Obviously, my name was meant to make fun of the "Gurus". Yes, I've had a guru tell me he lost $38,000 over a year while having people spending thousands of dollars and hours on him. If they only knew the truth. I will agree that maybe 1/100 will be good, but ONLY ones that show P/L and prove they make money should be followed. the rest are salespersons. i even had a guru tell me he was a horrible trader but others should be able to use his system. huh? Most gurus are good speakers, able to make trading be easy to explain ("see, yesterday, you should have done this and this"). Even a monkey can explain things in hindsight. It's funny when gurus insult other gurus. Why will gurus kill your trading? They will make you think that trading is a pretty closed universe (eg. moving averages explain trend) and they don't admit about being clueless for long periods of time. If gurus are giving you one tool for your toolbelt, please make sure they made money with it over the long term. When gurus use clever metaphors, be careful. Eg. Trading is like flying a plane or whatever. They write books. I agree knowledge is power and education is important. My point is I think you can get what you need for free, and not pay money for this information. I might not have the answer, but I think avoiding gurus is important. Do you really think gurus put up a website and say "I want to help people for FREE." No, they want to monetize. Maybe free at first, like crack. I just want to save ONE person.
People have to save themselves. If a nwb does not get Caveat Emptor, s/he needs to b taught that thru experience. It will save them 7 figures over a lifetime. Why would u deprive them of that, u evil person u.
On the flip side, is the steady stream of lemmings (whoops, newbie trader wannabes) who come to places like Elitetrader, who want a system for no more than $200 that is guaranteed to make at least 500% annually with minimal risk. Maybe the "gurus" and the "newbies" deserve each other. Seriously, on places like EBay, there are systems that "can't miss" with great backtests for sums like $39. And people still buy them, because they are "cheap" After all, who wants to spend the time or the money to actually learn how to trade?
No doubt, there are flakes out there but when you have been trading for some time and have acquired good working knowledge many of these metaphors actually speak volumes. You don't need to tell me in detail how to trade; you need only make allusions that will help me "open my inner eye". There ya go, you can add one more metaphor to your list.
You should listen to all gurus, even the flakes (on the off-chance they may be right). Then make up your own mind.
Good points. You described reality honestly. My suggestions to newbies: 1. Do not even start unless you have 50K at least you can afford to lose without impact on your life and emotional state. 2. Be prepared for a long journey that can last anywhere from 5 to 10 years for reaching a point where you can claim you understand more or less what is going on in the markets. 3. Remember that drawdowns are more common than windfall profits. At least in 95% of the cases. If you do not have a good concept of risk and money management you will lose it all in the first few months or year. 4. Markets were not made to reward anyone, God does not care who wins and who loses, so do not pray, He does not listen to traders. When you open a trade you should know that probably TraderZones or Intradaybill are on the other side of it and you have no chances if you know less than we do
Oh Janes, you silly goose. Don't you find the title of your thread here rather hypocritical? I mean after all... you secretly aspire to be the king guru yourself. Might want to discuss that inner conflict at the next weekly meeting with your shrink.
I agree, listen. I just don't agree on paying ANY money for some self-proclaimed guru, even $25 for any of their magical insight. I went and heard some clown speak once about his software; fantastic speaker. However, I read online later that his software would try to hide losing signals by disappearing and not counting in his P/L. Then he got sued. lol This was 6-7 years ago and I actually went to hear him because I wanted to sell systems to suckers, curious how they did it. I even remember thinking one had fantastic calls for a few weeks in a row, then he took a 60-point ES loss and later said "All my winners were 50 contracts and that was only 1"