There's that smoke trail in the sky left behind by the jets...a trail us retail traders can follow that most will ignore.
I am consistently impressed by your posts on this site. Where many go off topic and have ridiculous arguments on frivolous details, you simply state the case as it is. In my opinion, what you have to say makes sense. Thank you for being one of the diamonds in the rough, I look forward to using what you are saying to better my personal trading.
IMHO, ethical day trading instruction is ENTIRELY dependent on the teacher or author's successful execution of their teaching concepts and a transparent depiction of their risk:reward and losses.
Serious questions... 1) Did you have these strong ethical opinions prior to your purchase of his material or did they only develop after you started having problems with Al Brooks ? 2) What trade method you're using now ? 3) The trade method you're using now...did you find verification that the person that designed it actually did show he/she was consistently profitable prior to using the method or maybe you're using the self-taught route ? P.S. Nothing wrong with your expectations. I'm just curious if you developed them after the fact and if you're now applying the same for your new trade method.
you are so correct! but to do what you envisioned, would require that the guru shows you in real time his live entry on his live trading screen.... THIS WOULD BE PROBLEM NUMBER 1 FOR HIM TO SHOW ANYONE ANYTHING LIVE AND ON SCREEN. no one wishes to be embarrassed on screen AND LIVE....! that would be, particularly for a guru, a total and absolute humiliation in public! THE NEXT PROBLEM WOULD BE, THE GURU WON'T KNOW FOR SURE WHETHER WHICH DIRECTIONS THE TRADE WOULD GO AT THAT INSTANCE.... i am not a guru, nor am i remotely associated with anything commercial trading related or trading training education related, or trading software related, in any shape or form. however, i do know a little bit about trading and very much like so many traders here, who just enjoy reading and finding out what other traders and traders to be, are saying and thinking and wishing to do, so they can attain the liberty of trading for a living status. most of these traders with longivity would not talk much to anyone about their tradings, particularly their trading setups etc and won't ever think about selling their profitable trading setups and such. selfishly, of course, why would they want to teach or educate others in whatever that is making them money comfortably in their own surroundings? and why should they want to sell to others, when they can actually do it themselves, very much like owning a private printing press legally? (not belittling nor referring to big al or any guru out there, k) currently, there are only a handful of trading educators or so, who would show their subscribers their live screens and their live in and out trades on their live screens at the real live trading sessions; at the cost of about 300? usd per month per subscriber. i am not promoting any of them, nor am i promoting their services; not that they are not good, nor that they are not profitable: they are good and profitable; but for newbies and beginners; it is a waste of money, in my humble one man opin. well, with that very much one-sided said and done, and to sort of, compensate for your time, patience and indulgence; i am submitting with humility a screen shot from one of my trading screens for your pleasurable viewing and enjoyment at your own risk only; with no trading nor commercial value of any kind implied or otherwise, k. enjoy, my trading friends.
marketsurfer said: Past PRICE data printed on a chart is what TAers use. Price Drivers don't use past price-- so the system is completely different than ta. First nice day of the last several. Going to the beach. See ya! surf ?????
Anyone who considers a losing trade to be embarrassing is not a guru. Anyone who would be humiliated if a live trading demonstration resulted in a losing trade is not a guru. Anyone who claims to know for sure which direction price will go from the current price at any given moment is not a guru. I'm assuming a guru is a trader who executes positive expectancy methods according to plan and can explain these methods to others in a manner that can be learned and duplicated assuming the student possesses the same tools as the guru. Such a trader considers a losing trade to be a normal cost of doing business and freely admits that s/he has no idea which direction the trade will go at the time of entry.
