Always plenty of 'mentors' available if you get your credit card out. But a proper mentor, not a marketer, for free, why would he/she do that?
+1 there's no free lunch... its either: 1. i know u well & i like u 2. u're working for me 3. u'll pay me more than its value i perceive
realistically, real mentors would only mentor for social reasons, not monetary, if they were any good, they don't need more money.
Find (probably another more friendly and helpful) forum with plenty of helpful people describing their trading systems/strategies and find one that works for you. Rinse repeat until you have your own or a mashup of systems. I don't recommend spending ANY amount of money unless its around $50 to contribute to this friendly and helpful forum. You can learn from the vast amount of free resources and platforms out there, such as NinjaTrader. Just PM'ed you the specifics.
Thank you for the help Mr You. I guess ultimately, I would like to start learning as much as possible. What is the best way to approach this? Through a prop firm? I dont have 10,000 liquid cash but are there other ways? I have tried the virtual demos but they are limited to 30 days. What are good firms? INteractive brokers? And I wanted to clarify that I would be able help the mentor if he/she needed an intern to help do all the dirty work if they could share their wisdom. That would be better than me shelving money and feeling insecure about it all the time>
To adamm2 I cannot seem to PM you. I emailed the administrator and they said newbies are banned from pm'ing. Is there another option?
Siva, IMHO you'd do best to prepare yourself to be mentored. One way to prepare yourself is to define what you want to trade and the time frame you want to trade, then embark on defining high probability setups. I posted similar to this before: Here is a site with several high probability setup patterns - http://www.daytradingcoach.com/daytrading-technicalanalysis-course.htm Better yet, study charts in a given time frame (daily charts are common for short term swing trading; 5-min charts are common for day trading) and write down all the things you notice that happen just before price makes a significant swing in one direction or the other. After a while you'll notice a few things happen way more often than not prior to a major price swing. These are setups with an edge. Get to where you can describe them accurately so you can learn to identify them quickly. (The site above shows many common setups; you can simply use the ones you like best). Once you identify the setups that offer you the best opportunities, narrow them down by weeding out the ones where the risk is so great it dilutes the positive expectancy of the setups. For example, if you decide to trade breaks out of narrow range consolidation, you may want to filter out any range that's greater than X ticks. For the highest probability setups, learn where to place survivable stop losses, and how best to determine profit targets. On strong price runs, make note of clues that the market was willing to offer more than your standard minimum profit target and add rules for letting winners run based on the appearance of these clues. Choose a couple of the best setups your research provides and document the average number of opportunities you have to trade these setups in your particular time frame (per day if you're a day trader or per week/month/quarter if you're a swing trader). Document the win rate % your analysis presents, and document your average risk:reward ratio (average $ loss vs. average $ gain per trade). From this information, determine how much profit you expect to make daily/weekly/monthly. Define a set of written rules for trade entry, stop loss placement and profit taking for the setup(s) you choose to trade. Be sure to include filters you intend to use as well (example: "No trading energy futures during the weekly inventory report"). Trade your chosen setups in a demo account until you can trade every appearance of your setups and follow the rules, no exceptions, no cheating, for at least 3 consecutive months. If you violate any part of the plan, the 3-month count restarts at 0. During non-trading hours, analyze the day's chart (or week's chart, if you're swing trading) to be sure you recognized and traded every appearance of your chosen setups. Make written notes about additional patterns you notice that may help you take larger profits, or cut losses earlier. During non-trading hours read Mark Douglas' "Trading in the Zone" (at least 3 times). Once you have a couple months of screen time under your belt, start reading Al Brooks' "Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar". Start with the Glossary in the back of the book, then you can begin reading from the beginning, but only a few pages at a time. Once you attain 3 consecutive months of trading all valid setups by the rules of your trading plan and you're consistently profitable at a level very similar to the level your trading plan predicted, you're ready to trade live and should be well-prepared to be one of the minority of consistently profitable traders. If you find yourself unable to follow your trading plan despite your best efforts, then you should seek a mentor or a psychologist to help you.