LONG ANSWER
Summary
This post is necessarily long as the subject is both complex and one that many new traders (and some not so new ones) have many misconceptions about. To get the full benefit of the Long Answer, please read it all the way through. 20 minutes spent reading this FAQ now – plus the other two related FAQs linked in point 10 (below) - could save you huge amounts of angst and money later on. To kick off with, here is a quick ten point summary of the main points:
1. Learn the basics about trading in order to make the most efficient use of your tutor’s time (and save you money).
2. Focus on hard and fast facts and treat opinions with caution. An opinion is an opinion regardless of who it’s from. They don’t magically turn into facts simply because they fall from the lips of George Soros, Warren Buffett – or whoever!
3. Understand that trading success is not easily duplicated. Don’t be surprised if you fail to trade like your mentor or coach and achieve similar results to them. On the contrary, this is the norm and is to be expected.
4. Are you patient, sensible, honest (with yourself), hard working, disciplined and take responsibility for your own actions? Look yourself in the mirror and be brutally - gut wrenchingly honest. If you answer ‘yes’ to all of them – ask yourself how you can improve – what can you do better?
5. Are you clear about the difference between an alerts or tips service, as opposed to the services provided by a mentor, coach or course? (Hereafter referred to collectively as ‘tutor’.) Working with a tutor will be a slower process and involve much more work on your part than subscribing to an alerts service.
6. Do you want to learn how someone else trades and try to emulate them? If so, you want a coach or a course. Or do you want someone to help you develop your own style based on your own interests, skills and personality etc? If so, you need a mentor. Either way, align your interests and objectives with your prospective mentor / coach so that the two of you are ‘in sync’.
7. Think carefully about what you want from your prospective tutor. Is it necessary to find someone with a great trading record, or are there other more important factors to consider? What matters to you most – that your prospective tutor earned $10 million last year, or that they helped 10 other traders in a similar position to you to turn the corner and become consistently profitable?
8. Whoever you find, understand one thing: no one can magically turn you from an unprofitable trader into a profitable one. Not George Soros, not Paul Tudor Jones, not Curtis Faith – no one. Only you can do that! And it’s going to take time and effort. Run a mile from peddlers of ‘get rich quick’ schemes and accept the fact that there is no holy grail.
9. Face up to your own shortcomings and failures. Don’t blame your coach, don’t blame your broker and definitely don’t blame the market! Take personal responsibility for your trading and embrace the fact that only you can make you a successful trader. Projecting your hopes, fears and dreams onto a tutor is a recipe for disaster. Don’t do it!
10. Regardless of whether you want a mentor, coach or course - proceed with caution; caveat emptor! There are good ones out there, but they are largely outnumbered by the scammers, rip-off merchants and snake oil salesmen. Ensure that you don’t fall prey to these rogues by following the suggestions in these sibling FAQs:
Can You Recommend a Forex Alert Service? and
How Can I Distinguish Between Scams and Reputable Vendors?
Be clear about what you want: is it to learn how to trade or to receive tips and alerts?
Anyone interested in this FAQ may also be interested in the sibling FAQ entitled ‘Can You Recommend a Forex Alert Service?’ (link above). Many of the points made in that FAQ are relevant here – and vice versa. The key distinction between the alert service FAQ and this one is whether you want to learn to trade for yourself, or merely wish to follow the alerts, tips and advice of someone else. This FAQ is aimed at the former, i.e. anyone intent on becoming a self-reliant retail trader. Specifically, it will help you to decide whether to pursue this goal alone, or to enlist the services of a tutor.
Before you ‘add to cart’ . . .
Before embarking on your search for a tutor and long before you dig out your credit card, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the basics of trading. Why? Well, for starters, it’ll save your tutor time which will save you money. Suppose David Beckham offered 1-2-1 football coaching, would you ask him to explain what a 4-4-2 formation is, or how the off-side rule works or what a ‘one-two’ passing manoeuvre is? Hopefully not. Additionally, only you can decide whether you want to scalp the order book for a tick or two at a time, or swing trade over many days. Only you know whether you want to trade the Forex market in preference to index futures or equities. And only you know what your trading objectives are: to become a full-time multi-million pound hedge fund manager, or just to work part-time for some extra beer money. So, before you start looking for a tutor, set a few trading foundations in place. Fortunately, T2W is a great place to help you do that, starting with this FAQ:
I’m New to Trading – Where do I Start?
