Hey Livingston- Right now I'm learning and just being in the market, being in trades, and learn and improve on scalping with 100 lots. How did you transition from doing 100 lots and each one atop? How did you move? 100, then 200? 300? I hear most move in increments of 2s such as 100 to 200, then 400, 600, 800, 1000... Other thing is that I hear a lot of people will market sell on New York when a huge block is spread up and about to print for price improvement, I assume you do that, and can you give some pointers? Will you always get price improvement as the seller will probably unload all the shares and just sell for a little less if it gets all unloaded. What do you average net a day? $1000? It seems like with scalping, one can make income but not necessarily get rich. Some people have done scalping and then they did pairs trading and they say they made most of their money doing pairs trading.
How about an offer that I can accept: in legal parlance, that would be manifestation of present contractual intent, with definite and certain terms, communicated to the offeree. So far, it appears that the offer is: join your firm, put up 5K, figure out how to survive. Does your offer include mentoring by you, or someone of equivalent knowledge, skill and education? If yes, then who? And, how can I verify your/their ability to perform, i.e.: 1. trade profitably. 2. train effectively. Are you willing to provide assurances of the above? If so, then where are you located (or do I even need to come to your location), when do we start, and how much actual training will I receive?
honestly, I think the person that is responsible for learning how to trade is no other than ourselves. Of course, having good guidance will help one get their faster/a little easier, but in the end, they can show you the door, some can walk through it with you showing you some thing along the way, but no matter what, you will still have to walk, step by step. Just some thoughts...
FF, I'd agree with your last post wholeheartedly. A lot of new traders to the floor look for someone to teach them trading. As you said, someone can point out things to watch, or give guidelines, but in the end, each individual has to put it all together in the way that works for them. The reason I think this is that we're all individuals - different temperments, risk tolerances, and differnt views of the world. Ok...it's late and I'm waxing philosphical...
You people talk about trading like it's black magic. In my experience there is no such thing as magic. If you want to learn to hit a golf ball well, you have to practice. But, you can't watch your swing, like a pro can. And, a pro can correct you so you don't develop bad habits. The result is that you learn quicker and more correctly. Will you become Tiger Woods? Doubtful. But can you get to a decent handicap? Absolutely. I had a business partner who was a scratch golfer, and don't mean that he occasionally shaved his scores. This guy had played golf since he was 10 years old and he could go to any course and play par from the pro tee. He just decided he didn't want to try to get on the tour. Regardless, the guy could not teach anyone how to golf, because he had no clue how he did what he did. Some people can play -- some people can teach. Very few can do both. Mr. Livingston asserts that he is a pro. The question is, can he teach or not? And the second question is: will he teach? If he can trade, and he can teach, and he will teach, then I can learn and I will learn, assuming we can come to an accommodation. If we can't, no big deal.
Perhaps a bit of trading experience of your own would help indentify those areas you think might benefit from having someone teach. My guess is that unless there's a strong personal motive (it's your friend, family, etc) no successful trader has any incentive to teach much - why bother with something that's simply taking you away from your own profit potential? You might go look at Livingston's P&L in the Journals Forum and ask yourself if that were you, how much it would take to risk negatively impacting that to teach someone else. There have been LOTS of great tips and signposts in this thread alone to help guide people.
Oh, really? All I saw were vague generalities leading to nowhere in particular. Livingston may or may not be a great trader. He may or may not be a good teacher. Aside from a couple of endorsements from people we have not actually met, there is really no way of knowing from the content of this thread. There is very little of substance here to decide one way or the other. Personally, I'm not that big on making unnecessary or unwarranted assumptions. This is not meant to be an insult to any respondents to this thread. It is only a realistic observation about the thread's content thus far. kjkent1 was trying to get specific, as anyone who values his money and time would do. The question now is whether Livingston will respond with equal specificity. I'm all "ears."
I understand your point, but it doesn't comport with the facts, because livingston has started this thread, and if his info is good, then that puts his earnings at risk for the same reason as he would were he to teach someone personally. So, if I accept your position, that it would be a risk for him to help in any material way, then the question becomes: why this thread? The possibilities: 1. He's bored. 2. He wants to misinform and thereby increase his earning capacity. 3. He's feeling altrusitic in his old age and actually wants to help. 4. He has more money than he knows what to do with, so he doesn't care about risking his earnings. 5. He doesn't believe that most people can trade on his advice even if he were to hold their hand and walk them through the process, so he doesn't see any risk in distributing info. 6. He's trolling for people to join his prop firm, so he can try to beat them in the market, or because it increases the firm's volume of business and reduces his average cost per share overhead, or because maybe one of them will make a lot of dough and he will earn a rake on their commissions. The list goes on... In the end, none of this matters to me. I'm very nuts and bolts. Livingston says he's an expert, others concur. I'm looking to learn from an expert. If he wants to train me, then he will make me a reasonable offer. If he doesn't, then he won't.
Hi Livingston, You've probably seen this thread, but I'd be most interested in your opinion of DeeMan's discussion of the specialist at the beginning of this thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=3282 Thanks for your time!