Darren Winters?

[iandh2010]

Hi Guys,
I went to a Darren Winters seminar on Saturday in London and was impressed with the amount of information that I received.

I thought that it was well worth £100 inc. lunch and coffee BUT I know that many on T2W would say the exact opposite. One thread listed a Guardian article on Darren that I should read but unfortunately the link is now broken.

Darren appears to have been around a long time, the FREE 6 DVD set that I was given, includes a recording of one of his two day courses when he must have been 10 years younger!

I am currently considering signing up for his "Apprenticeship" but as I only have a total trading fund of £7k at present, it would take a large chunk of that!

He cited many of his "apprentices" that had made very good returns and some that must have taken a punt and won, as they made stupid profits (if true)!

I want to swing trade on LSE shares and his system appeared logical and he does give the same basic advice to limit losses etc. and only invest 1-2% of your fund on any one trade.

I understand all that as I have been end -of-day trading for a couple of years now but not making much profit but also not much loss either!

I really want to progress and I currently have a month or so to really focus on trading so any advice on the above or how to make that transition from part-time to full-time trading would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
Ian

 

[sminicooper]

Hi Guys,
I went to a Darren Winters seminar on Saturday in London and was impressed with the amount of information that I received.

I thought that it was well worth £100 inc. lunch and coffee BUT I know that many on T2W would say the exact opposite. One thread listed a Guardian article on Darren that I should read but unfortunately the link is now broken.

Darren appears to have been around a long time, the FREE 6 DVD set that I was given, includes a recording of one of his two day courses when he must have been 10 years younger!

I am currently considering signing up for his "Apprenticeship" but as I only have a total trading fund of £7k at present, it would take a large chunk of that!

He cited many of his "apprentices" that had made very good returns and some that must have taken a punt and won, as they made stupid profits (if true)!

I want to swing trade on LSE shares and his system appeared logical and he does give the same basic advice to limit losses etc. and only invest 1-2% of your fund on any one trade.

I understand all that as I have been end -of-day trading for a couple of years now but not making much profit but also not much loss either!

I really want to progress and I currently have a month or so to really focus on trading so any advice on the above or how to make that transition from part-time to full-time trading would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
Ian

Have you tried to analyse why you have not been successful so far? If you've not made big losses then it would seem that at least you're doing something right.

Have you been using some kind of system? Do you know what it's trying to do? If it's a basically sound system (where did you get it from? What is its provenance?) then perhaps it's yourself that's not using it properly?

£100 doesn't seem extravagantly expensive for the day you describe but £7K is an entirely different story and in my opinion you can find everything you need on this site and on the Internet for free. With a full description of what you've been doing so far I'm sure there are plenty of people on here who might offer some advice. From what you say, it doesn't appear that you are ready to transition to full-time trading. Do you not think that you must completely master part-time trading first?

 

[tomorton]

Salesmen can be great at selling, trainers can be great at training: having done both, and trading as well, I can tell you that trading is hardest. But you don't get to be a great trader through buying training.

As sminicooper says, there is so much free stuff available, you should not let your training, self-education, seminars, text books and everything combined ever get to 4 figures. After that its down to application and practice. Practice is the best value time you can spend.

 

[highbury fx]

Hi Guys,
I went to a Darren Winters seminar on Saturday in London and was impressed with the amount of information that I received.

I thought that it was well worth £100 inc. lunch and coffee BUT I know that many on T2W would say the exact opposite. One thread listed a Guardian article on Darren that I should read but unfortunately the link is now broken.

Darren appears to have been around a long time, the FREE 6 DVD set that I was given, includes a recording of one of his two day courses when he must have been 10 years younger!

I am currently considering signing up for his "Apprenticeship" but as I only have a total trading fund of £7k at present, it would take a large chunk of that!

He cited many of his "apprentices" that had made very good returns and some that must have taken a punt and won, as they made stupid profits (if true)!

I want to swing trade on LSE shares and his system appeared logical and he does give the same basic advice to limit losses etc. and only invest 1-2% of your fund on any one trade.

I understand all that as I have been end -of-day trading for a couple of years now but not making much profit but also not much loss either!

I really want to progress and I currently have a month or so to really focus on trading so any advice on the above or how to make that transition from part-time to full-time trading would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
Ian

what broker do you need to open an account with?

 

[iandh2010]

Salesmen can be great at selling, trainers can be great at training: having done both, and trading as well, I can tell you that trading is hardest. But you don't get to be a great trader through buying training.

As sminicooper says, there is so much free stuff available, you should not let your training, self-education, seminars, text books and everything combined ever get to 4 figures. After that its down to application and practice. Practice is the best value time you can spend.