Start a journal
Next up, having devoured the many free resources available here on T2W, you might like to have a dry run and start your own journal.
The Essentials Of Trading Journals Sticky explains what a journal is and how they work. The value of this exercise is that T2W members are good at responding in kind. If you make a real effort and take your journal seriously, knowledgeable and experienced members will post their ideas. This process will help you to cement the foundations and expose any basic flaws in your approach. Additionally, if your future trading training provider is a T2W member, it will give them an insight into the way you think and work. Not only that, the experience may well uncover specific problems that you want your tutor to help you with.
A catch-22
A word of caution: you need to learn the ‘right’ information and avoid the stuff that’s out of date, inaccurate and written by people who don’t actually trade. The obvious catch-22 here is that it’s often difficult for new traders to distinguish between good information and bad disinformation. Your best bet is to stick to the facts about the industry and be very wary of personal opinion. You don’t want to find a mentor or coach only to be told to ‘forget everything you think you’ve learned from books and online forums’! Question everything that isn’t a hard and fast verifiable fact – including what you read in FAQs like this one or on the forum Stickies. Nothing is sacred.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Good, because now comes the really bad news. If you think that finding a tutor is a short cut to an easy life, then think again. Absolutely no one, anywhere, is going to make you rich. There’s no holy grail. All any tutor can do is to help you get from wherever you are now to wherever you want to be, faster and with less grief than you might otherwise manage on your own. If the prospect of hard work puts you off trading and/or finding a tutor, then this FAQ will have served its purpose and saved you truck loads of time and money!
Trading success is not easily duplicated
When looking for a tutor, it’s essential that you match their skill set with your own objectives. Even if / when you find someone who fits the bill, there is one golden rule that you must understand:
there are no guarantees that their ideas or methodology will work for you! This is especially important when looking for a trading coach. The success enjoyed by one trader is not easily duplicated by another. Trading is not like network marketing or a franchise such as McDonald’s. Both business models centre on finding something that works and then duplicating it. In the case of franchising, this results in an astonishingly high business success rate; allegedly in excess of 92%. However, this principle cannot easily be applied to trading, not least because your tutor can’t sit next to you and look over your shoulder day after day. Unlike franchising, there’s no magic formula that virtually guarantees success.
An uncomfortable truth
The fact that your tutor makes a fortune every day or week will impress you when you first meet him/her. You will imagine how different your life will be if you could make just half as much as they do. However, s/he might not be a great teacher and the fact that their methodology works brilliantly for them does not mean that it will work brilliantly for you. In fact, almost certainly, it won’t. When you fail to duplicate their success – as many students do – watching them make money every day/week while you struggle to break even will soon irritate you. It will undermine your confidence and you will start to question your own abilities. At that point the little voice in your head will tell you that the problem doesn’t lie with you but with your tutor. The next thing that happens is that you’re posting on forums like T2W, complaining that you paid shed loads of money to the tutor, but you’re no further forward. In fact, financially, you’re worse off. This scenario is played out week after week. The uncomfortable truth is that - often as not -
the fault lies with the student and not with the tutor! The next section of this FAQ will examine some of the pitfalls in the tutor / student relationship and the measures you can take to avoid them.
So, why do students fail?
The scenario outlined above is common and 9 times out of 10 it’s the tutor that gets blamed for the failure of the student. Many of the issues that occur are completely avoidable if the student is focused, patient, sensible, honest (with themselves), hard working, emotionally stable, disciplined and takes responsibility for their own actions. Most aren’t. Let’s look at these points in turn . . .
