Ambitious Investing education

Who is Rihari and how did he become a forex trader?

Rihari is a New Zealand-born forex trader and trading educator who says he grew up in poverty, lost $50,000 while learning to trade, then built a system-based daily process that took a $20,000 account past $100,000 and now teaches that process to paying students.

Published 9 September 2026 ยท Based on this Ambitious Investing video

Who is Rihari?

Rihari is a forex trader and trading educator who appears in first-person YouTube videos describing a path from financial hardship in New Zealand to running a paid trading community. Everything reported here about his life comes from his own spoken statements in those two videos, not from independent verification.

Across the two source videos, "How Trading Changed My Life From Broke to Millionaire" and "The Reality of Personal Growth," Rihari presents himself as a self-taught trader who now mentors others. He speaks on camera while on a boat, references a Discord-style trading community he runs, mentions golfing with other wealthy people at a private marina development, and describes daily routines built around forex chart analysis. He also references a Dubai property purchase, an Instagram account where he posts monthly trading results, and a group of students he coaches on live calls during trading sessions. None of these details are cross-checked against public records in the material supplied for this article, so they are reported strictly as Rihari's own claims about his life and business, not as confirmed facts.

It is also worth being precise about what the videos do not say. Neither transcript names a licensed entity, a regulator, a specific broker, or a formal trading qualification. There is no mention of an Australian Financial Services Licence or equivalent. Readers should treat the absence of that information as a gap in the source material, not as evidence one way or the other about Rihari's regulatory status.

Rihari also directly addresses skepticism about whether his results and lifestyle are genuine, responding to it by pointing to his own visible spending and possessions rather than by providing financial documentation. He describes people accusing him of doctoring screenshots or posting "demo" trading results while claiming they are real, and recalls a commenter doubting a video where he said he had bought an apartment in Dubai, with the commenter saying they would ask a real-estate contact to confirm it was fake. Rihari's response in the video is that his ongoing travel to Dubai to pursue a Golden Visa, tied to that property, is itself his answer to the skepticism, rather than an independent document or record. He also argues his day-to-day lifestyle, such as being able to take a weekday morning off to go fishing, would not be possible if his trading income were not real.

This article notes the existence of that public skepticism and Rihari's response to it, without independently resolving the underlying dispute. None of the source material available here includes account statements, tax records, property title records, or other third-party documentation that would confirm or disprove the claims either side is making.

How did Rihari get into forex trading?

Rihari says he started trading from a position of financial hardship, describing his family as having gone without food at times growing up, and calling himself "broke as" before he found success in the market. He frames his entry into trading as self-directed learning rather than formal education.

In the first video, Rihari describes trading as "a skill you have to learn," and says that without that skill "you're just going to lose money in the market." He does not give a specific start date, a specific broker, or a specific course or mentor he learned from. What he does describe is a mindset: watching other people make money from trading and reasoning that if it was possible for them, it should be possible for him too. He says this belief is what kept him trading through repeated early losses rather than quitting.

In the second video, Rihari mentions relocating out of New Zealand into his "own space" as the point where he says his results improved, tying that move to when he began following a fixed daily system rather than trading on motivation alone. He does not specify a country or city he moved to, only that leaving New Zealand coincided, in his account, with locking in a repeatable routine.

What trading losses does Rihari say he went through before finding success?

Rihari says he lost $50,000 during his early trading period, describing this as a stretch when he was "losing in the market so often" while still learning. He frames those losses as the price of developing the skill, not as evidence the approach does not work.

He is explicit that losing money was frequent in his first period of trading, and says what sustained him through it was watching other traders succeed and concluding that success was "doable" if he could work out the winning approach. This is a psychological account of persistence through losses, not a claim about a specific strategy that reversed them.

Separately, in the second video, Rihari mentions a different $50,000 loss that he says happened "earlier in the week" during a period when he was otherwise on a winning run with a much larger account. He describes this loss as insignificant relative to his account size at that point and says he does not get emotional about it either way. Because the two $50,000 figures appear in different videos, at what he describes as different stages of his trading career, they should be read as two separate self-reported events rather than one confirmed number. Neither loss is accompanied by a broker statement, trade log, or other documentation in the source material.

How does Rihari describe turning $20,000 into over $100,000?

In the first video, Rihari says he deposited $20,000 into a trading account and grew it to $32,000 in the first week, then to roughly $60,000 to $70,000 the next week, then past $100,000, specifically $103,000, within a further two to three days.

This sequence is narrated verbally on camera. The transcript supplied for this article does not include account statements, a broker name, screenshots, or dated records to accompany the figures, so the numbers below reflect what Rihari says happened, not an audited record of what happened.

| Stage (as narrated by Rihari) | Account value he states | Timeframe he claims | |---|---|---| | Starting deposit | $20,000 | Day one | | End of week one | $32,000 | About one week | | End of week two | Roughly $60,000 to $70,000 | About two weeks | | Final figure cited | $103,000 | Two to three additional days |

Rihari credits the growth to "knowledge," by which he means reading the market and applying a defined process rather than guessing. He contrasts this with what he describes as "the majority of people" who do not understand how to read charts. He does not walk through the specific trades that produced this account growth in the transcript provided, so the mechanics behind the numbers are not verifiable from this source material.

