer i.e within the country).
4.Certification in non-existant for forex. (Something similar to series 3 exists, but heavily biased towards stocks, commodities and mutual funds).
5.Taxation-A consensus amongst auditors is that profits or revenue through forex should be reported as business income and should be taxed as such (30%).


I hope this gives an insight to those interested.I am looking forward for meaningful discussions and learning more from each other.

Regards.

Note -The picture pasting and juvenile comments like i don't care, loser, etc is akin to a school bully attitude.Forming a cliq and laughing is not going to make us better traders.It just leaves a bad taste.

@Charron

My opinion is that RBI (i assume you had meant them when you said Feds) don't care about it too much.
The government is more worried about Indians locking up unaccounted cash (It is called black money here) in havens like swiss or money-laundering.The retail investor trading 10-20K usd is/should not be a problem.To add to this, they have not explicitly banned forex trading.
Brokers like Alpari are just setting up operations in India to test the waters.

In continuance with the liberalization, fresh directives from RBI should be favouring overseas investment. (I sure hope so).

Regards.

First of all, thank you for you detailed message. It was very informative but if I understand correctly, there are no legal investment vehicle for pro-trading ? And the brokers you have to use are foreign-based ?


Concerning my "I don't care" comment, I don't really understand how it was juvenile or bully. I really don't care about ns_karthik's history and I'm just interested in what he offers and the discussion he wants to start.

Thanks again for your input Scalperforex

@ Intensity-

I am sorry, but the "i don t care" phrase was not directed at you.It was directed at Sim and specifically to this post..
"lol you write like I even care to properly read ur post..."

And yes, you are correct in your understanding that most of the traders (at least the ones i interact with) trade with foreign brokers.The only legal investment vehicle is currency trading in indian exchanges. (which i had mentioned earlier)

And finally,like any other country India has it's share of bucketshops who open,siphon money and vanish.

Regards.

Thanks for the clarification


But if you trade mainly with forex brokers, wouldn't that mean that most of the time you'll just forget to declare your gains ? Would your government go after this part of your taxes ?