It is a great analogy. The OP wants something yet he brings nothing to the table. Not going to happen. If the OP finds a good trader maybe offering money in exhange of his time will help. That is how I found my mentor. Once I implied I wanted to help new traders and sharing what I was learning from him. He got mad and said " I don't give a damn about new traders ! " That might be not necessarely the case for everyone but it was my reality.
Just had to mention that.. I don't think that Citadel and Jane Street-T3 are really comparable to one another.
Geez, I guess I got lucky. I joined a chatroom about 8-9 years ago that is run by a great trader who also happens to be an honest no BS person. The room is very small, but has quite a few superstar types. All the traders are more than willing to help each other out and shares ideas, call thier trades, entries, exists, stops, etc. You can literally just follow them and do okay because I have and still do that. And these are guys who make high 6 and 7 figures. The funny thing is, we don't have any special systems or secret indicators. It's mostly just knowledge and price action. So, in my experience it is not true that top traders won't help to teach you. In fact, my experience is the really top guys are more than happy to help a new guy out so long as he listens and actually follows thier advice. I'd mention the room but it's closed to new members.
Kindness is giving a homeless person a meal or helping someone in real need. Helping someone to buy a Porsche doesn't fit into this category. After all, all of us (who are trading) do this knowing that another ET'er is probably on the other side of the trade. Going public with an extraordinary mechanical edge insures that it'll stop working quite soon since the next person you reveal it to probably doesn't understand the time and effort put into the system. Now if you're talking about discretionary trading using supres levels, that's another thing.
i'v been trading for 10 years now and have gotten my teeth kicked in several times. Several times I'v blown my account out. I wrote a book about my experiences as a trader and then when i was close to being finished with it, i thought to myself why should i share the knowledge it took me 10 years of getting kicked in the mouth for? When i first started my win% was less than 10% now im consistently above 75%. Out of all the traders that have wanted to "help me" i can count the sincere ones on 1 or 2 fingers. I found the only one you should count on is yourself. There is no easy path. But who knows maybe one day i'll publish my book. Good Luck.
Is a fighter going to train up some guy to learn all their moves and then beat them ? Not unless he is soft in the head or retiring. Ever wondered how Japan sudenly got a first class navy from 18th century wooden junks, beat the Russians and then Pearl Harbour ? Some silly sods did too good a job and then suffered the consequences. There is only limited room at the top and every time a top player lets in someone else he raises the bar even higher and thus makes it even harder ! Life is tough
There is the story of a young Jewish boy who asks his father to teach him about life. His father instructs him to stand on the third step on the stairs and jump into his arms. His son runs up the stairs, jumps and lands safely in his fathers arms. Now the father tells him to go to the fifth step. Again his son lands safely in his arms. Finally, he tells his son to go to the seventh step and jump. This time when the boy jumps his father takes a step back allowing his son to crash head first to the floor. "That will teach you all you need to know", says the father to his son.
this thread just proves to me that the established prop trading system is fundamentally flawed, the imbalance leans towards the sungard assent "monopoly" in the bigger markets, and where the retail $25K four round trip trading rule is handcuffing the majority of new traders from getting to a sufficiently net profitable level to sustain being a full-time trader as a paying "job". if "someone" were to come along with say, $100M in leveraged capital, pooled and risk-managed within a structured trading environment with established traders available for mentoring on a real-time basis, none of this remote trading crap, leave 'em high and dry to figure everything out for themselves, then "someone" would be on to something. not sure who that "someone" is, but perhaps they'll just appear one day with a management team in place to handle all the compliance bullshit, so the traders can focus on what they do best. and some people, like farmers trying to manage the future value of their crops, TO FEED PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD and make a modest living in the process to EDUCATE their CHILDREN, could learn to manage their derivative risk without worrying about their brokers taking the other side of their positions. these douchebags on here with thousands of posts naysaying anything out of the norm, anything that conflicts with their ideals, anything that challenges their integrity as bona fide "experts", perhaps they should set aside their massive egos inversely proportional to their limited vision (and lack of balls), and start working towards changing the system for the better so more people can learn how to become great traders instead of being constantly raped by the wall street illuminati insider trading on every trade in sight. no one can convince me that the goldmans, the jpm's, the assents of this industry are all knee-deep in collusion, document forgery, insider trading, etc. to maintain their control on the commission trough. but they have a system to maintain. the idea of turning a street-smart college dropout from harlem with the math skills of a bobby fischer and teaching him how to trade the treasuries versus some brain-washed white boy from greenwich, ct, with a trust fund to conserve if he doesn't get into harvard, just goes to show how fucked up this country's priorities are. i'd take the harlem kid over the harvard grad any day... rb.