Rihari cites further short-term figures in the second video, contrasting smaller results earlier in what he describes as a public account-growing challenge with larger ones later. He says that in June, when he first started that challenge, his daily results were mostly in the range of $2,000 to $6,000, with $6,000 counted as a big day at that stage. He then says that by mid-July, results had scaled up, citing a $50,000 day, two days shortly before that of roughly $2,500 and $3,500, and a running total of about $220,000 for the first ten trading days of that month. He frames the variance between those days, some in the low thousands and one at $50,000, as normal, arguing that focusing on "performance goals," meaning following the process correctly, matters more than any single day's dollar outcome. He says he posts monthly summaries like these to Instagram alongside a trading journal tool he refers to by a brand name similar to "TradeZella." No screenshots, exported journal data, or Instagram posts accompany the transcript supplied for this article, so these totals should be treated as claims made on camera rather than independently confirmed trading results.

What daily trading system does Rihari say he follows?

Rihari says his results come from a repeatable daily system rather than one-off decisions or luck, built around pre-market analysis, historical chart review, mindset routines, and a defined risk-management plan. He argues that systems, not goals, are what actually produce consistent outcomes.

He lays out a version of this routine in the second video as a sequence he follows before and during each trading session:

  1. Wake up before the Asia trading session opens, ahead of the rest of his day.
  2. Spend about an hour on what he calls "FX Replay," which he describes as reviewing historical chart movements to warm up his pattern recognition for the session ahead.
  3. Read personal affirmations, which he says help build the confidence and conviction he considers essential to executing trades.
  4. Visualize the plan for the session, including rehearsing mentally how he wants to feel after both a winning trade and a losing one.
  5. Enter trades only when his defined setup criteria appear on the chart, rather than trading at fixed times regardless of conditions.
  6. Apply a risk-management plan that he says prioritizes protecting capital, including accepting break-even trades rather than repeated losses.
  7. Journal and review the session afterward to identify mistakes, which he describes as the step that turns losses into future improvement.

Rihari says this process has made trading feel "boring" and repetitive to him, which he presents as a sign of discipline rather than a downside. He also states his win rate sits "between the 80 and 90 percent," a figure he gives verbally without accompanying broker statistics, a trading journal export, or third-party audit in the material reviewed for this article. That win-rate figure should be read as Rihari's stated claim about his own trading, not as an independently confirmed statistic.

Rihari frames the underlying philosophy of this routine as "systems, not goals," arguing that a goal like reaching a million dollars only supplies short-term motivation, while a fixed daily system is what he says actually carries someone through periods when motivation runs out. He extends the same argument to a separate goal he describes pursuing in parallel, losing weight and building muscle, saying he applies the identical logic of pre-planned meals and scheduled cardio rather than relying on willpower day to day. He also describes what he calls the "sacrifice" required to reach the level of success he claims, saying he gave up free time, sleep, and social spending for an extended period while learning to trade, and frames that sacrifice as a prerequisite for the results he says followed, rather than a guaranteed trade-off for anyone who repeats it.

What does Rihari claim about his trading students' results?

Rihari cites several student trading outcomes across the two videos, presenting them as evidence his coaching works for others too. He names one student, Jordan, and refers to others without naming them, and does not disclose price, structure, or overall group outcomes.

Rihari says he began teaching because he wants other people to be able to change their circumstances the way he says trading changed his, framing his coaching as personal motivation rather than describing it as a licensed advisory or financial service. He describes running a "community" of students, some of whom he says he speaks with on live calls during the Asia and New York trading sessions, and credits the strategy he built through his own losses, described earlier in this article, as the thing he now passes on. Nothing in the source material states a price, a course structure, refund terms, or the legal structure of this coaching activity, so this article does not characterize it as a specific commercial offer, and nothing here should be read as a description of a program's terms, cost, or guaranteed outcomes.

The specific claims he makes include a student who he says made $250,000 on a single trade, a student he says turned a $250,000 account into what he describes as roughly $1 million, students he says are "making like $30,000 a day," a student he says made his first $6,000 in a single day, and a separate account of a student who he says lost an entire $100,000 account on one trade before rebuilding it to around $250,000 to $300,000 through further coaching. He also describes Jordan as having made "someone's salary" in a single day without stating a figure.

These are anecdotes recounted verbally by Rihari about identified or partially identified individuals, not audited performance records, independently verified account statements, or a disclosed sample of outcomes across all of his students. This article reports them as claims Rihari makes on camera. It does not confirm they occurred as described, does not treat them as typical or representative results for traders in general or for participants in any program he runs, and does not offer them as evidence that similar outcomes are likely for any reader.

How does Rihari's story compare to broader retail forex and CFD trading data?