Focus
When looking for a tutor, it’s a natural for students to focus on the trading record and results of prospective instructors. The ones that make the most amount of money in the least amount of time tend to impress the most. This is fine – up to a point. However, there are other things that tend to get overshadowed that are equally important. First and foremost is the need to align your interests, style and objectives with those of the coach. Central to this is deciding what to trade. If you’re crystal clear about what market and timeframe you wish to trade (e.g. swing trading Forex over 1 – 5 days) – then your task is easier. If you’re new to the business and can’t answer this question, your task is harder. Start by looking at this FAQ:
What Should I Trade? Additionally, it might be worth opening a spread betting account and risking £100 in order to try different markets, trading styles and timeframes. Even if you lose the money, but discover you hate swing trading Forex but have a passion for day trading index futures – it will be money well spent. Certainly, you don’t want to pay (potentially) large sums to a Forex tutor, only to discover you don’t like that market and his/her trading style. Focus on the trader you want to be and then look for the tutor who can help you achieve your goal. The tutor who makes a gazillion pounds a day might not be the best one for you.
Patience
In all probability, your tutor will have taken years to get where they are and be very experienced. You simply can’t expect to go from a standing start or from a position of losing money to making money, consistently, overnight. The methodology you learn may be a simple one which only takes an afternoon to digest. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a piece of cake to apply in a live market with real money. On the contrary, a simple methodology and live trading are two completely different things. No tutor on the planet has the ability to instil in you their accumulated knowledge and experience. You have to acquire that on your own which will take time and practice. It could be many months before you can apply what you’ve learnt with confidence and skill. It’s essential that you understand this and adopt a patient, step by step approach. If you think that paying a tutor enables you to leapfrog to instant success - you are very much mistaken and you will probably fail.
Be sensible
Many students fail because they don’t learn the methodology and apply it as instructed by their tutor. Granted, this is difficult to do for most people. The temptation to fiddle with it is enormous, e.g. to tweak the setup slightly or to add an indicator if there isn’t one etc. By all means, question your tutor as to why they’ve configured the setup the way they have, or not used an indicator where they could have. It’s essential that you totally understand the methodology as taught and, also, that you believe in it 100%. If you don’t do both of these things, you will abandon it the minute you experience a string of losses. And, probably sooner rather than later, you WILL experience a string of losses! At that point you’ll fiddle with the methodology in an attempt to ‘improve’ it. It’s fine to do this if you want, just don’t blame your tutor if it doesn’t work!
Be honest
You must be honest with the most important person of all: yourself. Self deception is rife amongst traders. ‘I would have taken that trade if . . .’, ‘I could have taken that trade but . . .’ or ‘I should have taken that trade, but I didn’t because . . .’ Woulda, coulda, shoulda are three words you are well advised to try to delete from your vocabulary. Self deception is especially common when paper trading, which is why some traders don’t like it. ‘With my live account I would have let my profit run and not exited so soon.’ ‘With my live account I wouldn’t have taken that (losing) trade.’ ‘With my live account I wouldn’t have moved my stop loss and risked my entire account on just one trade.’ Yeah right, of course you wouldn’t! Personal integrity is a big issue and if you can’t admit to yourself that you screwed up, you sure as hell aren’t going to admit it to your tutor. Consequently, it tends to be the mentor or coach who gets the blame for your poor judgement, lack of patience or discipline – or whatever it is that’s lead to the losses.
Work hard
Many new traders don’t want to be traders at all. They want an easy life with loads of money in return for very little work. If this describes you: wake up - it ain’t gonna happen! If your tutor is a good one, he or she will spend very little time - if any - talking about supercars, Mediterranean villas, luxury yachts and other such trivia. Good tutors focus on the sausage, not the sizzle. They tell it like it is. Namely, there’s no holy grail, no getting rich quick, and that success is a by-product of hard work. They can’t do the work for you or make you do anything that you don’t want to do.
Emotions
Mechanical traders will tell you that the beauty of their approach is that emotions can’t cloud their judgement or, rather, their computer’s judgement. Machines are free of emotions which, 9 times out of 10, are a huge asset when it comes to trading. Therefore, discretionary traders have to – absolutely have to – keep their emotions in check. And that can be tough, not least because the markets are really all about two of the most powerful emotions known to mankind: fear and greed. Outside influences come into play here as well. Imagine starting your trading day and the last thing your partner said to you was that the mortgage payment goes out today and there’s not enough money in your account to cover it. On top of that, you have no overdraft facility with your bank. Oh joy! Do you think you’ll be able to trade calmly, rationally and without emotion? What about all the other emotional baggage associated with work and family – will you be able to ‘park’ all that while you’re trading? Tutors who are successful traders have developed this ability. Unfortunately for you, they can’t sell it to you or even gift it to you; it’s something you’ll have to master on your own.
