Kathy Lien is a successful female trader who is now working as Managing Director and Founding Partner of BKForex. She is the example of an experienced trader who built her own career from young age despite gender stereotypes in forex market.

It's no longer a secret that female traders are not as well-recognized as male traders. In the seemingly male-dominated field like forex trading, not many people know about women role in this area. However, female traders' numbers are growing day by day, in which a lot of them have managed to shed the image of incapable traders that is usually pinned on them. How do female traders build their career and gain success in the forex market? One example can be taken from Kathy Lien, whose story will give you a glimpse on how a female trader pave her way to success.

Kathy

 

Who Is Kathy Lien?

Kathy Lien is a successful female trader who is now working as Managing Director and Founding Partner of BKForex. She is often quoted by Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Associated Press, AAP, UK Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, etc. An expert on G20 currencies, she also appears regularly in US, Asian, and European CNBC, as well as Sky Business.

 

How Is Her Career?

From working as a proprietary trader to managing her own business, Kathy Lien has been active in Forex Market for 14 years and counting. She started her career when she was just a teenager, and now she has managed to establish herself as the Co-Director of BKForex. She is the example of an experienced trader who built her own career from young age despite gender stereotypes in forex market.

 

Lessons From JP Morgan Chase

Kathy Lien started working at JP Morgan Chase in the age of 18, just after graduating from New York University's Stern School of Business. Her first rotation was at credit derivative department. She was then posted at interbank FX trading desk, where she made markets in USD/JPY and AUD/USD. After the merge of JP Morgan and Chase, she moved to proprietary trading desk where she traded with instruments like forex spot, options, interest rate derivatives, bonds, equity indices, and futures. Since every little aspect from her trades were scrutinized to ensure her knowledge of what she was doing, she learned about discipline, risk control, and accountability when she worked in this company.

 

Expansion To Research Field

With a motivation to expand skill and share her knowledge, Kathy moved into research field. She worked at FXCM in 2003 as Chief Strategist, and started DailyFX, which then developed into one of leading forex research portals. Five years later, Kathy joined Global Futures & Forex Ltd. where she had a position as Director of Currency Research. She provided research and analysis to clients, as well as managed a forex analysis team.

 

Being Her Own Boss

Kathy Lien currently runs BKForex together with partner Boris Schlossberg. She mentioned about the advantages of being her own boss in an exclusive interview with FXStreet. She chose flexibility in choosing her own working place and hours, as well as experimenting on new ideas as the ultimate benefits. Being able to test out new ideas as soon as she can be, without having to wait for the approval from bureaucracy is one of the perks that she emphasize. In spite of admitting that running her own business is busier and never easy, she clearly enjoys her current activity as a business owner.

kathyKathy Lien showed one of her published books titled The Little Book of Currency Trading

Kathy Lien is also an internationally published author of best-seller books like Day Trading and Swing Trading the Currency Market, The Little Book of Currency Trading, and Millionaire Traders: How Everyday People Beat Wall Street at its Own Game.

 

What Is Her Trading Style?

Kathy Lien is a well known trader with a theory that works on a fusion of fundamental and technical analysis. She uses fundamentals to get into positions, and technicals to follow through and exit.

 

1. Not Ruling Out Fundamental

Based on her experience as a developer of automated trading products, she realizes that using robots would not be working in a long term. She underlines the importance of systematic rule to create trading discipline, but the ever changing market dynamics which can happen on daily basis is considered as the main reason why fundamentals should not be ignored. In fact, it is extremely important that trading without being aware of the big stories in the market is akin to trading with blinders on.

 

2. Benefiting From Big News

Kathy Lien also admitted her special talent of being able to predict economic surprises and capitalize on them. I love how I can take the biggest stories in the world and turn them into trading opportunities. said her. Furthermore, she went to find a new useful indicator in the form of New Zealand credit card spending. She also developed a proprietary of economic data, where she choose US Non-Manufacturing ISM and NFP as her favorites.

KathyNot only noticing the importance of technical analysis, Kathy Lien also stresses the important of fundamentals

 

3. Focusing On Analysis To Overcome Limit

In light of working as both an institutional and retail trader, Kathy stated that the main difference laid on the ability of seeing the flow. She revealed that bank dealers and proprietary traders had the benefit of seeing flow so they could react in a way that retail traders would never think of.

Having worked in retail market for years, Kathy acknowledged that her analysis and trading style had changed from how she did it in her JP Morgan days. As she doesn't have the benefit of seeing flow anymore, she opts to develop a strategy that is rooted in analysis.

 

How Does She See The Women's Role In Forex Market?

Kathy Lien defined the pinnacle of women's success in the areas of finance and banking can reach up to VP (Vice-President) or MD (Managing Director) level. She gives evidence by stating her experience of working under a Managing Director, and there are a plenty of her female friends now are VPs at banks. Well, considering the fact that Kathy herself is now a Managing Director, it's easy for us to relate to her claim.

 

Don't Mind The Glass Ceiling

Glass ceiling is a special term to symbolize a barrier that blocks career women to reach the top position. The term perfectly pictures a situation where women can only try their best to step up as high as they want to, but there is always an invincible barrier that prevent them to reach the top. Eventually, they can only watch their desired position from below. Even if there are no specific rules to limit women's potentials, it is believed that in reality, there is always a glass ceiling hindering women to get to the highest position.

So, does Kathy agree with that glass ceiling perception? The more you are a conscious of the existence of a glass ceiling, the more that you will credit your lack of progress on that and the more it will become reality, said her. It is obvious that she doesn't believe on glass ceiling capability on determining a woman's career path. She believes that it exists only when you think it does. Thus, perception is the only thing that matters. Doing what you can do best and behaving like there is no glass ceiling are needed to ensure your chance of being successful in male-dominated areas.

 

Being A Woman Is An Advantage

Unlike some women who sometimes are too conscious of their gender inferiority, Kathy Lien considered that being a woman is an advantage. The small number of female traders and analysts in the forex market had helped her to be easily recognized. She pointed out that women should be able to use their gender to their advantage. Some policies are even made to ensure women's roles. One example can be taken from banks' requirement to have some degree of balance between female and male upper management.

Opinion about women's capacity that is able to make them better traders than men has been circulating recently. It is apparently supported by their certain qualities in the areas of risk aversion, patience, and learning. Kathy Lien agreed to the idea, quoting Boris Schlossberg's viewpoint of her being a more disciplined and methodical trader than himself who is more instinctive.

 

How Does She Balance Her Career And Private Life?

Keeping up on professional career as well as being a responsible housewife at the same time don't seem to be a problem for Kathy Lien. She spoke on another exclusive interview with FXStreet about her strategy of becoming a successful business owner while managing her role as a good wife and mother to her family.

She calls it a compartmentalizing strategy, in which she clearly divides her time between working and taking care of her son. She doesn't let both aspects to invade each other, and always tries to give her all one thing at a time. The only time that she lets them intermingle is when she has a live trade. Being able to work in her own home has helped her a lot to be a well-functioned career woman and housewife. Instead of viewing her family as a distraction, she credits her son for helping her to become more patient, a virtue that is really important for a trader.