In the past two days, the news about "foreign exchange funds" has blown up the foreign exchange circle. Among the participants, there are veteran fund managers who have joined with the system and team for many years, and there are also fresh blood who have just been brought into the industry and have not met late. However, the final outcome is nothing more than a game of beating drums and passing flowers, losing everything. As the financial industry becomes more and more developed, the forms of financial fraud are also becoming more diverse and complex. The random flowers are gradually becoming charming. The most interesting thing about this era is the coexistence of deception and opportunity.
01
What is a "Ponzi scheme"
Ponzi scheme is the name of investment fraud in the financial field, the ancestor of pyramid scheme (Pyramid scheme), and many illegal pyramid schemes use this trick to collect money. This kind of deception was "invented" by a speculative businessman named Charles Ponzi. In China, it is also known as "tearing down the east wall to pay the west wall", "empty glove white wolf". In particular, the emergence of Internet finance has made this kind of deception more difficult to distinguish. Not to mention the general public, even college students, professors, civil servants and other highly educated people are deeply involved in it and cannot extricate themselves. Compared with general financial fraud, the "Ponzi scheme" has more victims, wider influence, deeper harm, stronger concealment, and greater social harm. In general, these scams have some of the following characteristics:
1. High yield. "High yield means high risk. If the yield exceeds 6%, it will be a question mark. If it exceeds 8%, it will be very dangerous. If it exceeds 10%, you must be prepared to lose all your principal." Statements on the forum. High returns are a common method used by many fraudulent companies to confuse investors. Therefore, when engaging in financial investment transactions, one must bear in mind a principle: high returns and high risks. There are no financial products that can guarantee high returns without risks.
2. The pyramid structure is also a very common routine. The pyramid structure is to first classify members according to their investment amount, and then members get a certain percentage of bonuses through development and downline. Different levels have different reward amounts.
3. "Borrow new debts to repay old debts", use the funds of the next person to make up for the income of the previous person, and spread the flowers with drums. Since the promised return on investment cannot be realized at all, the return on investment of old customers can only be realized by joining new customers or other financing arrangements. This puts quite high demands on the capital flow of the "Ponzi scheme". Therefore, scammers always try to expand the scope of customers and the scale of absorbing funds, so as to obtain sufficient space for funds to move and cover. Most scammers never refuse the addition of new funds, because the bigger the cake, not only the more substantial profits, but also the risk of breaking the capital chain is greatly reduced, and the duration of the scam can be greatly extended.
In fact, many people know that it is a scam, but they have not resisted the temptation of "low investment, high return". to maintain their income. The painted skin of these Ponzi schemes is not so unique, it’s just that too many people are blinded by profit and blinded by desire. Even if they are dubious, they are often willing to be the moth to the flame under the temptation of moving. Uncover its layers, it is very much like a pyramid in essence, but there is no Mr. Ponzi planning all this, in fact, thousands of people participated in a little bit of it.
So, don't think that you are standing at the top of this pyramid, in fact, you are just the soil at the bottom. There is no water without a source in this world, and there is no wealth for nothing. In the face of huge temptation, we need to be more cautious, otherwise, "you are staring at the interest he gives you, and he is staring at your principal".
02
How to identify foreign exchange funds
The fund disk is a marketing method that the platform claims to be able to manage customers' funds in a unified manner, entrust senior traders to conduct transactions, and earn stable high returns for customers, thereby absorbing customers' funds, and customers do not conduct transactions themselves.
Similar to the model of wealth management on behalf of customers, there may be a small part of which actually invests customers' funds in the market and implements strict risk control, but it is very doubtful how high the real stable rate of return can be. What's more, most platforms in this market do not invest customers' funds into the market at all, and adopt a model similar to pyramid schemes, relying on follow-up funds to pay for the promised surplus of previous funds. Once the capital chain is broken, it will be difficult for customers to recover their principal . Therefore, this kind of capital plate is also called pyramid scheme.
This kind of pyramid scheme often pays several installments of income. Once the follow-up funds cannot be followed up, the interest payment will be stopped due to various reasons, and the customers who joined later can hardly redeem the principal in the end. The platform may use some extreme market conditions to launder customer funds, and tell customers that due to Brexit, or the Swiss franc black swan incident, the account will be liquidated.
Like all scams, foreign exchange funds advertise high returns in order to confuse unsuspecting investors. Under the temptation of high returns and repeated brainwashing, kind people often find it difficult to resist the temptation.
In order to avoid being deceived, investors must first understand formal foreign exchange regulatory knowledge, and should rely on foreign exchange media, experienced practitioners, and formal financial securities companies to understand. Foreign exchange supervision and platform security have long formed a general consensus in the industry. The license fraud of funds, many so-called proof materials, and overseas inspections can only deceive novice investors who are completely ignorant of the foreign exchange industry.
Secondly, investors must understand how difficult financial transactions are, not to mention how difficult it is to find long-term stable traders. If there is such a stable performance, why is it necessary to use the MLM model to develop offline? As long as the platform side organizes a large amount of capital transactions, it can make a steady profit without losing money. Who in this world will do Lei Feng and help Xiaobai make money for free?
In addition, the selling orders, slippage, and liquidity repeatedly advertised by the funds are just applying the concept of the formal foreign exchange market, making investors believe it is true, and mistakenly believe that there are god-level traders who are actually trading. In fact, all the trading curves and order placing behaviors of the funds can be forged in the background.
03
summary
In his book Madness, Panic, and Crash, Professor Charles Kindleberger writes: "We believe that deceit is driven by need... In times of prosperity, wealth is created, people are greedy, and cheaters Come out and exploit people's desire for wealth."
The main reason why the Ponzi scheme can arise spontaneously is that many people buy it at a high price, expecting a completely unrealistic return. I believe that there will always be the biggest fool to take over, just like the crazy tulips back then. The Dutch people firmly believe that "tulips will always be hot." Go on, in the near future, investors from all over the world will gather in the Netherlands to buy tulips at any price offered by the Dutch.” In 1929, when the U.S. stock market crashed, even university professors and many famous experts believed that the stock market would go up forever.. ....
Today we are no better than the Dutch who fried tulips back then. The lessons of blood again and again are telling us, never think that you are better than others and can escape the last stick of drumming and passing flowers. Even if you get away with it the first 100 times, but the 101st fall, you will never die complex.
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