Amen. It's all in the price action ... learn to read price action and you won't need anything else ... welcome to the 2 - 4 year journey. JJ
I learned tons of stuff on my own and became a backtesting programming expert in the process.... then somebody told me how to trade and I have been happy ever since....
Trading is like sex and masturbation. First you start on your own, lots of practice, then you share your knowledge with others for Karma and good spirit. Happy thanksgiving! Anek
I stumbled into trading by acccident and have gotten fascinated in the subject of technical analysis Educating myself by reading, and asking questions here ET seems a pretty good forum -- many people who know a whole hell of alot more than I do are willing to share what they know I will be interested to see how long it takes me to learn to read charts -- and then whats involved in developing a disciplined trading style fortunately - I don't have to make money trading to pay the rent or buy the dog food but technical analysis is fascinating as hell
I agree with most of the contributions posted in response to your question. You certainly need to obtain information to learn how to trade. You will need a very strong desire to learn ... which will help motivate you to seek the information offered from the myriad of books and experienced traders. My biggest tool to "processing" all of this data into useful information was always writing notes. Someone earlier mentioned the necessity of developing your own style ... this is truth. For me, the continual taking of notes of every potential new trick and of every mistake I ever made allowed me to condense the overwhelming accumulation of direct and vicarious data into meaningful daily strategies. Read read read, find the best people to learn from ....& keep notes on everything!
get a mentor, work for a mentor, buy a mentor and not just one but dozens and dozens. then run hide in your closet and work your a$$ off. surface only when you think you have something to show so those mentors can shoot it down and back into the closet you go. until one day you realize your hard work has paid off you dont need no mentor no more, cause you have the confidence to "know" you have it. "if" you have the passion for discovery, that is to obtain what every man has "knowledge" and then some. you will be big in trading. otherwise if you dont seek what every man has then how will you "know" you have something of value without that bench mark? the higher your bench mark, the harder you will have to work and better trader you will be. otherwise a man only does what he has to its nature see the red queen theory. mb http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/5/l_015_03.html The Red Queen: Many say that our culture is obsessed with sex, and uses sexual references to sell everything from fragrances to cars. And wouldn't life be dull without it? Yet from the viewpoint of evolutionary theory, sex isn't the most efficient way of reproducing. In fact, scientists have been asking for decades, why does sexual reproduction even exist? If the goal of life is spreading one's genes far and wide, asexually reproducing organisms seem to have the edge. They do not have to invest time and energy finding a mate. Asexual individuals can pass on their genes twice as fast as those reproducing sexually, because they pass on all their genes -- and only their genes. When reproduction is sexual, half of the genes handed on to the next generation are those of the other parent. The offspring may lose some of the genetic traits that made each parent successful. There are many hypotheses but, until recently, little hard evidence on the advantages of sex. They stem from the notion that the genetic variation created in sexual reproduction is worth the cost. And at least in some environments, that variation must give a competitive edge over asexual organisms that can spread their genes efficiently, but vary little from one generation to the next. One explanation is the increasingly popular Red Queen hypothesis, referring to the huffy chess piece in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. In Looking Glass Land, the Queen tells Alice, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." According to the Red Queen hypothesis, sexual reproduction persists because it enables many species to rapidly evolve new genetic defenses against parasites that attempt to live off them. Scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey have tested this idea by observing different groups of small fish called topminnow in Mexico. Some populations of the topminnow reproduce sexually, while others reproduce asexually, so they provide the perfect opportunity to test these ideas. The topminnow is under constant attack by a parasite, a worm that causes something called black-spot disease. The researchers found that identical populations ("clones") of the asexually reproducing topminnows harbored many more black-spot worms than did those producing sexually, a finding that fit the Red Queen hypothesis: The sexual topminnows could devise new defenses faster by recombination than the asexually producing clones.
Hi All, I've only just seen this thread, so might be coming in a little late, but I will answer the original poster. I have followed the markets for 11 years and trading has been my main source of income for 5 years. However, for the first 6 years I was not a profitable trader - I lost money every single year for the first 6 years. During this time, I tried everything - I read books, I went on courses, I saw mentors and I looked at every market under the sun. Finally, I went right back to basics and decided to specialise in one market, trading a relatively simple system with sound principles.....I am still trading that same system today. If you're determined enough to crack it then you will. Trust me, it can be done..... Good Luck! Thanks Damian Professional U.S. Share Trader
well said , what is this obsession with finding someone to teach you , your on your own , whats the problem !!!