Trade Speakeasy Founder, Suzanne Manar Noukahoua, is a Syrian-American legal advisor, options trader, kids’ clothing line creator and author based in Koblenz, Germany. Suzanne spent her life traveling the world, studying multi-languages, and nurturing a vibrant career as a researcher and legal advisor.
Following her husband’s sudden and tragic death, Suzanne became a single mother to her 6-month-old son Xavier, and 3-year-old daughter Soraya. After an unimaginable journey from Germany to Switzerland, to Spain and finally to Cameroon, Suzanne laid her best friend to rest in his ancestral home.
Upon her return to Germany, CoVid-19 was sweeping across Europe. During the early days of quarantine Suzanne was driven to sharpen her trading skills. Restless nights led to hours of studying, practicing, broadening her trading skills, and eventually becoming an advanced options educator. Her efforts were not only to support her colleagues and friends, but to also teach her young children the invaluable skill of trading.
“For the last two years, I’ve taken my experience and turned it into the Trade Speakeasy, an intimate community for the new or advanced options trader to master the array of low-risk high reward strategies that have secured my family’s livelihood.”
Suzanne Noukahoua
When I first became a widow I thought the stress of organizing my financial future would drive me to utter madness. Though I knew how to trade, I lacked the confidence to scale my trading to replace my late husband’s income. However, that reality was a necessity not just a philosophical hope. If I ever hoped to keep my young children cared for in a safe environment I’d need to swiftly transition from a breastfeeding mother of a toddler and infant on maternity leave to a market-savvy trader.
Most trading courses I took taught the same basics of price action trading, they were slim on trade management, risk management and how to steadily grow not only a day trading account but a more robust long-term account. Many taught buy and hold strategies that required a significant amount of extra monthly income, which maternity leave doesn’t provide; or they taught strategies that required both a drunk mind and blind faith, neither of which sat well with this widow and mother of two.
At that point I knew I could trade, but to make it my living was another question, so I did what I knew how to do best, STUDY! I finished law school in two years from an Ivy League level institute with top grades, so I was sure I can could this data and find at least a few strategies that would click for me.
Building Blocks
Instead of one strategy clicking, they all started to click, as they were all interrelated, like building blocks. I started to turn my knowledge into bedtime stories for my children which forced me to truly break down the mechanics of each strategy into simple language a two and four-year-old could understand. This exercise was not at all futile; it allowed me to truly understand the detailed mechanics of how each strategy I teach now works, and this gave me a perfect opportunity to help other traders master the same strategies.
The other reality is that as a widow I had no ‘funny money.’ I had cash I needed to get working, and fast. It also meant I didn’t have the benefit of blowing up accounts or losing my own money. I had children to care for, and plan a life for, and losing our small family’s money was NOT in the cards for us. Many traders and teachers like to use bravado and ego to teach strategies, but I don’t have time for any of that nonsense! I only have time for being repetitively successful, and not revenge trading my way to a gambling habit of blowing up accounts, funds, and grocery money. Therefore my entire style of teaching, my drive to teach mechanics from the ground up, were born out of that sense of necessity and care, because I truly felt like every dollar I earned opened a door for my children and every dollar I lost unwisely was a future opportunity stolen from them.
I do trade intentionally, and passionately, as that is the core of my personality. However I do teach how to be cautious, manage your trades, and efficiently grow your trade account.
Welcome to the Trade Speakeasy. Let’s get started!
Meet the team
Rachel Seaman
Rachel Seaman is an entrepreneur at heart with multiple e-commerce businesses. She believes in empowering others through servitude and meaningful connections. Like you, she is a student, learning about the world of investing and trading.
Vicki Steinwurtzel
Vicki has a long history of working in the technology industry, starting with her years as a consultant to government organizations, corporations, and law firms, and also working with children as the Academic Technologist at a Washington, D.C. school. Vicki holds a BS in Secondary Education and English, and a MA in Education and Human Development in Educational Technology Leadership from George Washington University. Vicki is passionate about volunteer opportunities; she has built houses internationally with Habitat for Humanities and the Fuller Center, and in 2019 she traveled to Rwanda to provide technology training for the non-profit, Connect Rwanda. She enjoys traveling to different countries and learning about different cultures, and she currently resides in Mexico. She started actively investing 15 years ago, following a buy-and-hold methodology, and she began options trading in 2021.
Jay Forman
Jay Forman is a music teacher and options trader. “Working with Suzanne at Trade Speakeasy encouraged me to go deeper in my studies of options trading – challenging me to learn more technical analysis, and combine that with options strategies that are defensive by nature. The result is a sense of disciplined optimism in my approach to the market. I do not trade based on fear or greed, instead I take opportunities based on theses I understand. I express trades with options structures that allow for respectable gains, while keeping my risk tight. The TradeSpeakeasy Community has been instrumental to my growth as a trader, and I am honored to join the team, and help others the way that Suzanne has helped me!”
The Candlestick Journey
Over the months of quarantine Trade Speakeasy Founder, Suzanne, also began weaving colorful fantastical tales around the ancient art and study of Japanese Candlesticks. Suzanne made up countless stories of her children, Xavier and Soraya, in fantastical lands using metaphors and analogies to help her children gain at least an awareness of Japanese Candlestick patterns and how to identify them. Night after night Suzanne’s tales became more vivid, more dramatic and all the more imaginative. From these stories, Suzanne created a children’s book series called The Candlestick Journey.
The Doji’s Rumble, the first book in The Candlestick Journey book series, is a highly visual and engaging guide to learning the basics of trading through the ancient art and study of Japanese Candlesticks. Find out more about The Candlestick Journey …