"Develop knowledge out of nothing"
"Don't ask questions on a public forum dedicated to the subject matter"
"Books won't teach you"
"Find all answers yourself"
So beginners should sit and paper trade, until they eventually develop the skill?
Beginner seeking guidance
- Thread starter Bennny
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"Develop knowledge out of nothing"
"Don't ask questions on a public forum dedicated to the subject matter"
"Books won't teach you"
"Find all answers yourself"
So beginners should sit and paper trade, until they eventually develop the skill?
start form attempting to create definitions
and keep working on them all the while when you will discover that you definitions were not correct
no definitions = no method, no method = no trader, no trader = is just another sucker
"Develop knowledge out of nothing"
"Don't ask questions on a public forum dedicated to the subject matter"
"Books won't teach you"
"Find all answers yourself"
exactly !
so may be you better off where you are now
It does sound counter-intuitive, but what he posted makes some sense. Yes, of course you can learn the basics from books, websites, message boards, etc but none of them is going to teach you how to make actual money. You can read a book on playing tennis and watch loads of excellent Youtube vids. How do you think you would do in a match against Roger Federer?
What people are trying to tell you is that discretionary trading is a skill, not a set of rules that, if followed, lead automatically to success. Daytrading stocks is particularly hard in my experience. Stocks can exhibit a lot of random movement intraday.
There is no substitute for screen time. Backtesting can be extremely useful as well. You just have to realize that this is very different from, say, real estate development. Trading is zero sum, negative when you deduct the costs involved. Normal business virtues like conviction and doggedness are actually very dangerous traits when trading.
I like the fact you are focused on making money instead of say, adding some excitement to your life. A famous trader once observed that people generally get what they want out of trading. If you have a subconscious need to punish yourself or confirm a psychological problem, trading will certainly give you that opportunity. People who make money consistently tend to keep it very boring and low key. They have a process and trust it, but they keep their egos out of the equation. Buzzy Schwartz, a legendary trader who used to drop by here occasionally, wrote that his pivotal moment came when he realized the object was to make money, not prove yourself right.
You haven't received much concrete advice here. Let me give you some. I find Scott Redler at T3 Live to have a pretty sound process. I'm not saying sign up for expensive stuff but his free material is a good intro.
Unfortunately none of the advice in this thread will work for you only because you won't apply it permanently as a new trader. The only way you will learn to trade is by making mistakes and then correcting them and slowly building your personalized trading strategy that can take years to master, most quit after a while because they don't have the perseverance or the financial freedom to continue to do something like this, it's why 99% fail or whatever the statistic is .
Have you had experience with his prop firm? I'm looking to join a PF this coming new year so trying to find the best place for me
I believe so, for the most part, yes ... but after understanding enough theory at least to know what you're looking for when you paper trade.
Here's the thing (not often mentioned in forums, but it should be!) - the difference between the person with 'two years' experience' and the person with 'one month's experience repeated 24 times over' is that the first person had read a few books before starting to paper/demo-trade and the second person tried to learn everything as he went along (in other words, he started paper/demo-trading with no real idea what he was looking for or trying to learn).
So I don't quite agree that "books won't teach you", but I would certainly agree that "books alone won't teach you".
Just my perspective (on a subject about which I think I'm never in complete agreement with the "general forum consensus of opinion").
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Learn to analyze first. Then, armed with that, learn to trade.
Sorry, no experience with them. Only read his morning letter and tweets.