How many people...

[Technically Fundamental]

Excellent post and now we're getting somewhere.

Whether your mentor is profitable doesn't come into it.

You are given the knowledge. The environment. The tools.

You are given time.

The rest is up to you.

And what I am saying is that there is another alternative which is a better way to spend your 5k or your 10k or however much, that will get you a better grounding.

Didn't you pay for a course?

 

[Masquerade]

Take 2 people , both who are prepared to put in the same effort

1 does it for free online, researching and reading forums. Then opens a Spreadbetting account.
1 pays 5k to be in an office environment with experienced traders.

I know which one I'd back ...

The former right? Because the latter sounds like a fool.

 

[Technically Fundamental]

I'd back neither.

Then who would you back. Grad?

 

[trader_dante]

Didn't you pay for a course?

Nope, never.

I've put in 8 hard years of work.

Although I went from losing money consistently to making money consistently in the course of reading one free public thread.

 

[Technically Fundamental]

Nope, never.

I've put in 8 hard years of work.

Although I went from losing money consistently to making money consistently in the course of reading one free public thread.

Oh I assumed thats how you got your job.

 

[Paulie_5]

I'd back neither.

But I understand your point regarding 3/6 months ongoing support etc. If the point of a course is to assist noobs into becomming successful then any one of us can design such a course with powerpoint and make it very simple sticking purely to technical analysis, one market and three timeframes. That should not cost 5K. The 5K would be better spent by a noob who tested basic technical analysis on a demo account whilst keeping a trading diary who then placed very small trades after a successful strategy was born out of his/her own analysis. Being a old fashioned technical analyst, I dont get the need for news feeds, oscillators, hooks, bloomberg and Squarwk.

When I said "I know which one I'd back" .. I didn't mean in the literal sense, ie which one would I back with money to trade. I more meant, "which one would I reckon would have more chance of success". Poor choice of words on my part.

The 5K would be better spent by a noob who tested basic technical analysis on a demo account whilst keeping a trading diary who then placed very small trades after a successful strategy was born out of his/her own analysis

You make this bit sound so simple. You learn so much being in a trading environment that would take you a long time to figure out from the free info you get online. That is where your 5k is well spent. Being able to talk to people. Discuss ideas face-to-face with other people on the course. Ask questions. Have an experienced trader actually standing over your shoulder and with their finger actually pointing out stuff on charts.

There are so many "aaaaaaaahhhh, I get it" moments in this kind of environment that you simply don't get by sitting at home trawling through the net.

You are quite right, you don't need news feeds, oscillators, hooks, bloomberg and Squarwk to trade, but it's nice to understand them, see how they work and be able to eliminate them as a personal requirement for your trading.

 

[tafita]

When I said "I know which one I'd back" .. I didn't mean in the literal sense, ie which one would I back with money to trade. I more meant, "which one would I reckon would have more chance of success". Poor choice of words on my part.



You make this bit sound so simple. You learn so much being in a trading environment that would take you a long time to figure out from the free info you get online. That is where your 5k is well spent. Being able to talk to people. Discuss ideas face-to-face with other people on the course. Ask questions. Have an experienced trader actually standing over your shoulder and with their finger actually pointing out stuff on charts.

There are so many "aaaaaaaahhhh, I get it" moments in this kind of environment that you simply don't get by sitting at home trawling through the net.

You are quite right, you don't need news feeds, oscillators, hooks, bloomberg and Squarwk to trade, but it's nice to understand them, see how they work and be able to eliminate them as a personal requirement for your trading.

Yes I tried to make it simple for expediency. As for chances of success, both have a chance at that but there are so many other variables to becomming a success also. I guess I just do not see the need to part with 5K when you can use it to trade with once you have digested the free information and developed a strategy from it.

Then who would you back. Grad?

No. I would always back myself, I would not want to waste time babysitting someone who was trading with my money.

 

[tafita]

Nope, never.

I've put in 8 hard years of work.

Although I went from losing money consistently to making money consistently in the course of reading one free public thread.

And this I think is the point.

TD, FWIW I think you should start the resource that you alluded to before.

 

[N Rothschild]

dante your not a pro though, you failed at a prop firm..sorry!

 

[arabianights]

Infact, I went to see Arbitrageur (incidentally where is he lately??) at his trading desk and he really inspired me when I was close to giving up. And I knew next to nothing. I remember being amazed that he had a 1 tick spread on the Bund.

Changed name to Directional, still around...

 

[trader_dante]

dante your not a pro though, you failed at a prop firm..sorry!

Failed my *rse!

 

[trader_dante]

Sorry, just moved that to the private forum.