Thanks Tom,
Having read your profile you appear to be doing similar to what I intend to do.

I have been self-educating and going to a few seminars to pick up ideas and get a few things straightened out where I had a few doubts. Having done this for a couple of years now I would say that I thoroughly understand the basics and have developed a couple of ideas of my own based on what I see as common sense about the shares on the LSE . I keep a note of all my trades and a journal so that I can go back and check on losers and winners!

I would say that my biggest problem is timing, mainly entry timing. I said I want to move from part-time to full-time trader, yes I want to get my trading more reliable but one reason its not as reliable as I would like, is because work takes up too much of my time at present. So I really do want to start replacing at least 50% of my income with income from trading. I have some other savings to boost my trading fund but only once I am confident that I am unlikely to lose it!

Where is the best place to look for more advice and guidance on this Forum?

Regards
Ian

 

[iandh2010]

Have you tried to analyse why you have not been successful so far? If you've not made big losses then it would seem that at least you're doing something right.

Have you been using some kind of system? Do you know what it's trying to do? If it's a basically sound system (where did you get it from? What is its provenance?) then perhaps it's yourself that's not using it properly?

Hi sminicooper,
Thanks for responding.

The system I'm using is based on Fundamentals to determine good companies followed by technicals to time entry & exit. This seems to make sense to me for my small portfolio of shares in an S&S ISA. These I tend to buy and hold for min. 6 months so that they do not take up too much of my time.

I then use technicals only, for trading the 0-4 week timescale via Spread Betting. Here I am trading trends but also Bollinger breakouts followed by trend following.

None of these are purchased systems, the only thing I pay for on a regular basis is ShareScope for my market scanning for which I have programmed a couple of ShareScript columns to save me having to scan 350 shares each time.

I do want to start trading FX as well, using MT4 and I have paid for Jim Dandy's MQL4 programming course and have now programmed a couple of indicators which appear to work reasonably well. But these require fairly immediate placement of trades and although I have programmed some Expert Advisers I am not prepared to let them lose with my money so they only place the trades, once I have manually checked the charts.........

So in total I have probably spent £500 on seminars and training courses to get me to where I am.

I might have mislead you a little as the DW "apprenticeship" was not going to cost £7k but would have cost over half that, depending on the options taken. Mind you the full-scale apprenticeship was a lot more expensive....

So where should I look on this forum for the best advice, I don't want to become a pain to anyone!

Regards
Ian

 

[iandh2010]

what broker do you need to open an account with?

Hi HighburyFX,

I'm not too sure why you posed that question!

I already have a Spread Betting broker as I am live trading. In fact I use 2 so that I have a fallback if needed and one goes as low as £0.5 per pip so that allows me to practice scaling in and out of positions without losing a fortune!

I am, of course, always on the lookout for lower spreads and slippage with good technical backup. Both my current brokers aren't bad and one has refunded monies when I thought that there was no good evidence for having been stopped out. Yes it would have been better if they hadn't stopped me out in the first place.

If you have some suggestions please feel free!

Regards
Ian

 

[timsk]

. . . Where is the best place to look for more advice and guidance on this Forum? . . .

. . . So where should I look on this forum for the best advice, I don't want to become a pain to anyone!

Hi Ian,
Welcome to T2W.

In answer to your question - it rather depends on what you require advice about! The more specific your questions are then, as a general rule of thumb, the more relevant the answers will be.

With regard to Darren Winters - you're correct - he doesn't enjoy good press on here - or on other trading forums either for that matter. My advice is to ensure that you are crystal clear about exactly what it is that you'll be getting for your money. Answers along the lines of 'the knowledge, skills and techniques needed to enable you to make consistent profits from the markets' sound good but are pretty much meaningless. You need specific, quantifiable answers.

If you go for it, assume that the course won't make you a bean and, even, that you may lose money trying to implement whatever you are taught. If you're prepared for that outcome, you won't be disappointed. Anything better than that is icing on the cake.

Lastly, to help ensure you go into it with your eyes open, be sure to read these two FAQs before whipping out your credit card:
Can You Recommend a Mentor, Coach or Trading Course?
How Can I Distinguish Between Scams and Reputable Vendors?

From your OP, the only other thing you specifically ask for advice about is how best to transition from part-time to full-time trading. The answer to that is that first and foremost you must have a methodology that you've tested thoroughly, demo traded and then traded live with real money. If all that has gone to plan and you re making consistent gains over time and in a variety of different market conditions - then you may be in a position to start the process. However, take it slowly, build incrementally and don't burn your bridges viz a viz the day job. Always, always, always plan for (but don't expect) the worst. As per my suggestion with the Darren Winters training, plan for what you will do if the dream doesn't pan out as you hope it will. Reign in your expectations and be mindful that there's no pro rata correlation between the time spent trading and the amount earned. Plenty of traders go broke starring at their screens all day every day, while some swing and position traders - who may only look at their positions a few times each week - do quite well.

