First you be honest with yourself and decide if trading is really what you want to do. If it's in your blood, keeps you up at night and is on your mind all the time, then you will be driven to figure it out. If you don't have a real passion for it, you won't survive the long hard road on the way to "getting it". You can't buy trading success anymore than an olympic athlete can buy a medal. It only comes after you spend a long time pouring your blood, sweat and tears into it. If this isn't how you feel about trading, you will just be burning money and time.
This is excellent advice, and I would add that those new to the profession need to be realistic about the learning curve. From my own experience, and other traders I've spoken to, someone new to the game needs to plan on a two-year learning curve if they are to have any chance of reaching the goal of consistent profitability.
Look at static charts of every instrument you select every day for months- continue on for years. Narrow down to look at live data on charts for two instruments and get to know their behavior. Is it normal to have lots of spike like bars ? Are the bars a little more ' well behaved ' - stable ? What patterns emerge from these instruments over time? There will be something repeatable, and months to years of deciphering this data with dedication to the market will allow patterns to become recognizable. This does not guarantee trading success ! There is a long road to self discipline. I always say if this was a corporate job with all the hours- and years of of tremendous dedication and passion invested, most would have secured a position on top of the corporate ladder . . . in trading . . . If you make your own mistakes you will learn from them. Especially when your money has been passed on to someone else on the other side of your trade. People like DBPheonix, NihabaAbashi, Spydertrader, have had some great threads throughout the years building behind the scenes trading communities helping traders. Eventually you know you are getting there as you find yourself growing extremely pale from sitting in a room alone for years staring at screens talking to yourself, beard down to your knees, showering at midnight, and you dont even realize you haven't talked to a good friend in months while the wife slides your dinner under the door as if your were serving a life sentence.
Qwerty, if the bread and butter of the mentor is providing mentorship service, then the student should know about it. They should be made aware of the objective of the mentorship. Many students took on a paid mentor expecting to become a profitable trader (why else would anyone need a paid mentor?) If the mentor's bread and butter is not in trading, then it would be near impossible for him/her to teach someone else how to trade profitably. Those whose bread and butter are in trading and know that their edge is permanent, will be very reluctant to reveal their edge. If I just discover that type of edge, I would not sell it out, even when I am unemployed and starving, but that is just me. Qwerty, again, eventhough I did not accept your mentorship offer (cause I don't have a budget for it), I still appreciate your charts and your postings in the ET archive. PA
A mentor is not under obligation to reveal to a student whether it's his main source of income, other than providing competent guidance, if the student finds the mentor's guidance to be insightful then there is an agreement between both parties, if the student finds that the mentor is incompetent, then there is no arrangement that will go forward, if a student for example was struggling with trading prior to an arrangement with a mentor and is finally profitable under the guidance of his mentor, what bearing does it have whether it's the mentor's main source of income or not? nothing. Are you going to resort to kiddie logic again to explain your way out of that one as well? Again you're conveniently making an exception, clearly not even handed, a mentor that barters his services or receives compensation is not a guarantee to be less qualified to instruct nor is a mentor that derives his main source of income guaranteed to be more competent to teach either, a mentor whose main source of income is through trading may have horrible people skills, has little patience and to boot is incompetent, ah, but according to your kiddie logic it's not impossible for him to teach, but it's nearly impossible for the mentor that does receive compensation to teach effectively, I see a double standard Pension_Admin, it speaks loud and clear.
yeah thats so true. Traders who self-chastise themselves. They start gambling and such when they are profitable for 3 years. They are missing something in their lives. Fact is trading is harder than a corporate job. You work ten times as hard, but you do get independence. But you can get indepence in any other self-employed job, which doesnt have a 99% fail rate. Still alot of people try. there is a certain appeal to trading. Probably because of the instant gratification which is similar to gambling for daytraders.
The problem I see is that it is very difficult for a student to know if the mentor's guidance is insightful or not. The only way a student would know is once he/she became successful and look back at all the advices he/she received. Only then they will know if the mentor was either insightful or was just using trading clichés. I believe a student has the right to know if the paid mentor's main source of income is trading or not. It will give the student a reasonable expectation of the outcome of the mentorship and the he/she can decide if they still want to pursue this mentorship program. Trading is more like the profession of magician than a sport. If the mentor don't know how to perform the magic, how could he/she be expected to teach other magic? PA
Joe you said hub said: "One catch though. You had to promise to teach others what he taught you." It is neat to see a person use a phrase like "one catch though" .... lol. "Fear and delusion" is another neat phrase of yours. You have such a nice attractive orientation. If you ever talk to any traders, ask them what step in their learning was the one where they movd forward in skill the fastest. This is a trick question and there is a secret involved. Yesterday, bighog said he was in the bushes like a lawyer at an intersection "just waiting until after the news" so he could get his first break out of the day. He didn't get it and blew 6 trades (he says) "cause there were no breakouuts on FOMC day. Don't ask bighog since he hasn't had the secret experience as yet..... lol.... Keep up thatfear and delusion, joe.... it fits you to a tee.... You ought to have Hub tell you how he got into trading....
Ah, again the mentor that is compensated for his time is under intense fire, spending countless hours and days to weeks and months to longer toiling away showing the ropes to a student, to only receive a pat on the back for his efforts is a good thing, while the mentor that does it for free is under no scrutiny, i see your bias very clearly. It's not difficult to understand whether a mentor's insight is competent Pension_Admin, if a student makes gobs of money as a result of the mentor's input, whereas the student was failing or struggling before, that's a very good indication that a mentor is very insightful, if a person wants to learn how to play a musical instrument Pension_Admin, is it reasonable to conclude then that the student should not pay for his music lessons because he has doubts that he will be successful? what is the damn point in attending music lessons then? do you think that a music teacher will accept that as an excuse for the student not to pay him for his time and effort? Your logic is from another planet, it makes no sense, that means that a student is in effect saying that he will not pay his music teacher until or if he becomes proficient, but if he does not become proficient he's not under obligation to compensate his music teacher. There is no way that a music teacher will accept that arrangement or waste his valuable time instructing a student who places such ridiculous demands.