re: part-timers don't succeed. https://moneyish.com/ish/elon-musk-has-spilled-his-secret-to-success-and-its-simple/
I think if you could find someone who could prove to you that they actually trade and make money, then they would be a great mentor. But like others have said, if they can trade and make money, then why would they want to mentor anyone for money?
Mentoring is difficult for both parties, but you might get lucky, my original mentor was someone who was an anoymous poster on some long forgotten trading forum who told me what software to buy and then helped me with coding. We became friends, as again through a stroke of luck lived in the same city as I. Forever indepted to him for his assistance. But my suggestion to any struggling noob trader, learn to code, but you need good trading software, don't buy budget rubbish, 100% waste of time. If you want to get serious, then get serious, none if this flopping around, spend the money, quality doesn't cost, it saves. Getting a mentor to help you code will be easier and more advantageous than one attempting to teach you to trade.
Mentoring is hard for the mentor especially. Think about it. The mentor is handling his own trading for his account. Then, you have to teach someone how to trade. Chances are good, you will start at zero and assume he knows nothing. Then, you have to deal with his biases and bad habits and try and correct it for him! You could even hand everything to him including, a trading plan, a trading log, the setups and exits and still he will fail! More likely than not, he will do as he please and believe that he knows better! He will not follow rules, ignore risk management, trade against the trend, not maintain a trading log to monitor his mistakes and try to minimize losses, put huge amounts of monies in a few trades hoping for the big score. You get the picture. Now, do you want to be a mentor?
Yes, I work as software developer but what is the purpose of this question? are you asking this for backtesting strategies ?if yes, I have this book on the TODO list : Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems - by Kevin Davey
Once upon a time I coded for backtesting, but no longer. For the consistently unprofitable trader, this needs be done to get a sense of what works, however, regarding for example stocks, if you back test a random large universe of stocks with your stock exchange, you will get random results. As mentioned in a previous post elsewhere, possibly 80% of stocks in an exchange will be unsuitable to you to trade, so a winnowing process is required to weed out the chaff first. No point backtesting unsuitable stocks, you will be led down a garden path. Once you know what has high probabilities of working out, you would only need to code to then eyeball how it looks and to improve. Say for example you were coding a breakout system using crossovers (not how I trade, this just an example), then code the system and see how it looks in current time. No point for example backtesting a crossover system on old long running trends, the trend may be overbought, so again, you will get false signals. Coding, trading, testing is a very selective process, attempting these processes on a universe of anything at any random time frame will get you nowhere.
Anyone claiming to be The Best Mentor is what? Real mentoring, like guru-ing, is a happening and don't work like that. You can't force it to happen, or just purchase it. You may keep reading books, stuff your head with knowledge. But it's all unapplied. To really learn you need to apply yourself. Your best mentors may be many and are those that best makes you apply yourself. Making a thread. Posting charts. Asking questions regarding what you're working on, might be a better bet than hoping for a complete handout from mythical proven successfully consistent pro trader.
One purpose for the question is that a profitable trader might need some coding assistance for a transition to full automation so he would be willing to mentor you in exchange for your coding ability.
I ask because whether you know how to code or not determines the type of assistance you are capable of receiving.