Market narration may work. That's where you continuously describe what's happening in the market, to yourself or the trading buddy.
I chat with a few guys, we get to know each others style, rarely comment on each others decisions, toss out stocks, then just take them or leave them, sort of like talking AT each other. Recently, one guy goes completely out of character during this volatility and quickly retreats but not before I go completely out of character myself but I hold. This other fellow, smarter than I, no doubt, had a good rapport, we could reduce ideas to stacatto phrases and understand each other, but lo and behold, he was a poor excuse for a human being, so he's gone from my "bouncing ideas off list". We were completely different. My relatives, exchanges e-mails on ideas, hey we know each other but it is a long way from knowing someone personally to sharing trade ideas. Maybe we just get to learn a persons style even if it doesn't match our own and they make a good backboard. Don't know.
I find that the best trading partners are the ones who are completely different. My dad is a total fundamental/seasonal trader. He is deffinantly an opptimist. I like to watch the chart most of the time and am a pessimist usually. So when we discuss a trade if we can blow as many holes through it and even then it still looks good and we both like it then it is usually a pretty good trade.
Not using one at all. We tried, at TFMS, once to impliment a buddy system for our members. It was a disaster. People end up thinking too much, talking too much and ultimatly taking on each others worst traits, but rarely each others best, and having their own worst traits multiplied. We had many successful traders become unsuccessful during the experiment, and many losing traders ended up losing their shirts. It was not a good thing and we quickly ended it. Brandon
Brandon, very interesting. Sounds like trading by consensus or group think with just two, which in this case two heads weren't better than one, in actuality two heads should equal a third dimension.
It depends, some people might want someone to actually teach them--that's a different type of relationship. You can't be looking for anything. The best traders I know do share info with each other, but unless it's a fundamental breakdown of numbers, it's more observation of the markets than it is about particular tickers. Sometimes you may get someone to comment on a chart. But again, it's very general. Or, as youngtrader commented, you've got opposites, and you have the type of relationship where you poke holes in each other's theory. Hey Brandon!