I am willing to teach for free, but I choose the person very carefully. I look someone who can be proud and arrogant at the right time and defend his turf, given he can confidently back it up with solid knowledge. At other times I look for a humble, broken spirit, someone who can constantly admit the possibility he might be wrong. Someone who has an unquenched thirst to learn and the balls to ask tough and sometimes even embarrassing questions. Most above all, a hard worker. Someone you teach something and the next morning you notice that such person really pondered over the material of the previous day. Enough IQ to comprehend intermediate math and probability theory. Very hard to find a mentor who looks for students like this. Even harder for a mentor of this type to find the right student. And why I would be willing to do this gig for free for the right person? Because a) I wanna pass on something that took me a long time and something I am proud to have achieved and b) to answer the ever-repeating question to myself: Can I teach someone to become a profitable trader.
By the way, the absolute minimum requirement of such a student would be that he was seeking a mentor completely prepared with all the knowledge that can be attained by reading or watching content on one's own clock. Someone who is wondering whether futures or stocks or currencies are better instruments to trade are frankly speaking a waste of time, at least my time. Not saying they are a waste as a human being but they are just not ready to be taught.
Totally agree, with the exception of doing it for free, found out long ago, if people do not have "game", they less likely listen. Too many believe if someone doing it for free, must not be any good. So much down and rest at 50% of their new profits each month, this way student is not over trading cause too much in their accounts, and when you teach, if you still doing manually, you are going to miss setups or change orders cause you teaching a student live sometime during the day, not everyday but couple each week. Almost every student will at some point try to teach the teacher of what they know which is often right at the beginning, have to "nip that at the bud", if that was working, they would not be losing.
I often took quirky people and often took people I did not like initially, didn't want to spend 2 years with someone I liked from beginning. I have my own problems in life and generally do not like people period, so anyone I like from get go, I would see they have problems like me. Yea, I know most people don't understand, that's life.
Half times I would travel to where they lived and chat for 5-6 hours, see if I wanted to spend next 2 years with them, sometimes trade in front of them, and teach or cram into them trading concepts, to see how much they able to retain in short time. Sometimes every hour they get to pick a new symbol for me to trade, same basic concepts, show them what rules have to be changed for protective stops and targets, but chart reading does not change.
I not take anyone who was brand new, I had good amount of patience, but someone new who lacks ability to read something on charts, trend, how to put in orders, don't have enough patience to go over basics. I liked the person who lost 6 figures or more, family man/woman, have enough funds to live as very difficult to work and trade. I needed them to have fears of the market. I wanted them to not trust themselves and rely on what I taught, and if they found new patterns, they knew to test first before coming to me, am not going to be doing their homework. Homework everyday, their charts take me 2 hours to correct, as they get better, have to be done less. I never gave them my trading plan, they would never understand it. I didn't want to teach them a system but how to trade, how to adapt to changing volatility, having more than one symbol to trade, doesn't matter whether was stocks, options, futures symbols, timeframes, doesn't matter if I didn't know the symbol or they didn't know the symbol, you trade what is before you. They had to have enough IQ to understand risk management, risk to reward theory, and most importantly is able to memorize.
At some point they realize everything they were doing/thinking was wrong. At end of the 2 years, they have a massive Trading plan with examples of every risk management images, reasons of not taking trades, trade setup, trade management, examples when time to reduce targets or expand, when to hedge by options or legging into spread. At end of 2 years, mentor has learned about the family of the student, making sure student is not cave like, they spend same amount of time with wife and kids as they did behind screen, trader needs to really feel their presence but also family needs support/love of the student.
From first day, they need to see profitable days real time just from the basics, each week more is added, at some point it becomes overwhelming and slow down till they can memorize, in first week they are sim trading on live data for entire day sessions for 3-4 months then cut back to 4 hours with 2 hours catching up on stat recaps.
It is huge undertaking for a mentor as well, sometimes one has to express themselves several different ways as student just can't understand some concept. Some can't understand one penny means much down the line when trading more volume, them learning acceptance is very hard as they see where they got stopped out for Breakeven plus one then only to watch trade go their way, can't have both of consistency profits and wild profits/losses, best to go after smooth equity curve so to add volume, but smooth equity curve adds to one's mental thoughts they are getting good, reversing thoughts no one can do this mentality, at some point they sim trading 19 of 20 days, once done for few months, they should be ready to do real time, make so tough to get to this stage, they have to be able to compete within their 2 ears.
And no, not every student achieves 19 of 20, but they have to be able to do so in 4 months or less or they wasting time. And after 2 years, they are prepared for anything. And some after 2 years quits totally, it simple not what they thought life be like.
And no, refuse to take on any more, at my age am losing knowledge, don't have patience and bad back, simple don't like training people as much as 25 years ago and have other logs in the fire for new challenges. Trading is the same almost all the time now, even with huge move down recently, have seen it before 3-4 times, for my own trading, know the answers before the question, time to go off and do something else.
