I'm the one in that other thread who works for Dan Sheridan. Let's clear up a few mis-understandings first:
1.
Dan never worked for OptionVue. When Dan left the CBOE pit in 2004 he partnered with OptionVue to do the billing and advertising for him. Later, Steve Lentz did the first 4 sessions with Dan's students to get them up to speed on OptionVue, then Steve handed them over to Dan. Dan has always had his own company (Sheridan Options Mentoring).
When OptionVue decided to become a broker, this created a problem for Dan. CBOE has a guideline that no Broker/Dealers can do webinars. When OptionVue becomes a broker, it would have interfered with Dan's relationship with CBOE so Dan went completely independent last summer. OptionVue still works with Dan by providing their software to Dan's students for six months, but that's the only relationship between the two companies.
2.
Dan does do one-on-one mentoring. The only group classes are in the first month. The rest of the program is one-on-one mentoring sessions. Casey Platt was in the PIT with Dan for two decades. Mark Fenton was a broker and one of Dan's students. All three do one-on-one mentoring.
After the mentoring is over, students can still participate in all live webex events. We archive ALL webex sessions so many students who aren't able to watch things live can watch them at their convenience. We now have over 2700 archived WebEx files that are nearly 70GB in size and growing daily.
3.
We've only had one student do any teaching It was more of doing a walk through of a nice spreadsheet he built and doing some walk throughs of how to use our website. This is not something Dan relies on as a major portion of his program as one poster implied.
The only trading discussion run by students in the weekly Student Cafe. This is something I host each Sunday for our students. Anyone can come and participate. Ask questions, discuss trades, ideas, market opinions, etc etc. It's an open discussion each week.
4.
Price OptionVue wanted to raise the price for Dan's program to $7500 in early 2007 but Dan resisted so they compromised at $6000 (from $5000). Dan still hasn't raised the price. I've seen competitors charging $13,000 for one-on-one mentoring! OptionEtics and Investools have programs you can spend $25,000 if you like. It's quite common in this industry for seminars to be $1000 to $3000 per day!
Dan has over 500 current and former students now. Our forums has about 5000 posts in a little over one year. We have a very active community with many professional traders, some managing pretty large accounts. It's kind of like our own elitetrader.com but all trained as income option traders by Dan and his methods. The trading groups we started in January as being paid for by Dan. His monthly WebEx bill exploded after we started this but he doesn't want to charge students any more money. That's just how Dan is.
I was a professional military pilot. We definitely couldn't learn how to fly a jet by reading books. Trading is the same thing to me. It's a mix of science and art. A profession. The USAF teaches you with instructor pilots (mentors). All of the traders in the pit had mentors. I think it's the most natural way to learn by spending time with people who have done what you want to do and emulate what they are doing. You can learn it on your own, but a mentoring program can definitely speed you up on the learning curve.
I still maintain sheridanmentoring.com and actively trade myself. If you have any questions, please send them to my sheridanmentoring email address as I don't visit elitetrader.com very often.
Tom Nunamaker
www.sheridanmentoring.com