Ohhhhh, I was just being cranky. (And I appreciate the chuckles y'all threw in there, but...) The thing is, "you gotta prove..." was *not*at*all* what the thread was about! One guy gets on, sez: "I can't *believe* how hard it is, to pass on this workable formula...." He wasn't trying to sell it, shill it, slime it, *nothing*. THE THREAD was about Our Human Nature to look gift-horses in the mouth. (That poster) comes in, looking to make it an ego story: Ego is (I think) the single most destructive factor to financial capital. There are WHOLE THREADS on ET started and directed towards (basically) ego -- all populated by people who have or will *lose* massive amounts of capital, because they thought that whipping out their should-be private parts and waving them around HAS ANYTHING to do with trading. Ego-driven threads are dumb. But everyone has a right. But when you try to paint that kind of idiocy on other threads/other posters? Nah. Nah. Uh-uh. (Hope that helps.....)
The master is not there to adjust themselves to how you might feel or to watch you add your own preferences to it when your own preferences and style are usually what needs to be removed. You don't say to your Navy Seal instructor or your Zen master "I like what you do but you need to adjust it to my style." There is the story of the student who blabbed on and had his own ideas of what was right. The master asked him if he would like tea and then the student held out his cup. The master poured tea in to cup- and more and more and more until it was spilling on to the floor. The student was aghast. Whereupon the master said, "And so it is with you. How can I fill your cup if it is already full with something else?" This is not to say that you don't go off and apply your own thinking and style at some point. Actually, you have no choice but to do that and that is as it should be. Meanwhile, learn from the teacher. Oh, and do not irritate the master by taking a selfie. All of this of course does not apply if you have paid some clown who knows nothing to attend a weekend seminar on trading at the Airport Holiday Inn but that is not what I am talking about.
If one is a master at something they don't gripe about their students not wanting to listen and follow their path. They say, their loss and carry on.
It took me a solid seven years of failing and flailing before I got it. But I was entirely on my own, figuring it out (or not, in my case) without any guidance. I think you’re right: I didn’t sugarcoat the requirements for their own practice. That said, I don’t see any reason why it’s not doable in six months, given the right guidance.
I get the idiosyncracies of Human Nature mentioned in this thread. I was in a similar position in 2008-2009, the one time that I had a real edge (or was just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time). I offered the details to a long time trader friend and she countered with all of the potential ways that the system could lose money. I was booking $1,000 a day for an extended period of time (an extraordinarily monstrous number for me). And no, she had no private parts to whip out and wave around. It made no sense to me and I just shrugged it off, nor did I rub it in 15 months later when the edge was gone (the end of the bear). I still shake my head when she says that she wishes she had tried it.
Funny you should say that as "six months" crops up regularly, depending mostly on how one gets started. TreeFrogTrader's post above mentions the Zen Master/tea story: "And so it is with you. How can I fill your cup if it is already full with something else?" This is a nearly universal problem with people whose heads are filled with colors and candles and indicators and whatnot. They literally cannot see what's in front of them, and untangling all that takes a great deal of time and effort, too much time and effort when it comes to those who refuse to let go of all that isn't working for them and step onto a different path.
First step is to DEprogram the brain. Throw all garbage out and start from zero again. That is a huge problem for people who analyze markets for years without being profitable. When they realize that the only solution then is to start from scratch again, most of them cannot overcome that mental problem. On top of that they have to build up trust in the new tradeplan.
