We've all heard the adages that pro athletes and other top performers in their fields have coaches. An outside 3rd party that only has your interest at heart. So my question is - has anyone dealt with a trading coach and how was/is the experience? I know the mod's don't care for websites to be posted for co's, but I would like as open and honest feedback as possible. I'm sure some might say why bother and others may see the possible value here. It's the old Tiger Woods question, right? Why does the top golfer in the world need a coach? My point being that at what stage(s) of a trading career should a coach be present, if at all?
Interesting question. I've wondered that myself. I think an example would be for Tiger Woods, when you win X amount of opens and then you have a losing streak. Its a highly leveraged position. 1 lose seems like 10. Its like a losing streak in trading. In the grand scheme of things, its nothing. But you can't become gun-shy. Some people are afraid, and they need someone (unbiased - not the media, not family, not friends) to refocus you. Its like depression. Most people will benefit from therapy, because its just refocusing, rethinking. Just my thoughts.
have a look at http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...=60164&perpage=6&highlight=house&pagenumber=1 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1528320#post1528320
http://www.ruthroosevelt.com I have not had any direct experience with this lady, but she has some interesting articles and some good books out. The website she has seems to cover a lot of the questions about what coaching can accomplish in trading. I really like her honest and complete assessment of what coaching can and cannot do for a trader. Maybe a bit pricey, but sounds like the real deal to me.
when i was beginning, i worked with a trading coach. it was helpful i now am a trading coach i am helpful so, my answer would be "good"
I parsed my response to you. So my question is - has anyone dealt with a trading coach and how was/is the experience? The experience varies very broadly. To be coached takes a readiness on the part of the trader. If a trader is ready to be coached, it takes about two days to "read" the trader. A day is an eight hour period and it includes RTH. My orientation to coaching is to do it for people who are ready, if I choose to. The deal is that the coaching is free and when their account is being traded, if it gets upswide down I write a check to replenish the lost capital. There are two other parts to the deal: the coached person has to pass it forward and the coached person has to contribute to local problems that need either capital or personal time. It is very dificult for a person to find me and to get into a coaching arrangement. Most people have been vaccinated by books, courses, and training programs in the past. If these past experiences take the person past a certain point they are not going to be able to recover and be able to trade. If the person is affected amotionally tosany extent by fear, anxiety or anger, then he is probably not going to recover over time. It is simply a case of a person trying to build a house from a set of blueprints. I arrive (or they arrive at my place) and we discover that they have build walls, etc in the wrong places using the wrong materials. These cannot be taken out and replaced according the the blueprint since the mind prevents this because memory cannot be replaced. It is not a tiger wood thing at all. I trade joinly with the trader for periods of time. It is either one account of another it doesn't matter. I let the person do more of the monitoring initially and we converse. Then I let the person log once he is not freaked out by the monitoring screen. After a two day warm up to size the person up it is usually necessary to start over because the person has never seen the markets before. I have never seen a person who has as a matter of fact. Obviously it is necessary to set the screens up etc. This is fun if it can be done. At professional trading operations it is nearly impossible since the technicians do not know what is being talked about and the data deeds commonly available are not being utinlized. This is a period where cell phones get thrown, etc. as the market finally comes into view. If the situation is one where people have been on the floor it is harder as well. One the market is seen and a person can narrat it and can log notes of the market, then the person is ready to begin to watch money being made all of the time. It is very frightening to the trader being coached. the person cannot read the market since he has been competing or some such thing. People usally think in sports terms and DO NOT think in terms of shared responsibilities with the market. there is much more to say and later in the thread some other things may come up.[/b] I'm sure some might say why bother and others may see the possible value here. I love your dry humor. Every one who is not making a multiple of the daily range needs coaching. Sometimes the scene is quite funny. Really funny. Too funny to describe. Maybe like this for example. Pre-open it is realized that most people in the trading rooms have never been on the job at open or before open. They also have displays that are fucking unbelievable. So open happens and it is them against us. This is a low level effectiveness type coaching. they are good traders and the deal is we provide signals and they trade the signals. They have technicians and they are modifying their displays to "see" a little better. We are making the suggestions. Over 30 minutes into the day, maybe forty. Our connection is reading five prints @ 6.75 points per contract on a multiple contract trading account. They have been given five calls (and they pulled 200,000 on 27Feb07 with the contracts they ran that day). so this is not amateur hour coaching or trading. They are at a net loss after five trades ( low four digits). The day prior we observed and at one point said "follow our calls and we will take you to even on the next