@NoDoji what you described above are totally factual and theoretically correct. however in terms of reality, as it has been evidential from last several years, going back and searching over past postings, one can hardly find any guru, or supposedly guru in reference, or aspiring guru to be, who was willing even half-heartedly to show anything meaningful or practical in each of their trading activities or trading screens, in order to help serious traders to be, to see and study each guru's profitable setups; so aspiring traders could assimilate what they themselves consider to be meaningful and significant for their own trading styles. i am not inferig that left alone, aspiring traders would not succeed ultimately on their own accords. however, that would take a few years of full time devotion to learning how to trade: firstly, without losing too much, namely savings, auto and mortgages and such; secondly, minimize each potential losing trade quickly and promptly without wishing otherwise; so there is enough left over in the acct to trade again; thirdly, focuse on your ongoing profitable trade, allow it to take its natural course of rising or falling, depending whether you are long or short; without getting out before the price pattern really changes its direction--one of the most difficult tasks to determine. well, NoDoJi, theoretically it is really simple enough, not to get embarrassed or become embarrassed, particularyly in public, when you theorize one way and the annoying and uncoopeative markets persist in their own opposit course of action. positively, i agree with you wholeheartedly that entering a losing trade, among others, is a normal cost of biz/way in trading, but who would like to be posting the wrong call in public with or without being embarrassed by one's own temporary trading misjudgment in part? (i'm sorry, i have no intention to hijack this thread. sorry)
I very much agree with your post. There is no reason why someone couldn't make it work if just shown principles, but its incredibly difficult without actually seeing it in action through the good and bad trades. Not to pick on NoDoji because I truly respect her, but being familiar with her journey, she said that she had mentors on skype who she could talk to, and saw traders over skype putting on trade after trade. It sounds like she had weeks if not months of access to transparent profitable trading. My second example is of a guy on here named fortydraws. We've had arguments back and forth about this, but he was claiming that his friend learned to trade after reading the PDF of DbPhoenix and just sim trading for a few months. The big part of this equation is that he also had fortydraws himself to watch. His friend apparently spent a week watching him trade, in person, and then had access to him every night to talk and discuss. fortydraws concludes that his friend did most of the work by simply reading the PDF and watching/testing for a few months, but I think he left out the most important variable, which was access to a highly profitable trader. Lastly, I was just pointed to the videos of this trader, FT71, and on his webpage, he clearly states that it took him 7 months to become profitable, but there is this part "Training mainly received through proprietary trading with other professionals at the CBOT using trial-by-fire and trial-and-error". So even though he didn't receive formal trading, the environment was of extreme influence I'm sure. http://www.futurestrader71.com/?page_id=1238 My point is that if a person has access to seeing this transparent trading early on in their journey, they can more than likely shave 75% off the learning curve and untold losses. I know the gurus always say that even if they showed exactly where they enter and exit and had others follow their trades that those guys would still lose money. And as much as I do believe this to be true, I don't think this will in any way hurt the apprentice. It might not help, and given how high the failure rate is, we couldn't even say what the reason for failure is conclusively, but I just don't think that seeing everything would be a bad thing for the newbie trying to learn. When this cannot be shown, I can't help but be extremely cautious.
My Skype experience was the result of me helping a guy who asked me a question here on ET. There was no active chat room and Skype seemed like the best way to learn and share ideas with him in real time. I was experimenting with Brooks-based ideas, having slogged through a good portion of his book. We were joined by a seasoned trader who I'd met in ET's chat as a total beginner, and invited a few others that summer. We traded and shared ideas via Skype for about 6 hours a day for over 6 months. After that, I continued to connect with ET-ers via Skype, always sharing my latest ideas and tactics. We were all embarrassed by our temporary trading misjudgments, but I can't recall any of us being embarrassed by losing trades that were taken based on our tested trading ideas. I've posted live calls here, in ET's chat, via Skype with at least a dozen ET members, and I've illustrated a few of my top trading tactics from the hard right edge before through to the end result, multiple times. There's not much more any trader could do to demonstrate specific tactics. I've never seen any of the "beware the PA/TA guru" doomsayers come close to this level of transparency. They're experts at what's impossible. They're experts at demanding proof of gurus' personal profitability. But they seem completely incapable of demonstrating in real time what does work, why they put on particular trades, what their risk management plan for the trade is and why. And I've never once seen an actual illustration of any of their tactics. Instead they hide beneath a cloak of invisibility. At least our dear Mr. Brooks illustrates in great detail a full buffet of trade ideas, how to enter and manage risk, and how to read the footprints of the large players to determine where they're most likely to go before taking a break or changing direction.