The process of becoming a digital labor of retail traders on the forex proprietary firms’ trading platform

Abstract

This research article is an academic work in the sociology of finance that
studies the becoming process of digital labor among Thai retail traders on the
Forex prop firms’ trading platform. According to the research results, retail
traders desire to change themselves into professional traders of Forex prop
firms. If retail traders can pass the trading evaluation, they will get a contract
signed and have the opportunity to receive up to millions of dollars in funding,
including more than 90 percent of the profit share. However, the trading process
of Forex prop firms is fraught with the same strict trading rules. Therefore, only
a few retail traders are successful, but most retail traders fail and are unable to
make a profit in the long run. For this reason, Forex prop firms’ main income
comes from charging fees in the trading evaluation of most failed retail traders
while the secondary income of Forex prop firms comes from utilizing trading
data that are generated by a few successful retail traders. Under such conditions,
both successful and failed retail traders have a status of digital labor on trading
platforms that were exploited by the Forex prop firms.