move (they were down on several hours of trading). they did not take the call and were upside down more and they could have been even. In the first hour, we gave calls (8 total) that netted our account 10.5 points per contract. They did not take the three calls after the first 5 and were stiull upside down. This was a good warm up drill for working with knowledgable people who made 200K a couple months before and who had given it all back by the time we met for a few days. We are not covering these people's downside since they are professionals in the MERC building. We are amateurs and offering them some free coaching. It's the old Tiger Woods question, right? The above people are Tiger traders so to speak. Anyone making 200k on 27FEB07 knows what club to use. We were more successful than they but that is just the way it is for people who can coach in the trading industry with some exceptions. Why does the top golfer in the world need a coach? Again humor is a great thing. Tiger has a coach to be able to be the best in the world. Tiger's coach assures that he goes through whatever is needed to be excellent and to excell. tiger and the coach have a partnership and it keeps going along because each is an expert, they communicate and the coach coaches and Tiger does the trading in his accounts. A private plane is a requirement to be able to win. My point being that at what stage(s) of a trading career should a coach be present, if at all?Look at some examples. Here is one that is a sad one. A guy works for a firm which gives him OPM to trade. He is at warp speed trading. He makes 2 to 3 million a year. That is it for this guy. He does 6,000,000 contract turns to make what he does. He is trading 400 contract lots and he does 60 turns a day. He has a coach, He films himself trading for the coach and himself. He is being coached using OODA. Too bad for him. Too bad for his firm and too bad for his coach. See the preceding example. Lets say this guy was officed at the MERC. Let's say he had OPM. Lets say he did just 10 trades instead of 60 using the same 400 contracts. What is the difference in his net per day? It turns out to be 20 times greater. Two coaches are needed. One for the firm and another for the trader. In the first example a lot of actions were taken by the firm to improve the firm and to improve support for their traders and support for thier clients. These are coaching consequences. In the second example the guy is not coachable and the firm is not one that can embark on firm type improvements. Why? Well it is because they are aware of the opportunity and they didn't take it. That is very cool Let's say some coaching is done and the trader is now working on his own. He has been through the experience of trading for periods of time and then sidelining out of exhaustion so to speak. he knows what it is like to make the money the market offers and he also knows he was not in good enough physical or mental shape to put in a full day. He found that out with his coach. Lets say I took coolweb up to 25,000 a day profits every day. how would the 6 months needed to do this be spent? Lets say I met with ratesquad for the summer just part time. He would have every need paid for by fall, that is for sure. Hwe could then decide what to study since he is never going to have a job with anyone by his choice. Any one of many people could do either of these jobs. They would have only one incentive, however. The incentive would be that coolweb and reatesquad would have to become productive contributing people. That is the hard part. I met a person at the TE in SD. She has two homes: East Coast and Dove mountain (Tiger knows the courses well so does his coach). She had just returned from 22 days in China after spending the Spring in a subsurb of NYC. She passes her knowledge along to others weekly. In 2006, she picked up NTRI four times for and average return of 30 per hold. The holds were 3 days each. These 12 days compounded took up a small amout of her capital's time this year. 30% compounded four times is an interesting percentage. The rest of the year the capital was invested in similar ways. The coaching was free and she coaches for free too. Who we coach depends upon the person and the potential of the person to help others.
I've posted on this subject on another thread. It seems really hard to get a position where your're trading OPM whether its at a hedge fund or a real prop firm. So most traders develop a 'go at it alone' mentality where they convince themselves they can trade on their own, learn on their own, develop their own system, etc. - the whole process can only be described as trying to reinvent the wheel. Now a real trading coach is someone that is more or less by your side and reviewing every trade to make sure it doesn't conflict with the trading plan and trading goals that you yourself have created. A guy like that could easily cost 50k-100k a year but well worth it for a trader making over 5 million a year. A trading mentor, on the other hand, is a bit less involved but still valuable because with each trading day you develop good or bad habits and the mentor can help in making sure you're at least not adding to bad habits day after day and thus ruining your chances of getting to the 'unbeleivable' level of success Jack Hershey talks about. So why do the best golfers and the best tennis players have coaches? Its because the players have spent over 100k hours perfecting their form. But they are human - slight imperfections they're not aware of can enter their form. And without a coach they can just go on adding to the imperfections and making a bad habit out of it. Whereas the coach recognizes the imperfection immediately and tells the player about it and thus raises the player's level of awareness of the mistakes so that he can cut it out. The player can then cut his losses and get back to using a more perfect form. In no sport is the #1 player vastly 'better' than the #2 or #3 player. The top players just have that added bit of consistency that put them over the top.