Congratulation and good luck TradingBillions. To accept a mentor and began a journal as his student all in the course of two hours is an amazing leap of faith on your part. This guy could be some nut living in the middle of the dessert for all you know. You must feel you are in real good company with yourself now. Again good luck and I will look forward to following your journal.
Yea I think he is trying to dig pretty deep.. I mean, i don't know.. money is a motivator i won't lie but i also want to learn how to pick better entries than i am now and stuff like that.
I'm not trying to be a sour puss but I've never seen nor met a profitable trader that reached profitability via being mentored online. Simply, the proper way to mentor a trader is in person with actual trades by the mentor in front of the student's own two eyes. Next, after several days or weeks, the mentor than allows the student to trade with real money with the mentor looking over his/her shoulder providing guidance and insights from trade to trade. All of this of course is being recorded (video and audio) via something like Camtasia for the student's and mentor's future reference. After all of that, that's when I think online mentoring as a follow-up only is appropriate. Why? The online mentorship hides too much from the mentor that can easily derail a student. Thus, if the student fails, the mentor is too easy to blame. In addition, the student and mentor should be trading the same trading instrument, same position size while using the same broker platform and trading tools. Anthing less makes the entire student/mentor interaction problematic from the start. With that said, just because I haven't seen nor heard of a profitable trader via such a route... It doesn't mean it can't be done. Therefore, I wish you the best and good profits. Mark
OK, Billions, you have probably figured out what I am getting at. IMO to achieve initial success at trading you cannot expect it to carry too much freight. Trading success is like sex. The more desperately you need it, the less likely you are to get it. You have to trade initially purely for the pleasure and accomplishment of trading well. Trade well and small, and later you can trade as big as you like. And I think that trading success proceeds from other success, no matter how minor, in life. But we are getting ahead of the agenda. So simply put you want trading to make you a comfortable upper middle class living. How long do you typically hold a trade? I will be probing for your comfort zone in trading, absolutely essential to know in designing a trading system. Again, I appreciate your candor. I don't know you, and you don't know me, and likely we will reinvent ourselves on ET as we progress as traders.
Mark, my poor attempt to mentor impersonally over the web surely is no worse than trying to get it from a book, or from some raving fucking egomaniacal guru on ET. Despite the probable differences in our ages, I am just far enough ahead of him as a trader to do him some good. The pain and missteps of my own development are only too fresh in my memory. And let's face it, aspiring traders need therapy first, and trading instruction second. Trading is all in your head. That's why it's so hard. When I'm done he'll be ready for somebody else here. If they can resist the temptation that long. Best regards. Mike.
Billions, you can save some time of long drawn out Q&A if you go into detail about your trading style, how you plan entries and exits, what approach do you take to trading, how much are you willing to risk, what kind of exit strategies do you employ, what indicators or signals do you use to analyze the price action and how do you interpret them, how much heat are you willing to take on a trade before bailing, etc... Socrates cannot help you if he does not know what he is working with. Fill in with as muhc information as you are willing to provide otherwise what can he start with. My honest advice is to map out a day of trading here showing your entries and exits and the why in as much detail and then let us look over your shoulder and comment. It dont matter if you are losing money or making mistakes, that is how you learn.
Thanks for the heads up, Optioncoach! I will post in extreme detail tomorrow as I am about to head to bed. Thanks again!
I yield to Opie's superior posterior. In the immortal words of Harry Truman, "If you're gettin' on, I'm gettin' off." Bye.
Dont get your feather's ruffled Socrates, I am not pissing in your yard. A mentor is usually a lot stronger and tougher than that and usually does not pull the "No fair, I am taking my ball and going home!" Just that we can read 4 pages of one line question and answers or he can sum it up in one detailed post and you can get started. He is all yours to do with what you please , just that those of us looking over the shoulder saw where you were going and wanted to get there quicker lol... I will butt out and defer to your posterier.
Socrates is presenting a method which is reflexive in nature, one wherein your mind will come-up with the solutions to the problems you face with your individual style of trading. This cannot be taught, and the recommendations of others really won't mean that much to you without your having a solid base to operate from and enough self-awareness to know what is correct for you. Even if you have to do it through PMing, and use this Journal to chronicle your experience of working with him after the fact, I recommend you continue on the path which you have chosen. Being distracted by the normal run of egoists on Elite Trader, especially when they can't cut the mustard in your instrument(s) of choice and style of trading anyway, cannot really do you any good in the long run. Good Luck, Jimmy Jam