For Those Successful ET Members: Did You Have A Mentor?

[themickey]

I've written about this before, but here goes again but slightly different format.
I had mentoring by accident.
As a noob maybe 25 odd years ago I owned stupid TA charting software which was all about dumb indicators.
On a Australian trading chat forum (now not in existence) this stranger guy mentioned Amibroker and on his recommendation I bought it.
Well I asked this guy 'kaveman' to code me up an indicator which he did.
Then another, and another, and another.....
I decided to visit his home because coincidently he lived nearby. In Western Australia 'nearby' is about 50km distance. And I bought him a carton of various wines.

Well this went on awhile kaveman became a friend and I would frequently visit maybe once a month and he continued coding, I kept supplying wine.
Then kave said "hey, I'm getting sick of wine, howabout paying" and so I did.
Kave would also update my software from time to time and sort out any bugs.
This guy had been a design engineer at Worley Parsons and no longer worked due to illness which kept him home.

Anyhow I had no intention of self coding, the language looked too onerous, but one day kave designed this very huge program which was a trailing stop loss system which was my idea.

The code had a bug and kave couldn't/wouldn't fix it, so in frustration I looked at it over several days and despite the fact I knew nothing about coding, fixed the problem.
The sense of elation was huge.

Anyhow Kave kept designing code for me and I began to tweak them to fix/modify and finally I began to write my own stuff.

So that's a story of my mentoring.
Kave never mentored me to trade, he just accidently mentored me to code which originally I had no intention.

These days I no longer use Amibroker, I branched into Sierrachart, gave that away, now I just use googlesheets. This is 20 minutes delayed but works perfectly for how I self trade / self code. I've created my own algos, never been mentored in anything other than looked over kave's shoulder and decided the 'do your own' path. I have live streaming data on another (IRESS) system.

I'm fortunate in that I love maths, love being creative, enjoy designing stuff (I'm retired now but ex fitter-machinist, thermal powerstation operator (NZ), come project engineer oil, gas mining Australia.)

 

[JSOP]

I had mentored close to 10 interns/new hires at the last fund I worked at. About 2 of them ended up doing OK, after about a year or so. Most of them fail, because they think they know everything just because they got a PhD, and usually come crawling back when they lose $, but by then we've already decided to let them go.

Reminds me of this show that I watched long time ago:

Poor Simon.

 

[KevinBB]

Very good posts by @themickey (this page above) and @wmwmw (previous page).

I fear that too many people come to threads such as this looking for a 'Holy Grail'.

Those that have a holy grail are very, very, unlikely to part with it. One exception to this rule was Richard Dennis, who took on a group of trainees in the 1980s and taught them his holy grail.

Dennis' holy grail does not work as well in the 2020s as it did in the 1980s, but anyone looking for a mentor, or perhaps someone to teach them how to trade, or perhaps a holy grail, could do no worse than to read Dennis' story, copy his system, then adapt, change, or do whatever, and come up with method that suits how that individual wants to trade.

Unfortunately, the holy grail won't be found here. Google knows everything, but even Google won't give you or me the holy grail. Certainly, bits and pieces of that grail will be found in the most unlikely of places, but it is up to the individual to put all those pieces together in a form that suits how they want to trade.

As the Nike advertisers once said, Just do it, read widely, and develop your own holy grail.

KH

 

[zghorner]

Very good posts by @themickey (this page above) and @wmwmw (previous page).

I fear that too many people come to threads such as this looking for a 'Holy Grail'.

Those that have a holy grail are very, very, unlikely to part with it. One exception to this rule was Richard Dennis, who took on a group of trainees in the 1980s and taught them his holy grail.

Dennis' holy grail does not work as well in the 2020s as it did in the 1980s, but anyone looking for a mentor, or perhaps someone to teach them how to trade, or perhaps a holy grail, could do no worse than to read Dennis' story, copy his system, then adapt, change, or do whatever, and come up with method that suits how that individual wants to trade.

Unfortunately, the holy grail won't be found here. Google knows everything, but even Google won't give you or me the holy grail. Certainly, bits and pieces of that grail will be found in the most unlikely of places, but it is up to the individual to put all those pieces together in a form that suits how they want to trade.

