It didn't go in one ear out the other. I'd like to follow with his advice on what a mentor can show me and then utilize that advice to put it to work for myself. Yes, I understand it is not necessary but can definitely decrease the learning curve time and help me put in perspective what to look at and what to not look at. I think a lot of traders learning focus on too much and try to be everywhere. And when you are everywhere you are nowhere.
To succeed in this arena you need to have passion, self motivation, burning desire, etc... My take on your responses is that you are waiting for something to happen outside of yourself. You have to create it. You have already been given a couple of clues in this thread have you followed them to see where they lead? One of the problems with thinking I need a "mentor" or I need "this or that" is that your focus is on the wrong thing, you take away your power, it an excuse to not start the hard work that is required. Pretend you are in a locked room and there are 10,000 keys on the floor what are you going to do? By the way he is a she.
I trade for the most obvious reason. In the (sometimes vain) hope of making money. After saving the maximum allowed in my IRAs and 401ks for 30 years and having hardly anything to show for it I've realized that "investing" is for suckers.
That means nothing, at least a third of all those who fail have same desires. I no longer mentor- too old, too tired, lost patience of trying 1500 times of teaching same concept, but I have worked with newbies to 30 year losers, they all had intense desires of succeeding, that is not enough. First you have to know why do you want to sit in front of screens 100 hours a week in the beginning? Most people get the answer wrong. The first three years of doing it on your own is discovery of what doesn't work. It is discovery of leaving your ego at the door, knowing that women are much better traders as a group than men and being able to question "why"-learning the why is an answer to help oneself become better. Trading is not about numbers, although we test this way, trading is about emotions, "fear", fear of missing out, fear of loss whether market going in a profitable direction or against our direction. One of the best private journals I made thru the years is how I felt during the day, I got good at calling extreme turns by having opposite emotional feelings, intense fear at bottoms and intense happiest at highs. You learn by doing, making a story of the complete day of what emotion is making price go in a direction. Reason I trade, after 31 years, I am good at it. My passion comes from backtesting new ideas, keeping losing percentages under 10% for day trading, keeping max DD long term trading under 15%. I no longer search for better entries, only better money management rules. "Skills and Qualities", LOL, I use to think I was above average in IQ, market makes those with higher IQ look like idiots cause we think in logic instead of emotions. My only quality was I didn't care how much I lost till I found how to trade successfully. Less is better, always taking opposite trades of the 95%, books are only half written-never go beyond enough.
Chris, if you're looking for the common thread among the best traders, I'll tell you what it is. Most traders start trading because of the hope of riches or some other superficial reason. But the ones that become great, at some point along the way, transition from "doing it for the money" to "doing it to get better at doing it." In June I made 16% and made 2 sizeable errors in that I failed to see a 'plain as day' signal when it came. Each error cut the size of my winning trade in half. My mentality going into this month is "make less mistakes" and "be more observant." I could make money doing what I'm doing, and a lot of it. But the truth is, I'm driven to be a better trader. The money is a nice byproduct now. And I'm sure that's true with every great athlete. Some great NBA player somewhere must have been shooting free throws, missed one after sinking 99 in a row and said to himself, "How did that happen? And how can I prevent it in the future?" It's not about the money to him, it's about the pursuit of perfection. And I'm sure you'll find the same mentality among truly successful traders. I made the transition about 2 years ago, and that's when I really started to improve and win.
Its not about needing a mentor. I'd like to have one, though. Anybody on the floor at the CBOT or CBOE?