You can request access half way down the main forum at Trade for a Living

 

[ilplusq]

I see learning to trade being similar to a university. There are several categories of people there:

There are people who diligently study for five years under constant supervision and in an "environment". Many of them come out wearing blinders and do not realizing there are infinite ways to go about any profession. They just fail to see things differently and do not really want to.The extreme case is someone who stays with the school for the rest of their life/career.

Others graduate and wish they never spent the five years studying something of which only 10% is applicable in the real world, and those 10% are general sciences - general principles of trading in this case (tools and basics, money management, etc).

The next category is represented by - you guessed it - dropouts. They grasp the principles in the first year or two and then they realize that they can do better on their own. Many fail. But many never look back and become very successful, for there is nothing holding them back and there is no professor imposing their point of view and various constraints on them. How many subjects did you just have to sit through only because they are part of the cirriculum?

It is not hard to tell I'm a dropout. The basics and the discipline to study are something you cannot succeed without. For learing that, the school is a perfect environment and is worth way more than $5,000. But for what lies beyond that, self-education might be the best option. I'll make damn sure my kids enter the university. Whether they choose to graduate or not is another story.

There is nothing wrong with either of these categories. But one should have a good idea what fits their personality better, and this will determine the answer to TD's question. Sitting throught a lecture and listening to something I couldn't stand made me want to jump and scream. Not being able to have a 180-degree different view on something made me crazy. But I had the drive to succeed and I did not want to waste five years. I knew I could study ten times more efficiently and adjust the direction of my studies as I see fit. Combined with sweat, and lots of it, and availability of resources (in the case of trading, everything is avaialble for free), that's all you need. If you are determined to find the good stuff and are ready to dig until you do, nothing can stop you.

To answer Tom's question, $5,000 to learn the basics right, to get the shortcuts, to get the right tools for the job - it's a bargain. Something that would show you how many doors there are out there. Then you can and should pick your own door, alone. It is between you and you.

I've never seen a prop firm, but I suspect you will only learn about a couple of doors there. Probably scalping doors. That's why I would not pay for it - I would not want a method imposed on me, and I do not even know beforehand whether it would fit my personality.

But six months ago, when I did not understand what "spread" was, I would have paid $5,000 without thinking for I know how long it takes to understand the basics from the cold start, I've been there before and there are better ways to go about it. I just could not find someone who I could trust, so I had to dig again .

My hat's off to trader_dante, james16, mbqb11 (in the order I learnt about their existence ) and others who go out of their way to help others. These people understand the term "blood and sweat". And they have found what they were digging for.

Cheers

Ilya

 

[N Rothschild]

Failed my *rse!

 

[tafita]

To answer Tom's question, $5,000 to learn the basics right, to get the shortcuts, to get the right tools for the job - it's a bargain. Something that would show you how many doors there are out there. Then you can and should pick your own door, alone. It is between you and you.

Mmmm, I disagree. TD wants to put a resource together for free. The basics can be found on this forum if people can be bothered to look. What is it exactly do people want? To learn the basics or to learn how to be a profitable trader? Do people want to see what the so called pro's are doing to see if they can gain an edge? If we are talking about noobs then IMO they should not pay a penny for a course unless they are extremely lazy in which case you would have to ask if they were cut out to be a trader in the first place. Prop shops that charge for courses can do so because they are prop shops and can sell the dream of riches to suckers. They may very well say to you at the end of the course that they will back a person if you are good enough. My question is, if they thought you were good enough why pay make you pay for a course?

We can only do so much on forums to guide people away from being serial suckers, life's wannabes who cannot be bothered to actually look at a chart/set of financial statements and ask themselves question what does this mean? How hard is it to google 'price pattern'? Tell you what, I'll charge £2.5k to any sucker who wants to 'get to know the basics of trading'. They will still fail because the basics of trading do not cover issues such as risk management/position sizing in most 'courses'. The best noobs can hope for is 'try not to risk too much' or 'make sure you don't lose too many times.' And psychology? A strangely absent subject in most paid for courses.

 

[ilplusq]

They will still fail because the basics of trading do not cover issues such as risk management/position sizing in most 'courses'. The best noobs can hope for is 'try not to risk too much' or 'make sure you don't lose too many times.' And psychology? A strangely absent subject in most paid for courses.

In my mind risk management/position sizing/psychology are precisely the basics. Often the newbies want to skip all this ("Yeah, I'll deal with money management when I make the money to manage", etc.) and are looking for a recipe like "get in when a crosses b and get out when a crosses c". This "x crosses y" stuff is beyond basics.