Discipline
Being focused, patient, sensible, honest, working hard and keeping your emotions in check are all just for starters. On top of all that, you have to apply what you’ve learnt and trade with discipline. If you don’t, you’ll get caned. You can learn about trading - online, from books, seminars and what have you. But it’s all a waste of time if you don’t have the discipline to do what you gotta do when you gotta do it. Your tutor has discipline and is able to apply it every day in the markets. S/he can share with you everything there is to know about their trading methodology and practice, but they can’t teach you how to be disciplined. Only you can do that and, without it, most likely you will fail.
Take responsibility
Lastly, you’ve got to take responsibility for your own actions. Increasingly, the world over, this is something that more and more people refuse to do. Whatever’s wrong in their life, it’s someone else’s fault, never their own. Obese people blame fast food restaurants for their size and sue them. Amazingly, sometimes they even win! When you’re trading, you can’t blame the market for your losses, there’s no one to turn to and point a finger at and say ‘it’s your fault’. The market is always right. Always. If you’re not making any money, it’s down to one person and one person alone: YOU. This pill is just too bitter to swallow for some people, so they blame their tutor for their problems (i.e. losses), rather than taking full responsibility for their own trading.
Separating the rogues from the pros
Finding the right tutor is hard work in itself, not least because there are many rogues out there who seek to part new and inexperienced traders from their money. Please read the FAQ entitled: How Can I Distinguish Between Scams and Reputable Vendors? to ensure that you don’t fall prey to the scammers. Some of them end up on T2W where they think they’ve struck gold. However, experienced members are quick to expose them for what they are and hound them out. The downside to this excellent public service is that it tends to reinforce a common perception amongst many members that all vendors of trading products and services are the spawn of the devil. Without doubt, some of them are, but not all of them by any means. The logic to support this view goes something like this . . .
‘He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches’
This is a common criticism, based on the assumption that successful traders are too busy making their fortunes to be interested in teaching anyone else. Of course, all successful traders want to make money, but it’s rarely their sole raison d’être in life. They have other interests, and the good ones offer their trading services for perfectly valid reasons, including:
• Getting away from their work station to meet other like minded people, as trading can be dull at times and very solitary.
• Adding another string to their bow, i.e. income diversification. Critics will question this on the grounds that a good trader will make more money from trading than they ever could from coaching. This may be true but, as has been mentioned already, there is more to life than making money. Additionally, the tutor may want to retire from trading one day to focus on their trading services, much like professional footballers retire as players and move onto coaching or management.
• The buzz and satisfaction of seeing others succeed. Anyone who has ever helped someone else achieve their goals knows just how good this feels.
• Many tutors claim that they are better traders as a result of teaching others. Their students question everything they do and say, which helps them to maintain a clear and robust methodology.
• To prove that not all vendors are ‘snake oil salesmen’ and that good tutors do exist.
The ‘he who can, does - he who cannot, teaches’ comment is a generalisation and unfair in many cases, but not all. Sadly, there are people who have nothing of value to offer and cynically try and exploit the inexperience and gullibility of others. Ensuring that a tutor at least knows their subject is essential. And the obvious way to do that is to ask them to . . .
Trade live and/or produce a verifiable trading record of success
When you consult your doctor, you assume that s/he has spent 7 years in medical school, is fully qualified and registered with the BMA etc. Unlike doctors, trading tutors are mostly unregulated, so anyone can set themselves up and make any number of unsubstantiated claims. Clearly, if you want someone to coach you
how they trade, then it’s reasonable to ask for evidence that they can walk the walk; not just talk a good talk. Leave no stone unturned in this regard. Learning how to trade from someone who can’t trade themselves could prove to be expensive in more ways than one. Besides the obvious financial implications, you could end up with a bunch of bad habits and false beliefs about the markets. The same principle applies to trading courses. Having said all of the above, if you’re looking for a mentor to help you develop
your own style, arguably their trading track record is not so important. It’s the mentor’s ability to help you trade profitably that really matters, rather than their ability to trade profitably for themselves. Ask them for their track record in helping other traders like you to become consistently profitable.
