What does a day in the life of a forex trader in Dubai look like?

What does a day in the life of a forex trader in Dubai involve, according to this video?

In the YouTube video "A Day In The Life Of A Forex Trader In Dubai," Rihari shows a single day split between three forex trading sessions, a gym visit, a haircut, a recorded podcast and strategy session, and dinner at a Palm Jumeirah steakhouse, with trades checked on his phone between courses.

The video presents itself as a personal vlog, not a course or a service pitch. Rihari narrates each block of the day as it happens, cutting between his apartment, a gym, a barber chair, a podcast set, and a restaurant table. Trading only occupies part of the runtime; a large share of the video is lifestyle footage, filmed to accompany the trading updates rather than to explain a method. Where the video does show trading activity, Rihari narrates it in real time, referencing a specific account he calls his "journey to 10 million" account and a second account with a separate, smaller daily target. Nothing in the video describes a business structure, a licence, a fee, or a product being sold; it is one person's account of one day, and this article treats it that way.

The video opens with a short cold-open clip, out of chronological order, showing Rihari and his team watching a live trade approach its target during dinner and saying "price is pushing towards our target, up 5,000, we're going to take that," before cutting back to the actual start of the day. That same trade reappears later in the video, in its correct place in the day's timeline, once the New York session is underway. Between the cold open and the sign-off, the video's narration is built almost entirely around what stage of the day it is: which session is live, what time it is on his stated Brisbane clock, and what is happening around him, whether that is a gym, a haircut, a podcast set, or a dinner table.

Why does a Dubai-based trader keep trading on Brisbane time?

Rihari says that although he is physically in Dubai, he sticks to Brisbane, Australia time rather than adjusting to the local Dubai clock. He notes it is only 8:30am locally in Dubai when he is already having what he calls "lunch," because his schedule is anchored to Brisbane hours.

He does not explain in the video why Brisbane time specifically, but the effect shown on screen is that his stated meal times, session windows and evening plans are consistently offset from the actual Dubai clock. When he later has dinner at the steakhouse, he points out that it is 10pm in Brisbane at that moment, even though it is still closer to lunchtime for people around him in Dubai. This detail matters for anyone trying to map his on-screen day to Dubai business hours: the video is Dubai-located but Brisbane-timed, and viewers should not assume his session windows line up with Gulf-region market hours.

What trading sessions structure his day, and what does he say happened in each?

The video is built around three forex trading sessions Rihari names directly: Asia, London and New York. He gives a running account of results after each one, all expressed in USD, on the account he says he is following toward a $10 million goal.

He says the Asia session had just finished when the video opens, and that he was up about $8,000 USD on that account, which he describes as just over 4%. He frames this as a "good start to the day" against a stated personal target of 10% a day on that account, which he says he can sustain because of his understanding of the market, adding that viewers not yet at that level should be working toward it. He also gives a specific balance goal for the day, saying he is trying to finish the day at about $220,000 on that account, and describes the Asia-session setup in technical terms: his stated target was "the higher time frame liquidity, the previous day low," which he says price came down and took, after which he was watching for a "shift" in price action before treating it as continuing the higher-timeframe move. Moving into London, he narrates price action as "still bearish" but says he is starting to see "sellers come out of the market and more buyers coming into the market." He reports catching a trade for $3,000 during that window and says the session otherwise "ended up going sideways," leaving him at just under $11,000, or roughly 5%, for the day at that point. After London he assesses himself as "up 5% now" and says that is "not bad, but also not where we want to be" against the 10% target, naming gold, Nasdaq and US 30 as the instruments he might use to close the remaining gap in New York. Later, over dinner, he narrates a live New York-session trade approaching a target, says "price is pushing towards our target, up 5,000," and reports taking it. He then states the day's total as $21,000 USD net of commissions, which he calls 10% for the day and describes as "all winning trades."

How do the Asia, London and New York sessions compare in the video?

Laid out side by side, the three sessions Rihari narrates show a day that builds gradually: a solid opening result in Asia, a quieter London session with one clean trade, and a late New York move that pushes the account to his stated 10% target for the day.

| Session (as named in the video) | What Rihari says happened | Running total he states | |---|---|---| | Asia | Session had just ended when filming began; he reports being up about $8,000 USD, "just over 4%" | ~4% for the day | | London | Describes price action as bearish but shifting; reports catching one trade worth $3,000; says the rest of the session "went sideways" | Just under $11,000, "just under 5%" | | New York | Narrates a live trade during dinner, says he took a $5,000 gain toward the day's target | $21,000 total, which he calls 10% for the day |

This table reflects only what Rihari states on camera. The video does not show trade-by-trade broker statements, verified account audits, or independent confirmation of any of these figures; it shows his own narration and a screen he says is his "Trade Zola" trading journal, with a stated 100% win rate for the trades logged that day and figures he reads off the screen, including a gross profit and loss line, that are not fully legible in the video.

Rihari also describes a second, separate account with a different daily target of 2%, which he says trades gold, Nasdaq and US 30 rather than the currency pairs traded on the main account. He mentions this second account only briefly, stating its target and the instruments involved, without giving a result for it on the day filmed. He does not explain why the two accounts run different strategies or targets, and the video gives no further detail on how the second account is managed.

What is the day-in-the-life routine, step by step?

Rihari's video moves through the following sequence, in the order he presents it on screen, starting just after the Asia trading session closes and ending with a steakhouse dinner in Dubai where he checks the day's final trading result between courses.

