Quote from alicolba:
I basically quit my job because i have some income on the side now and i know i have capabilty of being a good trader i just wanted the learning curve to be jacked up to the max!
I have alot of time to do this besides reading reccomended books and practicing all day what else?
I take your inquiry seriously.
Please be aware that there are many guardians in ET that have very unfortunately lessened the quality of ET. I feel that they have no basis for being guardians nor judging others.
To fast track learning, I recommend the following general overlaying elements.:
1. Be very rational and thoughtful. You are building an integrated mechanism between you and the market.
2. Understand what you are developing and how your role and the market's role work together. It is not possible for you to assume the market's responsibilities and the market will not do your required job ever.
Moving on to what is possible. You have read Turok, jrkob and BSAM. Apparently they have had unfortunate experiences. I have not had any of those. For what ever reasons, from the start I paired learning and making money. When I mentor I do the same. If I am one-on-one and local, I guarantee the capital of the beginner with whom I am working.
There is a quid pro quo. People who go through this stuff, get to a place where they can contribute to their communities. What I get is an extension of myself in the sense that they contribute skills and time that I do not have myself.
There are three steps to get to where you want to have. I use an agricultural example. If I work with growers, I first assess the conditions (soil and tissue analysis). We find what's wrong, meaning poisons. you can read "How to Make Money in Stocks", Chapter 20, 18 common Mistakes Most Investors Make. You must make up a landscape chart ( or others can locate it for you), and use it as a log. Note every few months your status on these 18 mistakes. The reason is that you have to do something about them. You cannot do a pledge routine.
Lets say you are like anyone else. You want to learn as did Turok, jrkob, and BSAM, but you are currently carrying beliefs that are like any or most of the common mistakes, that W. J O'Neil painstakingly ID's.
How do I take the poisons out of the soil? How did they get there, even? Pledging not to do that anymore doesn't correct the situation. This is the "reading" error most people make. They think reading stuff will make them good traders. It doesn't.
Make the log to analyze yourself. You will see in a while how to get rid of the bad stuff. Turok, jrkob, and BSAM cannot read chapter 20, nor can they make logs and keep the logs. They have already proven this to us.
After fields are divested of their poisons, they are brought into balance (this is organic farming stuff) by additional stuff.
What you will do is learn by stages all you have to know to do a stage of money making. The stages are very practical because they do two things: Let you trade at low risk only and they KEEP YOU OUT OF THE MARKET OTHERWISE.
This approach to learning is not accepted by mostly any ET person. There are reasons and they are listed in Chapter 20. Most ET people have mistaken beliefs and they use a critical path method or such to work around these items. The most typical example is designing an approach, back testing it and then trading it if it is "believed" to be workable.
Can you imagine a DR, lawyer or engineer doing that? People who do this stuff as novices do not get it right. Those who are experienced and profitable in ET, say that they long term average about 1 point per contract per day in ES. This is the standard here in ET apparently.
My alternative is to make money from the beginning and only do the simplest trades that are very low risk. The primary reason it to get reinforcement of good sound basic market operating characteristics. Being profitable is reinforcing. The market is your guide at the beginning. Minimum risk is attained, as ig0r states in two words: "trade small". This means one ES contract. Period. After you have tripled your intial capital, you take it out and spend it. Decide now what to buy. I started with 300 bucks and spent that on a new car which I took delivery on in Kopenhagen.
This establishes that, as long as you trade, you will be profitable.
So you will learn fastest by building up from extremely simple (and profitable) to the most complex which turns out to be KISS.
Your pace of learning is determined by several things:
1. Present garbage
2. How fast you can get "provisional beliefs" to show up.
3. How fast you can bring unwanted emotions (inflamed ones) into balance.
4. How well you learn to stay out of the market when it is more challenging than you are capable of dealing with.
Trading is a process comprised of four distinct serial steps. Most people are defeated before they even begin.
Consider the stark contrast of "looking for a signal" and doing a repeated comprehensive process. Bear down and consider how in a zero sum market, you have to, from day one, be competent.
You can only do this by being comprehensive and assuring that all your trading is done in a flawless context. You know little and you are dealing with being in a group which is taking the pants off 90% of the other participants. You must go with the flow of the "smart money" from day 1 and always trade "with" them.
Beginner trading is done by entering established trends. That means after they begin. You will also not trade any trend but the very fastest paced ones (this means the strongest). You will also not stay in for the whole trend, but instead, leave as the trend shows "end effects".
What you get by doing this is a regal education in the context of making money. By building from the strongest least risk oriented full and comprehensive monitoring, you get to understand hoe to gather all data needed, analyze it, compare the analysis to your inital provisional beliefs, and learn to act in response to your beliefs. Emotions are paired with gathering data, the only sensory part of trading. Emotions have everlastingly been associated with human survival. Emotions automatically couple to all sensory processes
Yours will be developed and honed to a level that incites "intuition" vis a vis analysis and comparisions to your beliefs. You will, in effect, "see" what to do.
Brains are not a criteria for excelling in making money. But making money is very different than other skill based enterprises. It is not possible to compare DRs, lawyers and engineers with traders.
This is another of those stark contrasts that are part of the financial industry myth system.
You do not need much of any kind of schooling to be an excellent trader. This eludes most people for many big reasons. Trading is tied to two elements and they have nothing to do with schooling.
So your pace of getting rich is determined by only two things. both of these are easily dealt with in the least sophisticated ways that can be imagined.
All we need to do is keep all of the other crap out of the picture.
In ET that is an impossibility. No matter, that is what ignore is for. Please ignore the crap that shows up in this thread.