PROFILE
Chasing thieves and killers requires rock-steady nerves and quick decisions. Great training, in other words, for foreign-currency trading. Tim Bourquin, a 29-year-old LAPD officer, spent the early '90s as a licensed stockbroker. But while he liked buying and selling, Bourquin hated pitching ideas to clients – not least, he says, because "I was horrible at it." He bailed in 1994, enrolling in LA's Police Academy (he'd been a reservist for some years); soon afterward he began serving and protecting full-time. Working from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., Bourquin had mornings free to explore the nascent Internet trading scene. He put US$5,000 into an account and started clicking; within three years he'd boosted his holdings to about $70,000.
Then the department put Bourquin on a day shift – and put the US markets effectively out of his reach. So, with the trading bug still in him, he turned offshore. In the months that followed, Bourquin taught himself foreign-exchange currency trading, which, for obvious reasons, is active when Bourquin is home. (Risk-junkie bonus: It's also lightly regulated, affording even small investors a 100-to-1 margin – that is, $10,000 leverages $1 million.)
The cop/trader does as many as 25 currency deals a night on E-Forex, trading yen from 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (the start of the day in Tokyo) and later switching to pounds sterling, which can be exchanged round-the-clock five days a week. Like many Internet stock swappers, Bourquin researches on the Web: He prefers News Alert and day-trader-geared MoneyTeq. He monitors his losses carefully, trying never to exceed $500, and takes profits once a position is $600 to $900 in the black.
One thing Bourquin couldn't find online, though, was enough fellow e-traders. To combat the loneliness of a solo trading desk, he is developing a forex chat venue. "It's a support group. You find other traders' emotional ups and downs are the same as yours."
[an error occurred while processing this directive] E-Forex: www.eforex.com/; News Alert: www.newsalert.com/; MoneyTeq: www.moneyteq.com/. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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