My Forex Trading Journey: Spoiler Alert, The Game is Rigged

Down the Rabbit Hole

Turns out, if you give Erica the internet and a COVID shutdown, she’s going to go down a rabbit hole. And not the whimsical kind where you pop back up after a tea party. I mean the kind where suddenly it’s 3 a.m., you’ve got twenty browser tabs open, your coffee’s cold, and you’re muttering at candlesticks like they just grabbed the last roll of toilet paper.

My rabbit hole era was during COVID. You remember, QR code menus, Tiger King binges, and more sourdough starters than anyone asked for. What TF was that about anyway?! While the world was kneading bread I was glued to chart replays, scribbling notebooks, and quietly building a whole new future.

When the world shut down, I opened up a chart. That one decision changed everything.

On the surface, I probably looked like a mortgage lifer. Ten years in, steady career. But inside? Panic math. I did the numbers and Southern California Real Estate. I was turning 40 questioning life after lockdown.. asking myself: Do I really want to go back to a job? How am I going to pay for daughter's college? And if not now, then when do I finally buy my freedom back?

And COVID didn’t exactly calm the noise. Layoffs everywhere. Inflation through the roof. San Diego’s cost of living climbing like it had no ceiling. The old path wasn’t going to cut it — not for me, not for my family, not for the life I wanted.

Hi Erica, Meet Forex

A friend introduced me to forex almost by accident. He was a marketer who needed a signup for some trading education company. “Sure, $20, why not?” (What up, Nick!)

At first, I brushed it off. But curiosity (or maybe boredom) got the best of me, and I finally took a look.

Foreign exchange… like currency trading? Real people actually do this? Yeah right. In business school it was a one-page blip, strictly reserved for banks and hedge funds. Turns out, there is a whole world of trading out there that very few people even knows exists. (well, comparatively.)

I went deep down the rabbit hole chasing the possibility that maybe—just maybe—this trading thing was legit.

But the deeper I went, the messier it got. Indicators. Paid courses. Free YouTube gurus promising “10X your account in 10 days.” Everyone had their holy grail, and none of it held up.

Every path ended in the same place: confusion and blown accounts..

This is b.s.

Newsflash!

The Game is Rigged

The deeper I went, the clearer it became - the game was rigged from the start.

They say making money in forex is easy -it’s keeping it that’s hard. That’s not an accident. The system is built that way.

Like Alice’s nightmare croquet match, no matter how you swung, the rules bent against you. Hedge your bet, lose your bet. Play it safe, still lose. Unless you figured out what was really happening behind the curtain.

Through the Looking Glass

Somewhere in that rabbit hole, I got my hands onto Steve Mauro’s old Beat the Market Maker videos. Grainy, bootleg lectures where he wasn’t just teaching indicators- he was showing the mechanics, exposing the guys who actually move price.

For me, someone who has always loved a good behind-the-scenes reveal, it was like discovering the director’s cut of the market. Except this wasn’t theory, this was mechanics. This was how the game really worked. I was hooked in!

Finally — something solid to grab onto.

I binged 80+ hours of those bootcamps. And listen- I’m smart. I have a finance degree. I should’ve been able to follow along. But Mauro? Born from finance-bro lineage, speaking in finance-bro dialect. Half the time I was rewinding the same clip muttering, WTF is this guy even saying? and HTF am I supposed to learn this?

Still, beneath the jargon, the signal was there. The dealer cycles were real. The tells were consistent. The challenge wasn’t the theory; it was ignoring the static to see the pattern.

So I did what any stubborn-as-hell woman does: I went all in.

Rainman and the Magic Eye

I became like Rainman if he also starred in a Beautiful Mind. (My poor husband) Staring at charts until the patterns revealed themselves.

It was like those Magic Eye posters from the 90s — stare long enough at the chaos and suddenly the hidden picture pops into focus. That’s what dealer cycles became for me. Once I saw them, I couldn’t unsee them.

Remember these horrible 90s posters?

And just like Alice realizing the Queen’s croquet game was unwinnable until she understood the trick — I realized the forex market wasn’t random. It was patterned. It was structured. It was rigged, yes… but rigged in a way that could be decoded.

From there, it snowballed. I logged patterns. Built trade plans. Stripped Mauro’s system down, I stripped the whole market down to it's bones and rebuilt it into something simple, repeatable, and actually usable.

Because honestly, I don’t expect anyone else to go through the rabbit hole the way I did.

Inspiration

Every time I found something worth learning, my first instinct was to share it.

And that instinct is what has become The Trade Tribe.

What began as a messy notebook has already turned into a 7-day beginner series, a 40-class course, and a full flashcard system designed to help people see what I see.

And now? A growing community — trading education, cheat sheets, and a whole lot of fun to support people learning this craft.

So if you’ve ever felt like the game was rigged — come play with us.

We’ve hacked the Queen’s croquet match.

The Vision Becoming Real

This is just the beginning.

In all of my future dreams, I always saw a circle of women rising together, lifting each other up, and creating a life of freedom and support. That seed never left me.

Now, I can feel it taking form. The Tribe, the teaching, the community, the mission beyond just trading — it’s all beginning to come alive.

Because what I’m building isn’t only about charts.

It’s about freedom. Structure. Confidence.

It’s about building something solid in a world that often feels like it’s falling apart.

And I’d love for you to be part of it.

~Erica Lorrai

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably curious enough to take your first step.

👉 [Join the 7-Day Beginner Series] and I’ll walk you through the exact foundation I built my trading system on.

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FAQs

How long did all this take?

My forex trading journey started five years ago. The last year I dove in deep for another solid year of late nights, relentless study, messy experiments, and building what you see now piece by piece.

Do I need a finance background?

Nope. I’ve got a finance degree and can 100% vouch it is not needed to be successful in forex. That’s why I built my system — to make it simple for normal people to learn.

Can anyone really learn this?

If you can learn to spot patterns, you can learn this. I’ve boiled it down to repeatable steps and flashcards so you always know what just happened and what's about to happen next.

Where should I start my forex trading journey?

The 7-Day Beginner Series. It’s free, simple, and shows you the foundation of everything we do inside the Tribe.

Start Right Here

(For the nerds: Mauro’s BTMM 4-day lecture from 2012, a rite of passage for anyone deep in the rabbit hole.)