No doubt, the books just give you a starting place to jump from. They can guide you in the right direction and then with screen time you can piece it together for yourself. Profitsharing agreement would be nice, except the people that are really good enough to be a great mentor usually are too busy raking in the cash to spend time teaching a stranger. I think forums like ET are a great place for rookies to learn. there is a lot of good stuff here. They just have to learn that there are a lot of vultures hanging around who can't trade, but will gladly take their money under the guise of teaching them how to trade. I am not pointing to anyone in particular, I'm just saying...
I own 50+ trading books & have read about 20-25 so far, but they're like diet books, one book says TA is the way to go, another says TA is bunk, a third will say that any random entry will work with proper money mgmt....I know eventually I will fine tune my BS meter, so i will be able to screen out the garbage Another example....I mentioned John carter earlier...I thought "mastering the trade" was a great book. He has simple easy to use setups that i thought were the holy grail after reading the book, then i search the forums & it seems like the concensus was that blindly following his setups would lose money & there was no edge with his setups.....So, back to the drawing board To address a couple of other points: Of I course I would be willing to pay or profit share with a great mentor, comensurate with the help No I dont I can learn to trade in a couple of days, but I could be pointed in the right direction in a couple of days....by a mentor that is already successful at the level where i want to be
I am not really sure why you want to be a trader. You goal of 2%/month, 25% per year can be achieved by positiontrading. You don't need to sit in front of 8 screens all day, just play it with the longer timeframe and you are free to go to the beach. If you make a search on this site and read it for a few days, there are several posters who post their swingtrades. You just back them up and there you go... I know, it is not that exciting than making your own trades, but do you really care???
2 thoughts: Obviously more than 2%/mo would be better, I just want to keep my DDs low, so I have a conservative target to start...I would love more down the road Second, in addition to returns, I am interest in learning all i can about trading & the inner working of the markets for my long term financial security...such as understanding when to move capital from hard to soft assets or into different currencies to hedge against the dollar dropping
I do appreciate the advice. I am trying to take everything in and formulate a plan that meshes with my personality, time frames & goals. I don't take for granted the time you or anyone used to help me here on this thread. I offer my sincere gratitude.
jdkgroup.....I think you would like the YM, ES or NQ mini futures. You can enter trades outside of regular market hours which I think is a big plus.
Yes, I think jdkgroup already knows that which probably helped cut down his PM's by 90% I agree, forums like this can be useful but they probably reflect market participants, there's a disproportionate number of fools! There's an old adage which says 'those who can't do, teach', I wonder how accurate that is.
I have yet to find a book that is the "end all, be all" of trading, or any other subject for that matter. You have to take bits and pieces from each book. Every book has value. Sometimes it tells you what to do, sometimes you realize what not to do. I read a lot, but I do it in a different way than most. I always have a small notebook and pen with me when I am reading. If I read something helpful, I write it down. I have accumulated about 150 pages of random thoughts from trading books. I occasionally go through those thoughts and it helps me to formulate my trading plan and strategies. I then rewrite it into a clearer thought stream. It helps me to formulate what it means to me. By rewriting it in a format that someone else would clearly understand it helps me because you really have to know a subject if you are writing it to explain to others. Not that I have shared it with anyone, or have any plans to, but one day it might make a good trading book?
In the mail today came: Stock market Logic - Fosback Encyclopedia of Tech. Market indicators - Colby Last week: Evidenced Based TA - Aronson Technically Speaking - Wilkinson These along with 4 or 5 long threads on here will keep me busy for a little while...unless anyone has anything else to suggest