Lastly, if you've not yet seen them, there are some other FAQs in the New to T2W forum that may be of interest.

Hope that helps.
Tim.

 

[iandh2010]

Hi Tim,
Many thanks for your advice. I have to say that I'm very glad that I stumbled across T2W several years ago, I don’t think that I have received a bad piece of advice from here!

I can honestly say that I have no connections with Darren Winters apart from attending his seminar on trading. As I said, I am not in any way dissatisfied with Darren’s seminar on Saturday as I think that I came away with well over £100’s worth. Just now questioning whether I should take it any further!

Having read the full text of the "Can you recommend....." FAQ, I am definitely prepared to spend some serious effort in trying to get me to the next level, which from the advice I have received today from all on T2W, should be to become reliably profitable as a part-time trader and keep the day job.

It’s just that I feel that I can’t make that transition without finding some more hours in the day, or giving up some of my day job!

I have a couple of answers/questions to some of the headings in the FAQ as follows;

Be clear about what you want: is it to learn how to trade or to receive tips and alerts?
To learn to trade proficiently.

Before you ‘add to cart’ . . .
I believe that I understand most of the basics. I don’t want to spend all day in front of my PC screen watching prices. I did that one day and made over £200 on the FTSE100 and Dow indices, not long after I started live trading, which was very nice but I was a nervous wreck by the end of the day! Therefore, I want to swing trade LSE shares over the 0-4 wk timeframe (or longer if a trend is running in my favour). I am also playing with FX on 1 & 4 hour charts but only just feeling my way on this at present while concentrating on the shares..

Trading Journals
I have an Excel based one that I have developed in which I log my trades together with charts at open and close together with my reasons for opening and closing the trades. Each trade has a trade ticket that includes: the indicator that I based the trade on; the broker I placed it with; calculates my stops and limits based on an ATR multiplier and a reward:risk ratio, support and resistance levels. When I close the trade or it is automatically closed by stop or limit, I enter the price and then teh Trade Ticket calculates the profit/loss. This makes sure that I do not make a math error when placing my trade. A summary of each ticket is then copied to an overall monthly summary sheet that calculates the month's P&L.

In fact I have just noted one short coming of my trade ticket, and that is that I did not check when the company would be announcing its 1/2 & yearly results! Will be adding this to the ticket at end of month.

A catch-22
I guess that using T2W will help to ensure that anything I am told will be peer reviewed by other traders.

Trading Success is not easily duplicated
Understood!

Focus
Yep agree, I have been live trading small beer at present and slightly better than breaking even.

Patience
Definitely, ones perspective changes when live trading own money!

Be Sensible
Understood

Work Hard
Yep – just because I don’t want to watch prices 8 ½ hours a day doesn’t mean that I do not want to work hard to better my trading. Hence posting this at 22:20hrs.

Emotions
That is why I am end-of-day trading outside market hours and placing orders with stops and limits. I find this limits any chances for emotions to come into play. I can walk away from the screen, I don’t check the markets until about ½ hr after opening the following day to check which orders if any have been fulfilled by pre-market and early trading price movements. But if I have had to leave for work I am not constantly on the phone or laptop checking what’s happening, I just expect that either things will go my way or my stops will protect me. Maybe this is wrong but it feels right for me!

Lastly – the bottom line
Last Christmas I decided to set a couple of months aside to concentrate on my trading but that has had to be shortened to 5 weeks from now. I decided this as I felt that I just needed that final push to get me consistently profitable but not with unrealistic, unsustainable goals.

Once again Tim and everyone on T2W, thanks for your honest opinions, they are much appreciated and understood.

Regards
Ian

 

[Phil_GMT]

You're gonna get slaughtered...

You're clearly not ready...

 

[Oscar Reed]

Get a seat at the front and put your hand up high.

 

[iandh2010]

You're gonna get slaughtered...

You're clearly not ready...

Dear Phil_GMT,

Thanks a lot!

Having read your profile, you are a day trader and obviously thrive on the adrenaline! Great but I am probably a fair bit older than you as I would not be able to ride a wave on a surfboard now!

Anyway, from what I have understood, with swing trading it is not necessary to be at the screen all the time but one does have to do some fundamental research which can of course be done when the market is closed so less rush!

With my size of fund and using SB companies, the spreads tend to swamp most day trades. Yes, when I hopefully can make it full-time, I will increase my fund size so hopefully then will be able ot find a broker that passes through the market spreads and charges a commission each way which will then be more affordable given the larger size of trades.

