Today it is very hard to get the sort of returns which made the currency market so popular a few years ago. This editorial looks at how the foreign currency market has changed rapidly in recent years, and that gaining from investing in this market on an individual basis is extremely hard. For many investors, returns can be increased by the use of offshore bonds.

A colleague told me recently how easy it was to make money out of offshore bonds a few years ago.  There were many tricks you could use to fool the brokers, and it was just not necessary to invest part of your portfolio in a managed forex account, as there was plenty of money to be had from the brokers themselves.

Just one way to make a guaranteed profitable trade was to take a straddle trade just before news releases – this would often result in a 100 pip or more profit.  In those days, news announcements created big price movements, and it was an easy trade to make upwards of 100 pips with a big news event such as interest rates, unemployment figures etc.

Today, however, there is not so much volatility, and it is much harder to make such huge sums.  In those times, it was easy to make substantial returns on your trading account day in, day out, so an offshore bond was not needed to increase returns.

Today, however, is very different, with millions of expat financial advice, without wanting to be sensible and go for a managed forex account.  These events have occurred along with the extraordinary levels of leverage that the forex brokers are offering their clients to trade with.

The real money of course is setting up a forex brokerage, which explains why so many are springing up everywhere, although this does not go far to explaining why offshore portfolio bonds are becoming more popular amongst the expat community.

In conclusion, currency trading today is a very risky activity, and not so easy as the brokers want you to believe. Of course, it is very much in the interest of forex brokers to promote high leverage, and to offer free training courses, in an attempt to lure people into thinking it is easy to make money in the currency market.  With good financial advice and research and good expat financial advice, expats can benefit from offshore bonds.