Things which are also beyond the basics are the choice of markets and timeframes, the rythm of your day, the goals, and working with your own (as opposed to generic) physche, for you are your biggest enemy in trading. The basics include the basics of the market, terminology, charting, patterns, tools, fundamentals, etc as well as risk management and general psychology. In other words, you should come out of a course armed with a good trading plan and the tools, as well as overview of some strategies so you can go and start papertrading with some purpose.

This is what I meant to say.

 

[ilplusq]

Further, here's an example. Much of what I know about trading, I owe to the three gentlemen mentioned in my previous post. I have read MMT two times: forwards and backwards. And then I have notes on MMT which I periodically distill in order to apply to my own trading. This method fits me perfectly, this is why I took it as a base. MMT is basics. There is nothing wrong with saying that, because it is precisely that - being able to formulate the basics and create a profitable trading method without overcomplicating - that not too many people can do. But even after reading MMT, james16 forum and a lot of other stuff, I am still far from achieving TD's results. Is the problem in the method? Maybe I should try the new 5-minutes-a-day-to-riches method I got in my email? Hell no. The problem is between the chair and the screen. Between the ears, to be exact. When I make the method mine, be it a little changed or the same by then, only then I will become consistently profitable and 100% confident. I am almost there, working on the confidence part.

Regarding the basics being avaialble on this forum. Yes, they are. But there are often too many voices on the forums, and at times it is difficult to discern what applies to you and what does not, and what is outright garbage. TD has accumulated quite a reputation (before the Great June Rep Deflation ), and MMT has become the ONE source for many aspiring traders. Anything TD adds to what he started, will be along the same lines, will not contradict what's already there. And having one coherent source for the many newbie questions has a great value. But the rest is still between you and you. And the screen and the chair.

 

[dilesh23]

YouTube - OSHO: Selling Bliss

 

[trader_dante]

TD has accumulated quite a reputation (before the Great June Rep Deflation ), and MMT has become the ONE source for many aspiring traders. Anything TD adds to what he started, will be along the same lines, will not contradict what's already there. And having one coherent source for the many newbie questions has a great value. But the rest is still between you and you. And the screen and the chair.

Oh stop it, you're making me blush!

My goal is simple: I want to get people profitable. You're 100% right, it is down to the trader and it is between their ears. A lot of people don't understand this and have a whole lot of work to do. Others are very close but perhaps just have a little piece of the puzzle missing.

MMT was never a thread to show you how to make your fortune. It was how I made money and for the most part, with some minor alterations, still is at the core of how I make a living now. I accept that we're not all the same. Some people aren't comfortable trading that way and have to find something that fits them.

At the end of the day I will continue to impart what I've learnt and what my experience has been to people that are interested and enquiring. A prop environment did nothing for me. I was a better trader before I entered my firm than when I left it after a year. And I'm only just undoing a lot of the sh*t I learnt in there whilst assimilating that which was good. Everyone that knew me personally there knows that to be true...but if someone wants to pay thousands of pounds for a course and wants to know what its about and what exactly you will get - well thats why I just wrote that mammoth post on the private forum and thats what this thread was about.

As far as reputation...you can listen to the rep "deflationists" or the "inflationists" but the safe bet is to see what actually transpires. Just like in our good old economy, giving 179 reasons why something is or will be or must be, doesn't count for a single thing.

If Jesse Livermore was posting on here himself, you'd still have Genics telling the world he had blown his account, had failed to make it when he went to the Stock Exchange House and was a ruthless manipulator that said the opposite of whatever he did and you'd still have depth trade telling him that price action trading and listening to hunches doesn't work and insisting he make some live calls or he's a fraud

I enjoy the banter because I know I've helped a lot of people progress and through it all, I still sit here making good money each day.

ilplusq, you have me on msn and if you don't have the pf link its half way down the page. Whatever it takes, I will help you and anyone else that feels like they need something more for things to click even if it is just a confidence issue. And regardless of me and my trading, the results of that help can speak for themselves.

-Tom

 

[shmeeko69]

Most folk want easy fish & live for the day, If you learn to fish you live a lot longer in this game ! You can't use the same methodology all the time, as the markets have mood swings & most of the time go sideways (apart from 2008) & they sometimes trend. It's important to spot this difference early on in your trading & staying away if it does'nt suit your style.When you spot a potential good trade, you must apply sensible money management (stop loss % of account), a reasonable spread price for the trade must be a consideration, you must have an exit strategy & stick to it & the most important part of all Discipline - without that your a goner. If you still get a fast pulse or the sweats (I call it twitchy neck syndrome) when placing a trade or taking your profit, then it's time to take a step back & think about what your doing, this is a predatory business & the market will swallow you up.This is a great business & you have to be up for the fight & If you make it to the top of the pyramid you will be very wealthy !

Cheers

Mark