============= Thats a good one, Lights; further subdivided superior traders into ''SUPER trader'' And on the supertrader deal ,remember reading about a female scalper, think @ the time Active Trader mag mentioned her huge income years ago,Blackwood trading. And also VERY interesting she was reading the Wall Street Journal @ 5 years of age!!!!!!!. WOW thats early reading ,& same paper Rich put original turtle ad in; wish i had read Investors Business Daily @ 5 years old.
I agree its a combo of both, but 'supertrader' can be read as Olympic athlete - and those guys train, train, and train and surround themselves with coaches and advisors to critique their form (when they are not working a shift at The Home Depot!) A trader needs the same support system. Fortunately I nurtue these relationships with specific people whose commentary on the markets and direct advice help me know when I'm following their advice and when I'm not (at my own peril). If it were easy, I'd be taking even more of their money!
I guess after 16 pages it appears to be funny why there are no posts from teachers. Why after 16 pages didn't anyone come any closer than one inference as to the key to the thread subject? My guess is that a person has to go through the process to understand the matter at hand. Then the person can look back and see clearly what the matter is all about. I've had the same orientation to this stuff since 1960 so by now I have it down cold. All the necessary substantive commentary is out there for the acquiring, too bad it is not understood by the potential beneficiaries. The stuff in this thread is a very good read on why the people who posted what they did got to be the way they are (trapped). The arguing is especially revealing. I learned a lot and this thread is going to be a "must read" for our VI team. Believe me, they are able to read it, too. The VI team's job is to vet stuff so there are no possible processing pitfalls for remote learners who are in a self learning mode.
How 'bout a bit of both? Doesn't this apply to any serious undertaking? To succeed in any great endeavor you have to have some natural talent, and the degree of your success may indeed be relative to the depth of that talent, but everyone in any field still has to be trained. Before one can fully realize their potential there has to be a learning process. Talent is a raw, ethereal thing, seemingly existing on a subconscious level; education and training define and refine talent, pinning it down to specifics, giving it shape, something that can be manipulated consciously thru technique. Joe Montana did not just one day walk into the middle of a huddle on a whim, break, and then throw an incredible pass against a professional NFL defense. He studied and worked his ass off first and conditioned his body and mind to respond to his inborn talent. Good and great athletes train relentlessly to achieve that stature and, just as important, the great ones never stop training, there's always more to learn. Warren Buffet didn't just wake up one morning and pick up a newspaper and start circling potential businesses he thought would be wise investments. He studied the art of business to utilize his talent in practical ways and I guarantee he's still learning today. Unless you're a savant, there is no worthwhile difficult endeavor that doesn't take hard work, whatever degree of talent you possess. W/o training and education, you may never even get to the point where you are able to realize that talent, it may remain bottled up, stoppered by your ignorance. Education frees talent. Harold
Verily I say unto you: I, Grob109, am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can get to the Profits except through me.
LOL.....anything but the matter how come you don't perceive the basis of innate? Look how martys was sitting there watching the physicist telling him the game plan. for your self entertainment take a look at Forbes this week. Can you F**king imagine writing the brain stuff and NOT USING TRADING BRAIN BUILDING EXAMPLES. we are doing a cut and paste on the article and handing out a version we are writing that uses six corresponding trading drills to accomplish each and every one of the six drills mentioned in the article. that stuff of yours on page 12 is really off the mark...... What is the alternating to teaching people since teaching doesn't work???? THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!
I don't have a page 12. My post display preferences are set up differently. Which, oddly enough, highlights part of the issue: you seem to assume that everyone sees the world the way you do. I don't recall suggesting that teaching "doesn't work." Of course teaching "works" in some capacity. It is fairly obvious, however, that even the best teachers in the world are constrained by the limitations of their students. The average joe can become a competent violinist, but he's not going to become YoYo Ma. Furthermore, the more straightforward or rote a process is, the more likely it can be programmed into a computer. As Bruce Kovner noted, this is why medical diagnostic programs can be quite good. When the inputs are rigid and well defined, hardware beats wetware. So when you talk about things that can be easily taught--i.e. methods and processes that are not hard to understand because the inputs are rigid and straightforward--you are, by definition, talking about processes that can be fairly easily handled by a computer. The stuff that isn't easily handled by a computer... that can't be built into a functional software program... is what separates the best traders from the rest. These are the soft inputs, the ambiguous situations, the judgment calls that leverage the advantages of the human mind and reflect the limitations of silicon. Humans are simply far better at analyzing certain complex situations than computers are. This is why Deep Blue won't be challenging a top Go player any time soon---the nature of the 19x19 Go board gives a big edge to humans, because its complexity 1) favors the elegance of wetware heuristics and 2) short circuits the value of computational brute force. So here is the catch 22 then--if the subtleties, complexities and nuances are what separate the best from the rest, that means the best cannot ascribe their prowess to being "taught" in a straightforward way. The basics can and should be taught... just as the fundamentals of swinging a baseball bat or shooting a free throw can be taught... but the potential for greatness (or even competence) is determined by the abilities of the individual, some of which are most definitely innate. Anyone who says that trading successfully is nothing but straightforward processes is full of shit, just like black box trading systems promising infinite riches for the low price of $3,000 are full of shit. The proposed statements are internally contradictory--any straightforward system is subject to repeated implementation until the edge is bled away, just as no one in their right mind would sell a truly excellent trading system for three grand. Those with something to sell attempt to circumvent this reality by suggesting, hinting, or even blatantly stating that they have 'secret knowledge' of some sort, be it a magic formula or some version of Poe's purloined letter (out in the open but no one paying attention). If a great trader wants to share his insights and knowledge, or even let you in on his trades, then I would pay attention. If a great trader wants to attempt the act of knowledge transfer, try and help you see what's in his head and get it in yours, then I would pay attention there also. But if someone tells you that learning to trade is a simple matter of rote processes and following instructions that they, the guru, shall bestow upon you, then I would treat them with the same dignity and respect you would give to the seller of a $3,000 black box system.