Ken Chigbo

Like each SimFi instructor, Ken contributes to the University's curriculum from the standpoint of active practice. His contribution is macro: he connects what learners study about markets to the economic forces that move prices. The aim is not to hand learners a view to follow. It is to help them build their own framework for making decisions.

Ken has worked in financial markets from several sides. He began in a trading floor environment in the City of London. He then moved into analyst roles covering foreign exchange, fixed income, commodities and equities.

He later spent around eight years in corporate roles, including corporate foreign exchange. There he helped businesses:

• assess and manage currency risk
• decide when to make large international payments
• use forward contracts to make future transactions more certain (a forward contract is an agreement to exchange currencies at a set rate on a future date)

Ken has traded independently since 2017, with a focus on foreign exchange, gold and the macro factors that drive them.

His teaching rests on one order of work: understand the environment first, then look for the trade. Many traders start with a chart and look for a reason for the move afterward. He reverses that sequence. The learner studies the forces acting on a market, forms a view, sets out scenarios, and only then uses technical analysis to time and define the trade.

Ken stresses that an economic release is not the trade in itself. What matters more is what the release changes: expectations, interest rates, bond yields, currencies and, in the end, price. Macro analysis supplies the reason for a trade, and technical analysis supplies the execution.

His instruction covers:

• Macroeconomic analysis: growth, inflation, employment and the wider economic environment
• Central bank policy: how interest rate decisions and policy guidance shape market expectations
• Rates and bond yields: how interest rates and bond markets interact with currencies, gold and equities
• Economic data: how markets respond to inflation, labor market and growth releases
• Foreign exchange: reading a currency relative to another, not one economy in isolation
• Gold and commodities: the influence of inflation, the dollar, geopolitics and risk sentiment
• Cross-asset analysis: using relationships between bonds, currencies, commodities and equities to build a clearer view
• Scenario planning: preparing for several outcomes rather than relying on one prediction
• Risk management: controlling exposure, and treating the protection of capital as part of the trading process
• Independent decision-making: building a framework the learner can use without relying on signals or another person's opinion

His path into markets was gradual. At 16 he worked as a tea boy on a trading floor during school holidays. That early exposure led to analyst and macro analysis roles, and from there to corporate foreign exchange. In corporate foreign exchange, currency risk was a business problem with real consequences, not an abstract one.

After roughly eight years in corporate roles, he chose to apply that experience to his own trading. He has taught traders internationally since 2016, with a particular focus on making macroeconomics practical for independent traders.

This background explains why Ken does not separate technical trading from the economic environment around it. His approach asks four questions in turn: why a market is moving, what information has changed, how related assets are responding, and where the actual trading opportunity lies.

Since 2016 he has taught traders internationally. His focus is on translating economic information, central bank policy, rates and yields into practical trading decisions.

The Trader Score is an independent measure of trading behavior across six families. It does not measure profit. The activity it reflects takes place on simulated capital.

• Risk integrity
• Execution quality
• Behavioral stability
• Consistency and durability
• Adaptation to context
• Education completion