<i>08-22-06 04:18 PM
The thing is, the same effort, lets say selling <b>junk</b> of one kind or another to the public would be less stressful and more profitable. Trading is hard work. Win lose or draw."</i>
Steve46, I apologize for the sarcasm on my part in the previous post. I used the term "junk" in a condescending way, and that was a mistake on my part. I apologize to you and stock777 for phrasing it that way.
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Let me share a true story about method vendors and how at least two people I know totally owe their financial futures to such. I'll try to be brief, but we could get a bit windy here :>)
Back in early-2003, my trading partner whom we'll call Russ (because, well, that's his name) and I went searching for a new method of trading. Up to then, we had been using 60min/30min charts with Stochastics, MACD and BBands for setups & signals. That worked fine from 1999 - early 2003 but when high volatility waned, those slow charts faltered for intraday trading.
I was reading a book by Constance Brown which, quite frankly, bored me to no end. Perhaps that is just the A.D.D. affliction in me, no reflection on the material.
Anyway, Russ was highly interested in another well-touted information package that cost roughly $5,000 purchase (not T.I.)
We decided I would buy the $5k info package and study that while he would attend a personal workshop with Connie Brown at her palatial home in North Carolina. That event cost him $5,500 plus trip fares, in USD. Russ lives in Canada, so he ate the unfavorable exchange (at the time) on top of it all.
**
When we gathered after the workshop to compare notes, Russ was disappointed with the lessons learned at his live event. He basically dabbled a bit with what was taught, and then shelved it all with no further regard.
Later on we examined the other (well-known) info package and discovered some blurry mimeographs (I'm not kidding) of written material supported by fuzzy, poor volume VHS tapes. We tried to watch the videos, but couldn't get past the fact that its key speaker was plainly suffering from a serious case of acid reflux syndrome, recorded for posterity on the educational videos.
Again, we shelved that info package, wrote off the fact of losing $10,000+ wasted money between us and moved on.
***
About a year later, we still hadn't found what we were looking for. Inconsistent results, net profitable but not where we wanted to consistently be while trading the FX primarily at the time. We made money, but it was a real struggle.
After pounding on our charts literally day & night writing mechanical systems and probing discretionary methods, Russ confessed to his wife that he was exhausted and nearing wit's end. I wasn't too far from there myself. Luckily for Russ, he married above his head and wife Chris bailed him out yet again.
Chris, in her eternal wisdom told Russ to revisit the Constance Brown info notes he paid so dearly to learn. Russ committed himself to learning it, mastered his own personal version and trades that on a full-time basis himself ever since. Today there are no indicators on his chart... nothing but plain candles/bars and specific price patterns he can spot with one eye closed at twelve feet from the screens.
****
Russ tried to teach me his personal approach to trading, but a few points there just didn't click with me. However, I am eternally grateful for his attempts... that is how I came to develop what creates my livelihood today.
In demonstrating his approach, Russ kept referring to a specific failure pattern that showed up frequently. When this pattern occured, the trade was dead = market was going the other way. Every time.
Interesting.
I fooled around with some ideas there and made progress, but still didn't have the whole picture. Out of morbid curiosity I watched the VHS tapes again from that other package and things fell into place.
While sitting there thinking to myself, "good Lord, somebody please hit 'pause' on that camera and give the guy a double shot of maalox" I saw the exact-same failure patterns confirming bad trade signals in that guy's approach. Better yet, I also noticed those failure patterns <b>confirming</b> his winning trades... and the guy had no idea they even existed.
<b>CLICK</b> went the lightbulb in my head. A little bit of dabbling & back-testing, there it was. The method approach I use today that will work until the end of time, because it is based squarely on how all financial markets truly work.
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What's the moral to this story? A few points:
#1: Both Russ and I wrote off our initial $5k purchases as worthless. Truth is, we just weren't ready to receive the info at that time. The pupils weren't prepared, so the teacher was not recognized. Everything we needed to know was in either = both packages, the blindness problem lie squarely within us.
#2: If Russ hadn't tweaked Connie Brown's tools in personal style, he would have never been able to show me the key price pattern I built my entire method around that works so well today & forever more.
#3: Always listen to your wife... she knows everything!
Had we not spent $10,000+ on trading info, I have no idea what would have happened hence. At the pace we were going with oscillators, volatility breakouts, mechanical systems and ilk, odds are we'd have failed and washed out or needed a serious break from trading.
Instead, both of us are trading quite content, have made back our $5k cost innumerable times over with a lot more career ahead of us to go.
We were mired in the rut of reading books, magazines, chatrooms, trying our own stuff... none of that stuff got us anywhere we wanted to be, it was a total waste of time. Meanwhile, the clock kept ticking. The calendar pages kept turning. Money missed was true opportunity cost while we dabbled in circles.
So... today I take personal exception to all the offhand comments about educational providers in our profession. My very existence as a full-time trader depended on it, and the same goes for Russ.
Do some blatant crooks and liars exist to peddle information in our profession? Sure. Likewise, do some very honest and successful mentors exist as well? Hell yes... and thank God for that! If it weren't for the sequence of events I shared above, I might very well be your local WalMart cart boy right now, today.
The next time you hear = read someone say all info vendors are fakes, let this story of two salvaged careers drown those fallacies out of you mind.
Again, my apology to <b>steve46 and stock777</b> for the wrong tone in my prior post. That was not right, and I won't make that mistake in here again.
Thank you for reading this docudrama (both of ya left!) and I also promise subsequent posts will be bite-sized again :>)
Best Trading Wishes,
Austin