As the Nike advertisers once said, Just do it, read widely, and develop your own holy grail.

KH

I remember reading market wizards how Dennis' chapter really stood out to me...it let me down the path of reading the books "the complete turtle trader" by Covel and "Way of the Turtle" by Faith (who I believe use to be an active member of this forum). Great story and great evidence in support of TA.

 

[KevinBB]

Great story and great evidence in support of TA.

@zghorner Yes, it is a great story.

What stood out for me, much more than the TA aspect, is the systematic trading that the trainees were 'encouraged' to follow. First, make sure your trading method has a logical and reasonable chance of success, then systematise (if that is such a word) it, and follow blindly until it either breaks, or you retire.

KH

 

[countryBoy641]

Originally Series 7 in 1982.
20 guys in the office. Dean Witter.
Retail.
You learn a lot from other's mistakes there, less costly than learning from your own mistakes. (I think Ben Franklin said something about that too).
And general lessons on humility from the older guys, no substitute for that.
But most of retail brokerage imploded with the advent of discount brokers.

Decided to swing trade, 20 years ago.
Haven't had a day job since 2006.
I used to have all short term gains.
Now I trying to tweak that, only long term gains.
Like Buffett and those guys.
It's not what you make, it's what you keep.

Already mentioned, Market Wizards books. Read them.
One guy featured is Ed Seykota. Math genius MIT (I think)
He must have gotten so tired of people asking him how to do it, he just put up a vid:
The Whipsaw Song
But everybody is different.
Find your strengths.
Become the best there is at that.
Be honest with yourself.
And be true to yourself.

 

[NotKnown]

On a Australian trading chat forum (now not in existence) this stranger guy mentioned Amibroker and on his recommendation I bought it.

Would that have been incrediblecharts? I also started out with amibroker all those years ago. Their programming language was ok to use.

In terms of a mentor. Not really. I couple of people give you ideas along the way. For myself I knew where to look for trades so it was a matter of developing my owns tools to pinpoint those spots. It took a while to figure it. There is no magic just time and a willingness to accept when you are wrong and using that to move forward. The truth is not everyone can be a trader. No different to not everyone can be a doctor. The barriers to enter into trading is not high so almost anyone can give it a go. That leads to many failures as people have no clue hence they always say trading has a high failure rate. Well yes as many that start have no experience.

 

[themickey]

Would that have been incrediblecharts?

No, my memory fails me on the name now. I think I have it written down somewhere in some old notes. If I recall it was based in the Sunshine Coast QLD.

 

[deltaf0rce]

How much people are will to pay for a good mentor?

What’s an Ivy League education x4, an apartment in the city for the summer to intern at a firm til your ass falls off and meet a successful senior? That’s the answer.

 

[deltaf0rce]

I had a mentor for the first three years of my trading (when I first found him) until when he retired. He was a very good educator (was strictly a futures trader), that drove home a very simple point, over and over and over again...

"What does the market do MOST of the time"?

That was the single biggest lesson his students came away with. He retired just before the Powell era, and what he taught then is just as relevant today.

Back then, he was truly a scalper, because that is how you made money in markets that had no range. (Remember those days folks?) With the volatility of the past 3+ years, that question holds true, but instead of on an intraday scale as he was able to teach back then, it's a longer-term one.

These days, what does the market do MOST of the time? Welp, most of the time it goes UP, but the pullbacks are longer and harder. But MOST of the time, they will go UP. Thus the reason for me switching to swing.

I learned to switch to swing because of that one salient question he had..."What do markets do MOST of the time?" It has taught me to look for intraday patterns which I often see happen MOST of the time (Like today, made 100 ticks on YM, wheee), and if they are not there, I look for the larger patterns over a longer timeframe.

MOST of the time, it works.

Could I have figured it out on my own without a mentor? Maybe. But that one line he reiterated over and over made the costs all worth it. Plus the insane indicator package he created I can use if I choose to, but I am beyond indicators at this point.

Read some simple JPM research a long time ago. Mkt ends the year green 75% of the time and 70% of the time it also gets drilled intra annually for 10%.