1. Wakes early on the Brisbane clock and trades the Asia session with what he calls "the lads," reporting the session's result as soon as it closes.
2. Goes to the gym.
3. Orders lunch through Careem, an app he describes as Dubai's equivalent of Uber Eats, choosing what he calls a healthy steak wrap.
4. Has a friend come to his apartment to cut his hair, introducing him on camera as based in Dubai and originally from New Zealand or Australia.
5. Moves into the London trading session while preparing for a recorded podcast and strategy session, narrating price action and a $3,000 trade along the way.
6. Gets ready and heads out to film the podcast and strategy session with a co-host referred to as "the White on TV," which he says viewers should also follow. He tells the camera that the strategy session content itself is expected to come out "4 to 5 weeks" after the date of filming.
7. Travels to a steakhouse on the Palm Jumeirah for dinner, ordering from a shared platter and a non-alcoholic "Coke Crush" mocktail.
8. Checks the New York session live at the dinner table, narrates a trade being taken, and reports the day's account total once it closes.
9. Signs off for the day, stating the final USD figure and its equivalent in NZD and AUD, and previews a separate breakdown video he says he will publish walking through how the day's trades were made.

What lifestyle and spending details appear in the video?

Rihari shows a small number of concrete lifestyle details rather than a general account of cost of living in Dubai. He mentions using Careem for food delivery, getting a haircut from a Dubai-based barber he introduces as originally from New Zealand or Australia, and having dinner at a steakhouse on the Palm Jumeirah.

At the restaurant, he and his companion look at a three-cuts platter of strip loin, tenderloin and rib eye, and a separate Wagyu option priced at what he reads off the menu as roughly $2,000 for 850 grams, a price he immediately says they are "not going to eat." They order the tenderloin fillet with a bearnaise sauce instead, along with bread and butter, and a mocktail. None of this is presented as sponsored content in the transcript, and the video does not state who is paying for any of it. These details describe what is shown on screen for this one day and should not be read as a claim about typical costs of living or entertaining in Dubai.

The dinner also includes some unscripted back-and-forth between Rihari and his companion, who orders a "Coke Crush" mocktail described as pineapple, passion fruit and coconut, while Rihari sticks to water, prompting a joking exchange about who is being precious about their drink order. It is a small, ordinary moment rather than a trading or lifestyle claim, and it is included here only because it is part of what the video actually shows of the day, alongside the discussion of butter being salty and a shared aside about "still trying" to lose weight despite the steak dinner.

On the Careem detail specifically, Rihari says the app lets him order healthy breakfast, lunch or dinner with full macro and calorie information, and offers his own theory that this exists because of the number of fitness and lifestyle influencers based in Dubai who want to eat that way. That is his stated opinion about why the service is popular, not a verified fact about the app or the city, and it is presented in the video as a passing comment rather than a researched claim. He also introduces his barber on camera as someone who lives in Dubai and is originally from New Zealand or Australia, and references a separate, longer conversation with him about being in Dubai during a period of conflict, which he says is available elsewhere for viewers who want the full detail; the video used for this article does not itself contain that conversation.

What do independent statistics say about forex and CFD trading outcomes?

Two independently sourced statistics provide useful context that sits outside anything Rihari says in the video. The Bank for International Settlements measured global daily foreign-exchange turnover, and Australia's corporate regulator measured retail outcomes in a related product category.

According to the BIS 2025 Triennial Survey, average daily over-the-counter foreign-exchange turnover reached US$9.6 trillion in April 2025, giving a sense of the scale of the market that individual sessions like the ones narrated in the video sit inside. Separately, ASIC Report 828: Risky business found that 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. Forex trading and CFD trading are not identical products, but ASIC's report covers the same broad category of leveraged, short-term retail speculation that the sessions in this video belong to, and its finding is the most directly relevant independent data point available on how that category tends to play out for the average retail participant.

Reading the two figures together is instructive. A market turning over US$9.6 trillion a day, as the BIS reports, is large enough that the gains one trader narrates on one account in one video are a rounding error against the total, and the size of the market says nothing about whether any individual participant, including Rihari, is on the winning or losing side of it on a given day. ASIC's 68% loss rate is the figure that actually speaks to individual outcomes, and it describes Australian retail CFD investors as a group over a full financial year, not this video's subject specifically. Neither statistic confirms or disproves anything Rihari says about his own results; they simply describe the market he trades in and the category of retail outcomes it most closely resembles.

Is a single day's trading result shown in a video a typical or realistic outcome?

The video documents one trader's account of one day and states specific gains, a 10% daily target, and a 100% win rate for that day's logged trades. None of these figures are independently verified in the video, and they describe a single day rather than a track record.

Rihari frames his 10%-a-day target as sustainable for himself specifically, saying he is "able to sustain that" because of his level of market understanding, and he separately mentions a second account with a smaller 2%-a-day target. He does not claim in the video that these targets are typical, guaranteed, or achievable by viewers following the same approach; he says viewers not yet at his level should be "getting into" that level of understanding, without describing how. Set against ASIC's finding that 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money over a full financial year, a single winning day shown in a vlog is not a reliable guide to what a typical retail trader experiences over time.

He does add two data points about consistency beyond the single day filmed: he says the previous day's result on the same account was around $18,000 USD, and he converts the day filmed, $21,000 USD, into roughly $37,000 NZD and $30,000 AUD, visibly correcting himself mid-sentence on the NZD figure before settling on it. Two consecutive winning days narrated in a video are still not an audited track record, and the video does not show any losing days, drawdowns, or the longer history behind the "journey to 10 million" framing it uses for the main account. This article reports what Rihari says on camera; it does not verify his account statements, endorse his stated targets as achievable, or suggest that trading forex can reliably produce the results shown in this video.