Life on the trading platform: becoming an entrepreneurial machine of retail trader in the foreign exchange market

Abstract

This thesis is a research project in the sociology of finance that studies the lives of retail traders in Chiang Mai using ethnographic research methods and applies the Marxist concept of Autonomia thinkers in order to analyze the assemblage of subjectivity and negative effects that retail traders must face from speculating on the trading platforms of the Forex market. The findings of the thesis can be divided into four main issues. The first issue was found to be that the context of economic risks after the 2014 coup and the advancement of Forex trading technology is a key condition that results in young people having to face insecurity in working life and becoming Forex retail traders to seek freedom and wealth, which are the highest ideals in their lives. For this reason, retail traders need to learn "speculative knowledge" from the Forex gurus of "FX" (pseudonym) brokers in order to apply this knowledge as a tool to generate income and control themselves while trading Forex on the MT4 platform using computers, tablets, and smartphones. This is the second finding of the thesis. The third issue of the thesis revealed that trading Forex successfully is not an easy task. Although the Forex market is the most liquid and opportunity-filled financial market in the world, the risks and prices are also the most volatile. Moreover, retail traders are also subjected to the power and control of a "financial institution algorithm" that records and analyzes their trading data on the MT4 platform all the time in order to predict their trading behavior and make a profit from their losses. Therefore, algorithmic trading is a key tool used by financial institutions to build wealth amid the financial ruin of retail traders. For this reason, only a minority of retail traders will be able to adapt to survive and become consistently profitable by assembling the subjectivity of being an "entrepreneurial machine" in order to transform themselves into successful full-time traders. Nonetheless, the majority of retail traders are only part-time traders because they are unable to fully assemble their new subjectivity. They are thus unable to recombinate themselves to become one with the Forex machine network. As a result, they must face serious losses that lead to financial liquidity problems, including mental illnesses on the Forex trading platform. This is the thesis's fourth finding.