Also a strong possibility that the people selling these courses and books aren't remotely profitable themselves and instead make money selling this junk to people
I think you're basically right. I've come across a small handful of people over the years who have proven to me in realtime that they litrerally use the market as an ATM machine. Their success rate on trades is just ridiculous. It's like they have tomorrows newspaper lol. But naturally, these people aren't gonna tell you how they do it, and there'd be no point in them selling it for a hundred or a thousand bucks etc when they already make 100k per day and risk diluting their edge in some way (people who sell courses and stuff make their money by doing just that. Selling courses. Not trading ) One such person I met who had the market on a string was lucky enough to be given a 'tool' (that's his word) by a relative who was also a daytrading millionaire to enable him to make a lot of money daily. I don't know how the other 2 or 3 traders I came across discovered their 'edge'. Maybe it's always nepotism lol. (I know one of them worked in the industry before going private, though) But they ALL basically confirmed that they didn't look at anything that the rest of retail traders look at (charts, patterns, DOM, T+S etc etc) in order to actually make trading decisions. I have no idea what they ARE using to know where the market is headed with a ridiculous accuracy, but I know what they're NOT looking at lol From the above, I feel like ones best bet is to try to make friends with a very successful trader and hope he likes you enough to give you the secret sauce and then you just wait for the light to turn red and go short, or the light to go green, and go long lol.
Go to a good university and be hired by well known investment companies like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. That should be the best way to learn real trading I believe. Otherwise, you may need +10 years of dunning krugering process before finally you give up....
I spent a lot of money on fake gurus and wasted years hunting for something usable. This is what helped me. Find anyone who is consistently profitable and reverse engineer the trades. https://bit.ly/3ePkxmv I managed to get the data and figured out the method which was my turning point. The only other guy this good was spanish89, but I couldn't understand the basis for his entries.
If a mentor has that level of consistency and profits then they wouldn't even bother mentoring anyone. I'm no market wizard(at least not yet. hehe) and I still dont want to both mentoring anyone. Not worth my time and distract me from trading. That's the irony about the trading mentoring space.
In my humble and unsolicited opinion, become a librarian first. No matter what you want to study, become a librarian. This doesn't mean you have to read constantly (it does help though), but it does mean you catalogue information so you know how to quickly and efficiently find it. And lastly, finding the information is only part of the equation. You also must know how to use it. With all that said, I would begin with learning everything you can on how to read and understand level 2. If you can't watch the tape on a ticker and reasonably predict more times than not which way the price is gonna move, there is no way you'll win against those traders who understand and pay attention to price action. It's not magic. It's probabilities. It's a skill. And you will win some and you'll lose some. Good luck.
deaddog, If that is why traders fail, what does it take for traders to win? In my personal opinoin, not having the correct trading education is why traders struggle. Just look at this thread, about 50 post and NOT ONE SINGLE advice to the OP where to get quality training from. NOT EVEN one. Noone is giving away game for free @Aryan.1234 So OP what does this tell you. This tell you that NOONE is going to give you free information. They going to give you a quick 2 minute post and send you in circles. Noone is going to tell you on a public forum who is helping them make money. You have to PM them, I guess. That's like a drug dealer telling me where he get 500 kilos of cocaine from for $500 per kilo and everyone else paying $2000 per kilo. You get it. That's like a car dealership telling me where he buy cars for $2000 under the street value, and I am paying $4000. He not going to tell me nothing. I will end the bullshit for you. Keep your damn money in your pocket. YOUR only job now is to find quality trading training. That is your job. It make take you 1 year or 2 years to find the right resource to find good training. Interview your butt off. Pay someone $20 for an interview. Money talks, bullshit walks. Ask the trainer or mentor or whatever to show you verifiable trading income. If they can't do that walk away. You have to do your own due diliegence. Skype the person, call the person. You will know when you find the right resource.
I would like for you to prove me wrong but I strongly believe that you cannot buy trading success. What it took for me to become what I consider a successful is: Developing my own plan after studying the market I wanted to trade. Having reasonable expectations. I can make a living with returns in the teens. I'm very disciplined. I took my time. I never tried to implement a system or strategy without forward testing it by paper trading or on demo. If you can't make money on paper you don't stand a chance in real time. I take it that you have spent time and money on what you consider quality training. Have you made back your investment?
deaddog, No, and that is because I have not put in the time (due to conflicting priorities, etc.) and hard work to complete the courses and practice in demo, forward testing, etc. Not the course fault, its all my fault. You see, I know myself. I need training. I need structure way of learning. I need to a serious educational way of trading. That is my personality of trading. Learning on my own does not fit me. I can't stare at chart and then one day it will figure it out. By the way, all the training say EXACTLY what you stated above too. No hard work and effort, no good results. Also, by the way, your very first question to the OP was correct. The OP maybe was not studying right and trying to half ass.