They say teaching is the best way to master your craft

[murray t turtle]

My question, why do newbs always look for .... free. Free data, free brokerage .... free mentorship.

And only answer I can come up with is because they don't have the money it takes to trade yet they want to learn how to trade. Cart before the horse.

%%
FREE brokerage/LOL\ not going to happen for long with bid/ask spread.
Some comissions did go to free.
I did get a free IBD book with my 6 month[not free] subscription to 6 month IBD newspaper...........................................................................................................WORST way to learn is with leverage, but few of us are smart enough,to lean with 1 share SPY or MSFT.
But one good thing about leveraging ignorance, as many of us did\ it tends to get so exspensive /you ALWAYS remember the lesson.................................................................................

 

[heispark]

You are talking like a communist..........

 

[Windlesham1]

I feel like a mentor/coach/teacher should provide the tools and terminology and education about how everything works - maybe with some examples and a little bit of handholding, but that's where the value has to stop.

I can't teach someone "how to trade" any more than I can find them a wife, and it's a valid comparison. The things I enjoy and can tolerate are very different from the guy sitting next to me. We might both find a great wife and we may both be happy, but they could be totally different women. I think trading is very much like that. If you truly want it to be sustainable, you have to build it yourself in a way that suits your personality and lets you sleep at night.

I have to place a real trade every week on my site- it helps me but I still trade my own account like a wus

 

[ktm]

I have to place a real trade every week on my site- it helps me but I still trade my own account like a wus

I hear ya. For me, the biggest part is learning about myself. I read all these stories about the Gamestop kids and all these others over the years that hit massive home runs...turning $20 into $3M or whatever. I could never do it. When the $20 gets to $150 I sell because I can't believe I have a 7 bagger and I don't want to lose what I made. I love reading about these guys but it would never be me.

 

[deaddog]

I could never do it. When the $20 gets to $150 I sell because I can't believe I have a 7 bagger and I don't want to lose what I made. I love reading about these guys but it would never be me.

When it gets to $40 sell 1/2 and you have a risk free trade. Let the winners run.

 

[wildchild]

What I could use is consulting. An experienced trader who can tell me my trade is not a good trade. A trader, who can tell me, that even though, the market is crashing, that shorting, might not be the best idea, at the moment.

You should not expect anyone to give you their special sauce of how they are making money in the markets. You need to find your own strategy that works and meets your personality for trading. I seriously doubt you will find anyone who will tell you before the trade is made to follow through or not. You, at best. may find a mentor who will review your trades after the fact and explain where you went wrong. Very few for free.

There is all kind of information on the internet and in books that can help. They will not give a system to trade, but can give you the tools to build your own.

 

[deaddog]

You, at best. may find a mentor who will review your trades after the fact and explain where you went wrong. Very few for free.

For free you can use ET.
Post your plan for a trade and then post how you made the trade. If you varied from the plan explain why. That's what you should expect a mentor to do. A mentor will ask why? You have to be prepared to explain your action.

 

[Windlesham1]

You should not expect anyone to give you their special sauce of how they are making money in the markets. You need to find your own strategy that works and meets your personality for trading. I seriously doubt you will find anyone who will tell you before the trade is made to follow through or not. You, at best. may find a mentor who will review your trades after the fact and explain where you went wrong. Very few for free.

There is all kind of information on the internet and in books that can help. They will not give a system to trade, but can give you the tools to build your own.

I have a secretsauce method that makes 50%+ p.a. Do I trade it? Of course not, I'm an idiot like most people!

 

[timdug]

I'm willing to go through a risk model woth you for free. Something as simple as a risk model would probably straighten you out a bit from what I'm reading.

Definitely the first. I'm having a lot of trouble with how much money I'm supposed to be making in a certain time frame, and especially the expectation that I should be making at least this much a day or something, really gets in the way of intelligent trading.

 

[formikatrading]

Intriguing post by destriero and probably aligns a lot with my philosophy / approach. For me, I have a "framework" that guides what I'm focusing on but the actual decision-making is more discretionary based on skills and "pattern recognition" (conscious and subconscious / intuition), which can include reading the traders on elitetrader. And for me, pattern recognition isn't what a lot of people think (e.g., looking for typical price patterns such as H&S, wedge, candlesticks, etc.) -- it's way more expansive than that. For instance, there are definitely some folks on this site who have pretty distinct patterns of thinking and being able to recognize those is an additional edge.

I became super undisciplined once I found what (IMO) works. Recently, I stopped doing what was working (long term vol; switches, etc) for something short term and my PNL (hit rate% x avg $win), tripled. So skill development is key, but what can we know about subconscious pattern reco -> what really drives discretionary trading?