Regards
Ian

 

[iandh2010]

Dear Oscar,
Yes that's all the very same ideas and rhetoric!

I also found a very old article on the web:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-1603009/We-join-the-fortune-hunters.html

I guess this confirms what everyone on T2W has told me to date.

Regards
Ian

 

[NVP]

Run away run away run away .............

and if yuo are not running away post more emails here and we will all lend you a bycicle to cycle away ...

 

[aag100]

your next step forward is to take a step backward and start from the beginning again.

 

[iandh2010]

your next step forward is to take a step backward and start from the beginning again.

OK Guys, let me just make one thing straight, I am not about to go forth and multiply!

I see that three of you think that I need to start all over, that's great I can take that on board but none of you actually advise what I should be doing or how I should go about it!

Just because I am not day trading does not mean that I can't make money, just maybe not as rapidly as someone who is day trading FX with a large pot, obviously.

There appear to be lots of people on T2W that are swing trading shares on longer timeframes, which is what I thought that I could do!

So I need you three to be more specific and helpful and give me an outline of how to get profitable on swing trading shares or point me in the right direction to get me into day trading FX, if you are saying that I'll never make money out of shares.

Thanks

 

[tomorton]

I'm with you on this. There's no reason why you shouldn't make money out of trading longer term. Due diligence for a new trader must surely include learning about the training that's available. Even if (hopefully) you remain convinced you don't need to over-pay for it.

I recommend no new trader starts with day-trading. It is selected by people with the wrong mental attitude, its too difficult, it breeds over-trading, emotional subjection to market volatility and short-term return-ism.

 

[timsk]

. . . So I need you three to be more specific and helpful and give me an outline of how to get profitable on swing trading shares or point me in the right direction to get me into day trading FX, if you are saying that I'll never make money out of shares.

Hi Ian,
It's not for any of us to advise you to do one thing or another - only you can decide what's best for you. With regard to 'how to get profitable' - the same principle applies to all markets, instruments and timeframes. Namely, you need a thoroughly tested methodology (micro) - which forms part of a complete trading plan (Macro) - which you have demo traded and then traded live with real money using the smallest size your broker allows. If that goes well, then you can incrementally move up to a larger position size. If you're not sure how to go about creating a trading plan, check out the link in my signature, below. It's quite old now, but it'll do for starters.

As I said in my earlier post, if you want specific answers then you need to be specific with your questions. 'How do I become profitable?' is about as generic as they come - so you're only going to get generic answers like the one I've provided. If there was a simple cookie cutter solution to that question - then there would be no need for forums like this one and everyone would know exactly what to do from the get go and make their fortunes. Unfortunately, that's not how it works!

Tim.

 

[gerryg]

Hi Guys,
I went to a Darren Winters seminar on Saturday in London and was impressed with the amount of information that I received.

I thought that it was well worth £100 inc. lunch and coffee BUT I know that many on T2W would say the exact opposite. One thread listed a Guardian article on Darren that I should read but unfortunately the link is now broken.

Darren appears to have been around a long time, the FREE 6 DVD set that I was given, includes a recording of one of his two day courses when he must have been 10 years younger!

I am currently considering signing up for his "Apprenticeship" but as I only have a total trading fund of £7k at present, it would take a large chunk of that!

He cited many of his "apprentices" that had made very good returns and some that must have taken a punt and won, as they made stupid profits (if true)!

I want to swing trade on LSE shares and his system appeared logical and he does give the same basic advice to limit losses etc. and only invest 1-2% of your fund on any one trade.

I understand all that as I have been end -of-day trading for a couple of years now but not making much profit but also not much loss either!

I really want to progress and I currently have a month or so to really focus on trading so any advice on the above or how to make that transition from part-time to full-time trading would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
Ian

If he has successful trading system what is the sense of sharing it for 3500 pounds with others but not to trade himself? Ask him to show LIVE trades made by his trading account which demonstrates his abilities. Talk is nothing in this business, but proofs are essential. If he fails to do that, then he is trying to sell you some raw stuff if not a BS at all. My advice is to steer clear.

Trying to advocate his courses from your side (something you don't even know) will be taken as promotion.
Good luck

 

[iandh2010]

Hi Tim and Gerry,
Just to make absolutely clear again, I am not promoting anything or anyone!

I went to a one day course and was seeking advice from T2W users on whether I should take it any further. The consensus of opinion on T2W is NO! I appreciate that and will take the advice. As Gerryg said, why would he not just get on and trade! Something I have always said in the past!

So now I am just wondering how I progress form here. At least Tom appears to suggest that longer-term trading does work and that is how I want to continue to trade, its just a question of making my trading more profitable.