how to make trading education less boring?

Some things are just boring. How to make accounting interesting? Unless Hooters girls are the teachers, you just can't. It is pretty much the same with trading.

I saw a woman teaching trading on tradingschools.org, (forgot her name) and although the material was nothing special at least she got 5 stars on entertaining value.

Or you can put real money right away at stake and it get interesting really fast!
 
every time I try to read a trading ebook I get so bored by it and put off reading it

I have not finished a single book on trading.

do you think getting a physical copy would help?
I remember the very first trading book (best trading book ever for beginners btw) that I've read. This was a time before I even knew a site like ET existed. I was around your age at 19 or 20. I read the whole book (300 pages) in one night. It was that interesting. You seriously have some trouble with focus if you have trouble reading a book and it is not a good indicator of success. And books are on average $10 each.
 
You seriously have some trouble with focus if you have trouble reading a book and it is not a good indicator of success.


I must admit this was my own instinctive feeling, too, on first reading the OP.
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(I also suspect that "how to make it less boring" may, at least to some extent, be a misguided question, in the sense that from my own experience, the most boring, tedious and difficult-to-get-through ones have actually been of the most benefit to me, overall.)


And books are on average $10 each.


Not my experience at all, there: I'd say my average spend per trading book has probably been around $60-$70. And one of the most helpful ones, for me, was about $150, as I remember (privately published).

Out of perhaps 100 textbooks I've read since I started reading about trading, I'd say there were probably about 10-12 of them that were really majorly helpful and productive for me, and then perhaps about 10-12 more that taught me something, provided some value, and that my trading's probably slightly better for having read than it would be if I'd never seen them. All the rest were more or less a waste of time.

I don't think such that's a bad "win-rate", though, overall.

It's certainly true, however, that hard copies are much more productive and worthwhile than digital ones, for some people (of whom I'm one, myself).
 
If by "help" you mean getting through it, maybe. But probably not. Better to ask yourself why you're reading trading ebooks in the first place rather than studying the market. Study the market rather than what somebody says (or writes) about the market, and by "study the market" I mean watch price move either in real-time or delayed or replay. When price does something you don't understand -- reverses, collapses, moves in what amounts to a straight line seemingly not doing anything at all -- make note of that. Observe, wonder, think, ask questions. And when you have a list of questions, even a short one, you will then be prepared to consult books with a purpose, i.e., to find answers to your questions, not to endure making your way through the book from beginning to end just so that you can say you did.

Few books have been of actual use to me. Less than a half-dozen. But I got nothing out of any of them until I watched live (or delayed or replayed) charts and began to ask and write down questions regarding why price was doing what it was doing (which is another way of asking why traders were doing what they were doing). Studying indicators, including candlesticks, was a complete waste of time. Studying "patterns" other than double tops and bottoms and higher/lower lows/highs was also a waste of time. It doesn't matter what you intend to trade: stocks, futures, commodities, forex, options, whatever. You have to watch it, study it, attempt to understand it, and as part of that attempt formulate questions. When you have those questions, you'll be in a position to benefit from books. Whether those books are hard copy or digital won't matter much.

There is an extraordinary amount of misinformation out there. In order to insulate yourself and protect yourself from it, study the market -- the movement of your market's prices -- itself. Then when some book or post or article tries to blow smoke up your skirt, at least a couple of bells ought to go off and prompt you to wonder if this person has any idea what he or she is talking about, and you won't be sentencing yourself to years of trying to figure it all out.
At 19, it's highly doubtful that he has the necessary critical thinking skills do do all that. What he needs to do is go to college and major in something technical. That will at least help him build up those skills and at the same time give him a backup plan.
 
Not my experience at all, there: I'd say my average spend per trading book has probably been around $60-$70. And one of the most helpful ones, for me, was about $150, as I remember (privately published).

Out of perhaps 100 textbooks I've read since I started reading about trading, I'd say there were probably about 10-12 of them that were really majorly helpful and productive for me, and then perhaps about 10-12 more that taught me something, provided some value, and that my trading's probably slightly better for having read than it would be if I'd never seen them. All the rest were more or less a waste of time.

I don't think such that's a bad "win-rate", though, overall.

It's certainly true, however, that hard copies are much more productive and worthwhile than digital ones, for some people (of whom I'm one, myself).
For me, the best books I read were all under $20. Most of them were "classic" I think. I might have brought a few in the $40-$50 range, but they were bad.

And yes, hard copy are better then digital. With hard copies you can write notes and scribble in them. Use a highlighter and stuff. If the OP has any creative thought he might had came up with the idea to PRINT the digital copy he has on paper. Seriously, some of the questions people ask...
 
every time I try to read a trading ebook I get so bored by it and put off reading it

I have not finished a single book on trading.

do you think getting a physical copy would help?

I would think the reward for learning to trade well, (that is, being able to plop yourself down in front of a computer anywhere and be able to make significant money for the rest of your life) would be motivation enough to keep the learning "interesting".
 
OP should read Reminiscences... and maybe he gets the trading bug. After that any trading book will be interesting.
 
every time I try to read a trading ebook I get so bored by it and put off reading it

I have not finished a single book on trading.

do you think getting a physical copy would help?

Start with the original Market Wizards, each interview is self contained, the shortest is only a few pages long. You can skip any you find boring.
 
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Start with the original Market Wizards, each interview is self contained, the shortest is only a few pages long. You can skip any you find boring.
The edges the "wizards" once enjoyed are long gone. But the Schwager books still have entertainment value.
 
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