I can't disagree with any of that... seems legit to me...
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College Students and Grads.
- Thread starter Don Bright
- Start date
I can't disagree with any of that... seems legit to me...
Quote from OPTIONAL777:
If their goal is only making money, not wanting to be a professional like an attorney, doctor, accountant, etc. they can do lots of things besides trading. Noting wrong with looking at trading as a career, but you have to make an argument showing longevity as a result of Bright trading to put a trading career up there with other professions.
Discouraging people to go into debt with student loans is akin to saying that someone should not get a loan to start a business. Nonsense. If someone wants to be a doctor, lawyer, etc., you have to pay for that education.
Believe it or not, there are actually people who are not so self centered as traders that actually want to be in a service profession helping people with their lives, not a profession of sitting chained to a one armed bandit (computer and mouse).
People need to find out what it is that they want to do, not necessarily where they can make the most money.
Do what you love first, the rest is gravy.
More unhappiness comes from selling out your soul to a profession for money, than it does from working for less money at a job you love.
Since this is a board that caters to traders, not accountants, lawyers, or academics, I am assuming that most readers are passionate about trading.
And all this time, I thought you at least cared about trading for a living....but now that I see you that you have no interest at all in professional trading, your comments make a lot more sense.
What job (if any) do you love?
Don
Quote from Don Bright:
Since this is a board that caters to traders, not accountants, lawyers, or academics, I am assuming that most readers are passionate about trading.
And all this time, I thought you at least cared about trading for a living....but now that I see you that you have no interest at all in professional trading, your comments make a lot more sense.
What job (if any) do you love?
Don
Favorite job? Exposing fraud.
Quote from Don Bright:
Wow, so is mine....thus "Beyond the Snake Oil" .....perhaps we could partner up??
Don
There is something intrinsically inconsistent with someone who proclaims to expose fraud, and at the same time tries to recruit people for a business that fails to generate a success ratio of those recruits greater than 25%, and makes money in the process no matter if those recruits succeed or fail.
Call it "The Pot Calls The Kettle Black Tour" and I can see some truth in that.
Quote from OPTIONAL777:
Well, the proof is in the pudding.
However, if you were a prop firm that hired people and bankrolled them, would you have hired Aphie and that 40 year old guy based on the little you knew of them from their volumes of ideas about trading with little or no experience trading?
Wouldn't you at the very least want them to trade on simulation for a while before you bankrolled them, and see how they deal with pressure?
Bright offers anyone a chance to gamble as long as the meet some simple entrance requirements: money and a series 7.
If Bright were risking their own money, I assure you they would be much more careful about the hiring practices.
After a while of dealing with traders for years and years, don't you think you could tell pretty quickly whether or not someone had the right stuff?
I think that everyone could agree that if Don was hiring people to trade his own money he would be much more selective then in allowing someone to come on board with their own capital (w/ leverage provided by Bright). That is a moot point though since that is not what Don is offering here.
Since what Don is offering is the opportunity to start a business for yourself, I don't see why he needs to test people. If you have the money to open a restuarant the odds are 90% that you will fail, just like trading. However, when you go to the local meat locker to line up steak, to the power company to get the lights turned on and any other vendor you have to enteract with as the owner of a resturaunt they don't require you to "profile" correctly before they will enteract with you, and they have no moral obligation to do so.
Brandon
Quote from Don Bright:
....and even a few with zero capital up front to come to us without the "negative baggage" that accompanies so many of us "older folks."
... Rather than "work your way" through additional years of academia, put your skills to work in the real world. Nothing more, nothing less. Heck, I sure wouldn't want to work for a decade or more to pay back a student loan which may or may not help me in the job market.
Agree. Good Traders can be developed. The trainee must be willing to follow direction and be sharp. Older or younger does not matter.... They just need to be trainable and willing to learn.
The second point should not be underestimated. Time in school is a huge opportunity cost. You might go to school for undergrad, then two to four years of grad school, then if you get a PhD, on to post-doc for another 2-5 years: similar for med school.
Former Labor secretary Robert Reich recently commented on the trend of increased grad school applications during economic downturns and advised people to think twice about spending more time in school to get a job. He basically said what I think: go to school if it is for something that you love, but dont go necessarily to get a job or make money.
The economy evolves over time: contemplating 10 years of school requires a realistic approach: That is you need to understand that there could be a structural change in the economy or within your profession during this time and there is no gaurantee that you will have a well paying job to pay back loans at the end of the term. This is the astounding change in american society that has occurred over the last few decades: nearly all of the burden of training costs has been pushed from coporations on to the shoulders of the individual, across all disciplines. If you dont have a free ride through school you need to carefully evaluate your course of action.
Quote from baggerlord:
I think the thing that got people going(at least me) is the suggestion that this is a value equitable to Grad school. As a recent college grad myself, who has blown a few trading accounts, I know that my degree is much more worthwhile than a little trading experience.
Sure the degree is more valuable AFTER you've blown out trading accounts. But .... would you be making that same statement if you'd doubled your account in a year? Did you have any training prior to trading and apparently losing $$$? Without some sort of training or education in training that might be analogous to going into perform surgery with no medical training other than maybe a few undergrad courses IMO.
Quote from marketsurfer:
have college degree--- fail at trading or business ownership--have college degree.
don't have college degree--- fail at trading or business ownership-- have nothing.
the first option makes sense, the second one does not.
Does the college degree guarantee employment? Nope ...
Option 2 (above) ... no law says that a failed trader could not go back and finish (or pursue) a degree. Then he/she would fall into the group in option 1 (above) ... which still doesn't guarantee anything.
Quote from Brandonf:
I think that everyone could agree that if Don was hiring people to trade his own money he would be much more selective then in allowing someone to come on board with their own capital (w/ leverage provided by Bright). That is a moot point though since that is not what Don is offering here.
Since what Don is offering is the opportunity to start a business for yourself, I don't see why he needs to test people. If you have the money to open a restaurant the odds are 90% that you will fail, just like trading. However, when you go to the local meat locker to line up steak, to the power company to get the lights turned on and any other vendor you have to interact with as the owner of a restaurant they don't require you to "profile" correctly before they will interact with you, and they have no moral obligation to do so.
Brandon
Imagine a school opens up in Vegas that teaches people the profession of gambling.
Do you think parents would want their children to skip grad school in favor of that?
Do you think such a school could get accreditation from a reputable accreditation review board?
Don is offering an "opportunity" in the same way as a casino school would.
Few outside the casino or trading industry would consider it a professional opportunity or a good career choice.
Why doesn't Don and his road show turn up at "career days" at high schools and college campuses and see how well that flies?
We can look to the 90% failure rate of restaurants and figure out why in most cases, and if someone is willing to listen to proper advice, they can be counseled ahead of time about the pitfalls of restaurant ownership thus giving them an edge. Don claims to have no real idea why people fail or succeed, hence no screening process of merit.
Most people open a restaurant because they love the idea of owning a restaurant, they love to cook, they love to host parties, etc., rather than having done a careful analysis of the nature of the business, and the risk rewards involved. They do it out of passion.
How many trade out of passion for trading? It is passion for money that drives trading, not the process, unless they are simply adrenaline junkies or gambling addicts.
When you take away the financial carrot, and are left with the process, you find out what the job really is all about.
Until Don can screen out those who are not qualified to attempt trading, and demonstrate that his system, if qualified for, has a 75% or higher rate of success, it is just another barker selling dreams. There is a difference in my mind between selling a dream and a genuine opportunity.