As I wrote a few years ago here, "I hate telling people what we do because it opens up so many different questions like": 1. "Can you teach me how to trade because I have $200,000 sitting around in a bank account making 0.01 percent"? 2. "Hey, I really would like to sit beside you the next month so I can see how you trade"? That's a easy reply because I say "I don't even allow my girlfriend to watch because my nerves don't permit any type of noise or other distraction". 3. "I blew my account in to holes, can you please repair my damage"? There are only three people I repaired their damage with and never will that happen again. Out of all the people I did help only one person did anything nice. I learned the vast majority of people without trading skills offer a skilled trader nothing in return. 4. "What's the best way to make money, can you come over to my house and teach me"? I like to mention there are subscriptions I use to spend $1000+ per month until I figured out what they were doing which was not that much. When I bring up the price of those subscriptions they get real quite. Their like the people who show up to your house for dinner and only bring their appetite. They never, never, and never bring anything but their mooch-i-ness. When its time to clean up the dishes they grab their coats or find excuses why their too important and their wife is too important to help. 5. Why do you personally feel responsible for helping people get better at trading? I see Jon and Pete charge cash to follow their ideas. Louis Naviller newsletters are not free, even not so great materials like Zack's cost cash. So why do people think we owe them anything? After getting burned on helping that guy with the taxes I stop talking stocks, futures and options unless they have done something in return. Is there any reason why we owe these leeches cash, please do you have any ideas how I can be less aggressive when I meet people on the street who only want to take?
Ask them what they do for a living. Depending on their answer, I think an effective response would be to then ask if they'll teach you to do whatever they do and set up a company to compete with them -- free of charge of course.
I suspect those that freely help others may be paying it forward...as they themselves, most certainly, used the work/research of others to get to where they are.
When I say NO, I have gotten use to being called "selfish Fucking asshole", matter of fact it now soothes my nerves. I don't know why people think sitting next to me my knowledge is going to rub off, when they ask for me to check their portfolio and I say when you wire $2500 for first ten stocks then $2000 for each ten thereafter, they don't ask again. I thank them for losing monies to me and I am not giving it back but please use your Visa card and put in more. I tell people I am Starbuck's mystery customer.
Anything proprietary and worthy in the trading game is never static. You would have to teach someone how to find and approach their kill. Not easily teachable since it requires constant adaptation, and a hungry mind/pocket
Everyone in the world of trading will make money trading when the scum of the earth finally accept the Nash Equilibrium of economics. In the simplest terms; when there is not one person looking to "get it all in the huge major bit" at the expense of everyone else in the group, but rather is willing to take just a small amount of the bit so everyone else in the group can have a piece of that large bit, we're fine. But that will probably never happen in our lifetime, because there are too many Gordon Gekkos in the world. Reminds me of a Linux commercial from some years back...Hrmmm. *Edit* Found it.
Its so hard after getting burned by people who refuse to put any effort in trading. While I was getting up at 4:40 PST they strolled in at 12:15 or 12:45 PST asking "What are we trading today"? I would ask "Did you do the research on Imclone or WEL"? only to hear "I did not have any time, after leaving you (He stayed one whole hour the previous day to help find ideas) I went golfing, than me and my wife went to dinner to celebrate that great trade you found on Imclone and bowling till Midnight". That's when I dumped that guy, my friends at the brokerage told me he blew up about one month after leaving our group. Others tried to sneak him our research and soon found themselves outside too. We ended up tightening up group of fifteen to twenty down to five individuals. One quit trading, another died of cancer, he was the best person and taught me how to become a stronger person. He is the man that got me thinking because he warned me on his death bed, "why in the hell are you with these clowns, its time to leave" and after David quit trading to run his father in law's chain of sandwich shops, Bill died and the other guy started surfing because the stress was eating up his stomach we all went our own ways.
I avoid that topic and often want to give the response some of the Elite Traders said in the past. I do recall them saying "I do Gay Porn" just to get the looks of shock" or "I am a porn star" to avoid this topic. Elite Trader has provided far more information than all the years wasted with ungrateful jerks. I am worried about one of our members, he was pretty cool and have no heard from him in a while. I hope you are doing well BP!