Rihari's videos describe his own personal outcomes and do not reference industry-wide data on how retail traders perform overall. Independent regulatory and market statistics offer useful context for anyone weighing a personal trading story like his against the wider market.

ASIC Report 828: Risky business records that 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. This is a market-wide regulatory finding covering retail CFD trading generally in Australia, and it is not a statement about Rihari, his methods, or any specific program. It is included here as context on the base rate of outcomes among retail traders in this category, against which any individual's account of consistent profits should be weighed.

The BIS 2025 Triennial Survey reported average daily over-the-counter foreign-exchange turnover of US$9.6 trillion in April 2025. This figure describes the scale and liquidity of the global foreign-exchange market as a whole. It says nothing about the odds of success for an individual retail trader within that market, but it is useful for understanding the size of the market Rihari is describing trading in.

Neither of these two data points evaluates Rihari's specific trading, his win rate, or his students' results. They are supplied as independently sourced market and regulatory statistics, separate from and not a verification of anything in his videos.

What lifestyle claims does Rihari make about life after trading?

Beyond specific account figures, Rihari describes a lifestyle he says trading income has funded, including travel, property, and time with other wealthy people. He presents this as evidence of financial change in his own life, not as a claim about any business, investment product, or outcome.

He says he owns real estate in Dubai and was traveling there to apply for a Golden Visa, which he says is available to him because of that property ownership. He describes flying business class and staying in Dubai for around eight days for that purpose. He also says he funded a family holiday to Singapore for what he describes as sixteen family members, at a cost he states as $100,000, contrasting it with earlier years when his family saved slowly toward much smaller trips. Separately, he describes a personal health and fitness routine, including cardio during his morning trading sessions using a walking pad and stationary bike, and says he lost several kilograms over a period of months.

These are personal lifestyle claims made verbally by Rihari about his own life. They are not accompanied by property records, visa documentation, or financial statements in the source material reviewed for this article, and they should not be read as claims about any business's profitability, licensing status, or the pricing or performance of any product or service.

Which sources support these statistics?

ASIC Report 828 and the Bank for International Settlements 2025 Triennial Survey support the cited statistics. They report market-wide CFD-loss and foreign-exchange-turnover data, not evidence that a trading method, educator or reader will obtain any particular result.

What questions do readers ask about this topic?

The answers below address the adjacent practical questions readers ask after reviewing the article and its source material. Each answer describes the available evidence and does not replace an independent review of current terms, risks or personal circumstances.

Where does Rihari say he grew up?

Rihari says he grew up in New Zealand in a household that struggled financially, describing days without food and calling himself 'broke as' before trading changed his circumstances. He later says he moved out of New Zealand into his own space once he began trading full time, though he does not name the country or city he relocated to.

How much money does Rihari say he lost before becoming consistently profitable?

He says he lost $50,000 during his early trading period when he was losing frequently while still learning to read the market. In a separate video he mentions a different $50,000 loss later in his career that he treated as insignificant given his account size at the time. Both figures come only from his own spoken account, not from trading records supplied with this article.

What is FX Replay, as Rihari uses the term?

In his videos, Rihari describes spending about an hour each morning on what he calls FX Replay, reviewing historical chart movements to sharpen his pattern recognition before the trading session opens. He does not explain the tool in further detail, so this article reports only his description of how he says he uses it.

Does Rihari say he holds a financial trading licence or qualification?

No. Neither video transcript reviewed for this article mentions a trading licence, an Australian Financial Services Licence, or a formal trading qualification held by Rihari. That absence is a gap in the source material rather than a confirmed statement about his regulatory status either way.

What win rate does Rihari claim for his own trading?

Rihari says his win rate sits between 80% and 90%, a figure he states directly on camera without providing broker statistics, a trading journal export, or any third-party audit alongside the claim. It should be read as his own stated figure, not as an independently verified statistic.

Do Rihari's videos guarantee that viewers will make money from trading?

Rihari makes strong personal statements in his videos, including telling viewers he can 'promise' they will become millionaires if they follow his system and sacrifice enough to stick with it. This article reports that as Rihari's own statement and does not endorse, repeat as advice, or treat it as a realistic expectation, since trading outcomes are not guaranteed and [ASIC Report 828](https://download.asic.gov.au/media/tq0he35c/rep828-published-20-january-2026.pdf) records that most Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year.

What outcomes does Rihari claim for his trading students?

He cites unnamed or partially named students reaching outcomes such as $250,000 on a single trade, turning $250,000 into roughly $1 million, and one student, Jordan, making what Rihari calls 'someone's salary' in a single day. These are anecdotes recounted verbally in his videos, not audited performance records, and this article does not present them as typical or representative results.

Which RihariFX videos support this article?

The embedded RihariFX videos and their original English transcripts are the primary sources for the source-video claims in this article. They record what was said in each video and do not independently verify performance, price, licensing or typical results.

How Trading Changed My Life From Broke to Millionaire
The Reality of Personal Growth

General information only: This article is not personal financial advice. Trading and CFDs carry a risk of loss.