Not convinced about this?
There are parallels. Think of the many excellent school teachers out there who might well struggle to find employment outside of the education system - in a field related to the subject they teach. Then think of the likes of Messrs Mourinho, Ferguson and Wenger who weren’t great stars on the football field, but few people would question their coaching and managerial skills. So, there is a corollary to the ‘he who can, does - he who cannot, teaches’ aphorism - which goes something like this: ‘he who can, does – but may not teach it well, necessarily’. In other words, rather than getting too hung up on the trading performance of a prospective mentor, focus instead on what they can do to help you and YOUR trading performance.
Trading mentor or coach – what’s the difference?
Having decided that you want to learn to trade for yourself, the next issue to consider is a vital one that few novices think carefully enough about. Namely, do you want a successful trader to coach you
how they trade or do you want a mentor to help you develop
your own style, based on your personality, risk tolerances, available time and capital etc? The majority of courses and coaches out there are by traders who teach how they trade as this is what most new traders want.
MENTORS - have realistic expectations
By its very nature, the mentoring process is slow. Unearthing the talent that lies within you and helping you develop it to become a consistently profitable trader is likely to be both time consuming and expensive. No one will turn you from a novice or unprofitable trader into a money making machine overnight. Run a mile from anyone who tells you they can.
COACHES - have realistic expectations
A trading coach is a little different in that they can explain in detail how they trade in a day or even less. However, this information alone will not make you a profitable trader. Let’s return to the footy analogy and 1-2-1 coaching with David Beckham. Spending a day or two with him will not turn you into a star player overnight, worthy of a place in a premiership team. In fact, you’ll have to spend many hours on the training pitch practicing the things he showed you. It could be weeks or even months before your teammates notice any difference in your performance. More importantly than that, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever play as well as David Beckham – no matter how many coaching sessions you have. The same basic principle applies to trading coaches.
Beware of false logic
Hopefully, you’ve read, marked, learnt and inwardly digested the central point of this FAQ, namely, that tutors can’t turn you into a profitable trader – only you can do that. The tutor’s responsibility is to teach you whatever they have agreed to teach you, period. What you do (or don’t do) with that information is entirely up to you. And if you don’t make (more) money as a result of the tuition, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the tutor is no good or that the tuition was a waste of money. Maybe you’ve stopped losing money as a result of it! Many T2W members will quickly jump to the conclusion that a student who doesn’t make money as a result of their tuition has been ripped off by a scammer who probably can’t trade themselves. This is totally false logic. There is hardly any correlation between the profitability of the tutor and your trading results. For example, many members will recommend the book
Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by Van K. Tharp, citing the book as the key to getting their risk and money management in order and helping them to become profitable. However, Mr. Tharp doesn’t actually trade himself – he’s an author and businessman. Projecting your hopes onto a tutor and expecting them to make you profitable is wrong and won’t work. To then blame him or her if your dreams fail to materialise is both unreasonable and irresponsible.
Lastly – the bottom line
It’s understandable that many new and/or unprofitable traders think that all that stands between them and being fabulously successful is a robust methodology, or some amazing market insight, that a more experienced trader can provide. With credit card in hand, they set off in search of what they believe to be the missing link in the puzzle. When they think they’ve found it – and paid for it – they expect to be successful. If they aren’t, they conclude that the fault must lie with the tutor. In a few cases the tutor may be at fault. However, in the vast majority of cases, it is the student who is to blame. Hopefully, if nothing else, this FAQ will have impressed upon you the fact – and it is a fact – that the methodology or amazing market insight is only one piece of the jigsaw required to become a successful trader. Some traders will argue that it’s a small part at that – less than 50%. The other 50% - or more - comprises elements that you alone bring to the table; your focus, patience, work ethic, honesty, emotions and, above all, your discipline. These elements have a far, far greater impact on your eventual success or failure as a trader - than any course, coach or mentor. As the old saying goes, ‘if it is to be, it’s up to me’.
. People can be fast tracked to be better or improve at most things and has been proven throughout the centuries with education and being taught/mentored. This is definitely true in the world of trading. Driving a car for example, yes, you can teach yourself but can you teach yourself to be as good as the other drivers on the road without picking up the bad habits you don't even know exist?