Alot of traders are like sports or politics...no matter what, they are convinced they are absolutely right. and you are wrong. -- their ego can't stand to admit or sense they are wrong. You must have a Huge grey mind to succeed as a trader, not a black or white one only. Teaching an old stubborn dog a new trick is tough indeed. If everyone here were proud, happy, successful traders we would all be bragging about our returns, and earthly finer possessions. and showing them off too -- without getting extremely defensive at the slightest suggestion. Mazal tov, schweiz
The "six months" thing rang a bell and reminded me of the following, posted several years ago: My interest in daytrading was sparked by a chance viewing of an early morning infomercial for a day trading school. I actually contacted the school, and my conversation with the admissions counselor left me with two takeaways: first, he was trying hard to sell me, and I do not respond well to the hard sell; second, from his pitch, it became apparent that learning to "read the tape" was, according to his pitch, the critical skill component of learning to trade. A google search of "tape reading" and "reading the tape," and a little discernment applied to what I was reading as I investigated the results quickly acquainted me with Wyckoff and Neill. One cannot immerse oneself in the study of a field and not quickly come to terms with the vocabulary of its participants. Less than two months ago, I was vaguely aware of "ticker tape," mostly as it related to parades. I have a much more comprehensive view of "the tape" now than I did then. Much of that has to do with the fact that, in addition to Wyckoff and Neill and Raschke, I also read a few basic textbooks on the financial markets. I knew nothing when I started. More importantly, I knew that I knew nothing and that I needed to learn what these financial markets were about before I started to engage them on an active basis. Rather than "sift through thousands of market strategies," I have really explored only one – the one that was my first introduction to this business: "learning how to read the tape." I have encountered other systems in my reading. I have been fortunate in that I read everything with a eye toward how it related to what I had learned about price movement and volume. I have indeed been invested in the markets for quite some time. I have Keogh accounts as well as non-retirement savings that have been invested in mutual funds for some years. As a matter of fact, my recently-funded trading account began as a $60,000 investment with a Merrill Lynch broker in a group of diversified mutual funds over 13 years ago. In 13 years, that $60,000 had "grown" to $58,155.29. So I am not new to being a market participant. I am new to be an active and informed participant. I have also spent a fair amount of time reading trading websites, blogs, and trading forums. I have found very few that added to my understanding in any beneficial way. One thought that struck me early on – and has continued to recur to me over my journey – is that many who speculate in the financial markets seem to be of a mind that it needs to be more complicated than it is. Of course, my having said that can easily, and likely will, and probably should be readily dismissed by those who think it a highly complicated and difficult business, as I am admittedly new to the business. I am enough of a realist to recognize that they may have the last laugh. For now, I am pleased with my progress. I am confident. Maybe I am just lucky that my personality and my background have caused me to find affinity with certain authors and not others. I read several books that raised more questions in my mind than answers before I stumbled upon Wyckoff. Studies in Tape Reading made perfect sense to me. It is likely my background: I am a self-employed tradesman who understands the difference between retail and wholesale and the need at times to mark down inventory, sometimes below even wholesale cost, selling product at a small loss to avoid complete spoilage and a large loss in order to purge the shelves, so to speak, to make room for more salable goods. On the other hand, I just finished a fairly recent book on technical analysis by an author who appears to be widely read and highly respected by professional traders (if the book jacket blurbs are to be believed) that was chock full of indicator studies. Far from making sense to me, I am baffled by it. That doesn't mean there are not others who are not only not baffled, but who also use these indicators to engage in profitable trading operations. My charts are fairly bare-bones affairs. My trades are short-term, most being opened and closed within the same trading session, while others are held for a few days. I do have a line struck at the current session's opening trade price and also at the prior day's closing price. I also write down yesterday's high and low using a lowly pencil and wide-ruled paper in a 17-cent notebook. Other than that, any notes or annotations which I think may be helpful for review are drawn after the trade is closed using a separate screenshot edited in Paint. In other words, the only lines on my chart in my charting software are yesterday's close and today's open. I also use volume, and that is plotted in a subpane of the main price window. I do not dwell on the fact that I am unable to do what others do with ease. I have always been of the mind that I can do what anyone else can do so long as I am able to find my own way. Fortunately, it seems as though others have found my way long before I ever was; therefore, I simply need to follow those who blazed the trail before me. Wyckoff makes it clear that if someone were to take the time to understand the how and why of price movement then to speculate according to the way the market in fact works, it should be neither difficult nor take an interminably long time to achieve profitability. In the first pages of Studies in Tape Reading, Wyckoff mentions a friend of his who had started trading over the same ticker with a trader named Joe Manning. In the beginning, they were both trading in 10-share lots. Years later, Joe Manning was trading hundreds of thousands of dollars, while Wyckoff's friend was still trading in 10-share lots. In six months, I'll either be on my way to being a Joe Manning, or I'll be like Wyckoff's unnamed friend. If the former, then full steam ahead, and if the latter, I'll move on to something else. It would be irresponsible of me and, in my opinion, plain crazy of me to continue to bang my head obsessively against the wall for six years, insisting that I was going to "make it as a trader" in spite of clear and compelling evidence to the contrary. –fortydraws