For Those Successful ET Members: Did You Have A Mentor?

I know, I know..."wHat dO yOu MEaN bY sUcCeSSfuL????"

For the scope of this thread, successful is defined as meeting the following:

- You have more profitable years than losing years.
- Trading is your PRIMARY source of income...not interested in hearing about how you're a genius because your 401K is killing it...or even your self directed IRA that is 80% S&P...
- You don't necessarily need to be self employed to comment.

What do I mean by Mentor? Someone with much more experience than you had when starting, that were themselves successful by the above criteria...That were available to you as a resource and helped guide you in early decision making. This could be an individual relationship, OR a manager of sorts at a business where you held a job related to trading of some type.

Do you think a mentor is required for success in this field? I think most would agree that it is at least helpful...but I am curious to see how many of you (if any) made it solo, strictly with self education via books, videos, seminars, etc...

 

You always need to learn from people who have more experience and have traded way more than you. It is the only way to learn. It does not always mean hiring someone specifically to work with you but going out and reading books and ET threads and absorbing info from others and self-testing of approaches. You wil not need an actual mentor 1 v 1 because that is impossible to find, most of your learning will come from collecting nuggets over time and testing on your own.

 

There is zero financial upside for anyone who knows to mentor. Those who offer to mentor for a reasonable cost... like maybe, "Online Trading School"... will take your money without teaching what you need. Not that they are necessarily deceitful thieves... but likely they don't know themselves. They only say they can teach to play on your hopes and suck you into paying their fee.

The only genuine story I ever heard about a successful mentorship involved an "institutional pro-trader" father being the mentor.

To "figure it out", you'll need to be like Sherlock Holmes... when asked, "Just what is it that you do, Mr. Holmes?". Holmes replied, "I observe and deduce"... as applicable to trading the markets as to solving fictional crimes.

Aspiring traders are wasting their time when they are grappling around, looking for the one who might "teach them how".

 

One, and this is truly the only exception, was SOES bandits. You were shown a method that worked. However, the only reason was they needed humans bodies to execute. I am unaware of any other example when something that makes money was shown to public.

 

No mentor.
Books, internet, experience and common sense.

 

I've posted before, no mentor originally when I got started. I fell into the dotcom insanity, and pretty much got away buying anything tech and riding it for nice wins. I also traded CMGI(I think that was it at this point) and made stupid money in and out a couple times a day on swings. Quite a few of those trades were while I was at work and using E*TRADE's phone system. That is a sign of how stupid it was.
When I transitioned to futures my trading wasn't as great, and I managed to piss away some money on the fraudster system vendors. Not a lot, as I am a cheap ass, but pissed me off just the same. I found a guy running a room on Paltalk(?). For whatever reason his mentoring and discipline rubbed off and after a year or so I moved onto my own and have been at it ever since.
I mostly trade futures intraday, with occasional swings in the 10 year and crude. I still take a few day trades and swings on stocks, but mostly my stocks are long term holds. I've had quite a few I should have kept for longer term, and not had to reenter, like Amazon. I was in back after the crash, and managed to talk myself out of it in 2011-2012 when the kids were hitting college age. Back in it now, but missed a ton of gain in between.

 

To add and expand to @deaddog post above...

1. Books of the top of my head (Market Wizards Series and recommendations of books by Traders interviewed, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator)
2. Internet (ET, Futures IO and Reddit (mainly to understand the psychology of crowd))
3. Experience - paper trading is fine but for most people trading real money is different. Your emotions will respond differently when "real" money is on line. Trade small until you know "yourself" and how you react to stress (both greed and fear).
4. Common Sense - still working on it however my motto is that a smart person learns from their failure, a wise person learns from other peoples failure.

Main learning from years of investing and trading - its not about accounting, finance, systems or economics etc. Its about developing a worldview and then developing the confidence and conviction to act on that worldview. There are no right or wrong answers. Every trade has two sides. Your worldview will dictate which side you take. If you are frequently wrong, go thru 1 to 4 above, rinse and repeat. Worldviews are not static. It should evolve with new information and your personal experience in the market. As one of the traders interviewed by Schwager said "strong opinions, weakly held."

 

Had a couple of mentors. Wouldn't have made it without them

 

No.

 

Yes. I had spent years grinding on books etc. and was heading roughly in the right direction. But the mentor focused me into doing it properly.