Has anyone had any dealings with "Natural Order Educators" as advertised in "Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine"? They offer a trading course for about 5-6K. Any pros or cons would be appreciated!
There are excellent trader training sites that offer excellent "hands on" training for a lot less than $5k.
From what I hear, a trader can easily spend $5,000 or more on seminars and books and various courses and still not find what they're looking for. I would much rather spend good money on good training as opposed to spending good money on bad. You get, so it's said, what you pay for. Or, maybe I'm just beeing hopeful.
Without getting into a debate, while "you get what you pay for" applies to many things, trading is an exception. This site, http://www.traderinterviews.com, profiles some successful traders who offer training sites and aren't out to "milk" anyone.
Sometimes a very good place to start with training is at the local university. A number of universities offer various courses on Technical Analysis and other related topics. These are much more likely to be well organised and well taught than those high priced courses advertised in the trade journals. And the universities charge a small fraction of what the other guys do. Richard
Neonnight, A better cliche for trading courses is "buyer beware" rather than "you get what you pay for". Before you send one cent off to purchase any trading method, make sure you request (and get) a copy of the system or course seller's own brokerage statements proving that the method has been used successfully in real-time (not a system report for TradeStation or some other program that lets you over-optimize results and show "hypothetical past performance"). Most will not give you this and come up with some lame excuse about why they can't. There is only one reason...they don't have any. It is not too much to ask to see evidence that the method works before you give them your hard earned money. While I have never had any dealings with "Natural Order Educators", I can assure you that there isn't any natural order or holy grail or anything else like that, only hard work. Believe me, I've looked. If there was, that person would have all the money and they would never dream of selling it. (would you?) Many times the best ideas in trading come from the least expensive sources. The most I ever learned about trading came from the book "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" and the "Market Wizards" books and they can be had for less than $15 apiece. I agree with rfoulk about looking at local colleges. I got my first experience with trading from an investment class at a local junior college that was taught by a trader. He certainly wasn't there for the money, as JC's don't pay well. He was making his money from the markets, not from his students and that's what you should demand of anyone who claims to know the "secrets" of the market. You're better off to spend as much time as possible at sites like http://www.daytradingstocks.com that offer tons of free educational materials. Once you've read everything there, spend the $5k on books. You can buy 100 $50 books for the price of that one course and while none of the books will be perfect, by the time you finish all of them you will have begun to find little bits and pieces of different ideas that you can incorporate into a plan of your own. You will only be successful if you have 100% confidence in your trading methodology and you won't get that from one course. It comes from a culmination of all your education and experience put together and can't be packaged into a 3-ring binder. Trading just isn't that easy. Good luck to you! Kirk
Thanks to all who replied. I agree with the concensus. However, I've found numerous sites, often recommended by the countless books I've read, recommending sites that charge $2K-$3k for seminars. I've decided on a course that charges $3,800 for 7 weeks of training + mentoring in order to learn the finer points of position trading. I've no doubt spent that much on books. After extensive investigation, I chose this route based on my need to reduce the time spent wandering around on my own. If I'm wrong, I'll soon know it, and then, it's back to the drawing board. For me, failure is not an option. Mistakes, yes. Giving up, no. Wish me luck, as I do all who took the time to respond.