Since this is a board that caters to traders, not accountants, lawyers, or academics, I am assuming that most readers are passionate about trading. And all this time, I thought you at least cared about trading for a living....but now that I see you that you have no interest at all in professional trading, your comments make a lot more sense. What job (if any) do you love? Don
There is something intrinsically inconsistent with someone who proclaims to expose fraud, and at the same time tries to recruit people for a business that fails to generate a success ratio of those recruits greater than 25%, and makes money in the process no matter if those recruits succeed or fail. Call it "The Pot Calls The Kettle Black Tour" and I can see some truth in that.
I think that everyone could agree that if Don was hiring people to trade his own money he would be much more selective then in allowing someone to come on board with their own capital (w/ leverage provided by Bright). That is a moot point though since that is not what Don is offering here. Since what Don is offering is the opportunity to start a business for yourself, I don't see why he needs to test people. If you have the money to open a restuarant the odds are 90% that you will fail, just like trading. However, when you go to the local meat locker to line up steak, to the power company to get the lights turned on and any other vendor you have to enteract with as the owner of a resturaunt they don't require you to "profile" correctly before they will enteract with you, and they have no moral obligation to do so. Brandon
Agree. Good Traders can be developed. The trainee must be willing to follow direction and be sharp. Older or younger does not matter.... They just need to be trainable and willing to learn. The second point should not be underestimated. Time in school is a huge opportunity cost. You might go to school for undergrad, then two to four years of grad school, then if you get a PhD, on to post-doc for another 2-5 years: similar for med school. Former Labor secretary Robert Reich recently commented on the trend of increased grad school applications during economic downturns and advised people to think twice about spending more time in school to get a job. He basically said what I think: go to school if it is for something that you love, but dont go necessarily to get a job or make money. The economy evolves over time: contemplating 10 years of school requires a realistic approach: That is you need to understand that there could be a structural change in the economy or within your profession during this time and there is no gaurantee that you will have a well paying job to pay back loans at the end of the term. This is the astounding change in american society that has occurred over the last few decades: nearly all of the burden of training costs has been pushed from coporations on to the shoulders of the individual, across all disciplines. If you dont have a free ride through school you need to carefully evaluate your course of action.
Sure the degree is more valuable AFTER you've blown out trading accounts. But .... would you be making that same statement if you'd doubled your account in a year? Did you have any training prior to trading and apparently losing $$$? Without some sort of training or education in training that might be analogous to going into perform surgery with no medical training other than maybe a few undergrad courses IMO.
Does the college degree guarantee employment? Nope ... Option 2 (above) ... no law says that a failed trader could not go back and finish (or pursue) a degree. Then he/she would fall into the group in option 1 (above) ... which still doesn't guarantee anything.
Imagine a school opens up in Vegas that teaches people the profession of gambling. Do you think parents would want their children to skip grad school in favor of that? Do you think such a school could get accreditation from a reputable accreditation review board? Don is offering an "opportunity" in the same way as a casino school would. Few outside the casino or trading industry would consider it a professional opportunity or a good career choice. Why doesn't Don and his road show turn up at "career days" at high schools and college campuses and see how well that flies? We can look to the 90% failure rate of restaurants and figure out why in most cases, and if someone is willing to listen to proper advice, they can be counseled ahead of time about the pitfalls of restaurant ownership thus giving them an edge. Don claims to have no real idea why people fail or succeed, hence no screening process of merit. Most people open a restaurant because they love the idea of owning a restaurant, they love to cook, they love to host parties, etc., rather than having done a careful analysis of the nature of the business, and the risk rewards involved. They do it out of passion. How many trade out of passion for trading? It is passion for money that drives trading, not the process, unless they are simply adrenaline junkies or gambling addicts. When you take away the financial carrot, and are left with the process, you find out what the job really is all about. Until Don can screen out those who are not qualified to attempt trading, and demonstrate that his system, if qualified for, has a 75% or higher rate of success, it is just another barker selling dreams. There is a difference in my mind between selling a dream and a genuine opportunity.