I posted earlier that the teacher making money is not important and after watching some of these teaching sites (keystone not being a bad offender) I would have to refute my own comment. I was actually looking at a site, not Keystone, where the teacher charged 300 bucks a month to traders and the guy trades simulator while others follow. The things I said above are to protect the trader, not the company. After some deliberation I am not going to implement my own trading room b/c to be honest, doing it the right way is too much work and concentration on things other than my own performance.
I spent $30/mo in a live room for 6 months to learn the basics of futures trading. I also watch free videos and webinars from other more well-known traders. I probably learned in a $30/mo live room that these places that many thousands up-front.
If trading is that easy, you won't be asking these questions on statistics when everyone's aptitute for succeeding is different. So what if they reported a high (or low) percentage of success? Each person's discipline and emotional mastery is different, even if the training/mentoring and course materials are same. Can you recommend me that $50 book? which gives the same level of knowledge/information provided by the 16 chapters (9hrs audio/visual) and the private/individual mentoring for subsequent months. I would like to make a comparison with the ET101 recordings.
BSTAY, How much does your "mentoring" cost you? If your teachers believe in it so greatly are you trading your money or there's? What if he told you that he got a 16 chapter book on tape and some slides to look at? Would that be better? I don't know if you are a part in one of these groups, upset that you may have invested money in a program that isn't worth it or just angry at hippie for some reason... But I'm wondering why you are coming after someone who is trying to make other traders aware of his opinions in dealing with a firm. What types of stocks are the teachers at whatever company you went with trading? How much are they making on average a day? Are they taking time out of their day to teach or just letting you know their thought process? What kind of size are they trading? I guarantee if you answer those questions you will have people all over you and probably convince yourself to think again about whatever decision you made. I have to guess that you are working for a firm with an up front training program insted of a monthly plan or you wouldn't be so defensive about it. Please answer my question in a public post so that I can evaluate the situation for myself. I will gladly share what I think are the pros and cons of what you're doing. By the way there's probably one big difference between him buying a book and buying the service of an online training course.... AND THAT DIFFERNCE WOULD BE ABOUT $1500 - $8,000 DOLLARS DEPENDING ON THE ONLINE TRAINING COURSE YOU GAVE YOUR MONEY TO. WHY DON'T YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR SITUATION BEFORE ATTACKING OTHERS.... B/C IF YOU ARE TAKING ONE OF THESE COURSES THEN YOU YOURSELF ARE AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF YOUR CAREER AND REALLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT TRADING, MAKING YOU A VERY POOR JUDGE.
I'M JUST PLAYING DEVIL'S ADVOCATE HERE, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE THIS CONVO TO REVEAL THE GOOD AND BAD OF THESE TYPES OF PROGRAMS..... I'M NOT TRYING TO GET PERSONAL WITH YOU AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO REVEAL THE FIRM OR ONLINE PROGRAM YOU SIGNED UP WITH, IF INFACT YOU DID SIGN UP FOR ONE.
You guys need to go where you have ZERO financial risk and no training fees. In this scenario, the it is in the best interest of the firm to make you profitable. On the other hand, if you put up $1,500 for training and/or $5,000 initial contribution, the firm can fire you when you go through whatever you put up. The have no risk so they have less interest. I also just watched the ET 101 introductory video. It was nicely made, but can't imagine the course be worth $1,500. While you won't find all that information in one $50 book, you can easily obtain it by doing research on the web and buying several used books. If you are a serious trader, you should be willing to do that anyway. Do some more research and find a real company where you have no financial risk. New guys should not waste any of their money. Do not go to the 99% payout firms either because they are nothing more than retail brokers who provide leverage. If you are a seasoned trader who is consistently profitable then you can consider trading at those firms, but new guys won't learn there.
That's a great comment. Not only is trading firm capital without a risk deposit legal, risk deposit and training fee are often the same thing with different coining of the phrase. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, IF A FIRM REALLY BELIEVES IN THEIR TRAINING THEN IT SHOULDN'T BE A PROBLEM FOR THEM TO SHARE IN YOUR LOSSES. MOST LIKELY EVEN IF A FIRM ISN'T BACKING YOU THEY ARE SHARING IN SOME OF YOUR PROFITS. BUT IF THEIR PROGRAM IS GOOD ENOUGH TO CHARGE YOU A BULK SOME OF MONEY THEN WHY ISN'T IT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO INVEST THAT SAME MONEY IN THEIR OWN SYSTEM BY INVESTING IT IN THE TRADERS THEY TEACH. IF THE SYSTEM WORKS AND YOU ARE SHARING PROFITS THEN THEY SHOULD BE CONFIDENT THAT A GOOD ENOUGH PERCENTAGE OF THEIR GUYS/GIRLS WILL MAKE IT AND THE PROFIT SHARING WILL FAR EXCEED THE TRAINING FEE. Granted making 1500 or 5000 or 12000, depending on what course you enroll in, is not that much money once you are trading and making a living. But it is alot of money for a kid out of college or if I was to start trading in my mid thirties with a wife and kid. Sometimes traders forget, including me, that when you are working a real job it might take 6 months or a Year to be able to support your family and pay your bills while putting away 5K. It's easy for an experienced trader to think of this money as nothing b/c in this job, once you put all of you skills together, for some people it's a good trade without alot of risk. However, this is and real estate speculation are probably the only jobs where you can actually lose money at work..... and many traders or aspiring traders forget this.
I'm not even "attacking" at all, .... just stating the facts that i know (seeing some of the misinformation) and posting through my experience in these firms. So sorry to see you attack furiously with Capital letters. You should be in EliteTrader forum long enough to know what will happen if i post publicly the courses i took, the chatrooms i'm currently participate in, and the methods by which i obtained some of the seminar recordings (without being a part of their prop programs). If you strongly believe these firms are scam and fraud and the teachings cheap, and would attack any alternative views to their support, ..... then i have nothing more to tell you. my nickname is the same in these chatrooms: "bstay2", others can chat me up if u take a trial to check the scams.
I'm not at all calling these training programs scams in any way, shape or form. None of them, to my knowledge, give any guarantees and I'm sure that they do teach novice traders the basics. I'm simply saying that there is more than likely a cheaper and equally informative way to learn. I simply raised some basic questions about whatever training it is that you're using. These questions are not different than what I would ask an instructor to signing up for a course. I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say I know what would happen if you said which programs you were using in this room, but obviously you don't want to mention them. If you could, out of curiousity I would like to know what you're being taught and how much it was approximately. I don't even want to know what training you're using, just an answer to the questions I raised above. You can put it up here or just PM me if you get a chance. As far as yelling at you, I made a seperate post above saying I was not getting personal with you and was just playing devil's advocate.
I like John Carter's book. I also bought Mike Reed's ebook. You may be able to find used copies. Here are some free and very inexpensive resource I found that is very helpful for me: http://hippietrader.blogspot.com/ I am a newbie with very limited funds. I am forced to learn to trade futures instead of equities due to the 25k day-trading requirement. I funded my futures account with 3k. I am practicing on simulator for much longer than traders with more resources. I agree that the odds are not good. However, paying many thousands for courses is not likely to improve your odds more than if you pay a small monthly fee to learn the basics or learn form books and videos.