Trading is where 95% people will fail.I try to learn myself and find out its not easy,lost money first three years,than realized,I need help from the pros,that's when I finally learn the ropes,and finally become,what I am today.My sincere advice to all new traders is,go to good trading school(like Prsitene.com) or find good mentor(He must be profitable and trading must be only source of his income).Or learn yourself struggle,lose $$,get frustrated and say-trading is very hard and quit.
Trading is hard, very hard, damn hard
- Thread starter BPtrader
- Start date
Well, my coach was two years out of college when he took me on. Being two years out of college is irrelevant. In my firm, once you hit a certain level of profitability, you are qualified as a High Performing Trader and are thus qualified to coach new traders if you like. There are multi-million dollar traders in my office that never stepped foot inside of college.
Coaching a new trader isn't some all day, time-consuming affair like it seems that you have assumed...as if I'm over the top of my student's shoulders the entire day telling him what to to and what not to do. Lol. I'm reasonably familiar with online trading coaches and the sort who sit in chat rooms and post their trades or coach on skype or whatever and coaching consumes their day. It's not like that in my office. Coaching is more along the lines of guidance where we sit. A student may see a trade we make and ask, why did you short that? What did you see? How did you know to get out there?
At the end of the day I would go over my student's trades with him to see the thinking that was underlying his trades. He also had the option of looking at all of my trades and asking questions --any questions he liked -- to see how I made my money.
As far as whether I believe my future prospects lie as a coach as opposed to a trader is considered, the answer is an emphatic no as to my future lying in coaching. I'm a high performing trader. Why would I focus more of my energy on being a coach (which I have had ZERO success at) as opposed to a trader (which I have had success at)?
The fact is, somebody gave me a shot to follow my dream, I feel at the very least I owe that shot to someone else. I actually have a new student now that I hired because he is hungry and he is a friend of a friend. Because I prefer to focus on my own trading, he will more than likely be my last student unless someone that I know personally (and I think they are cut out for this business) wants some guidance. Hope that answers your question.
I think its funny that you imply that if we all knew "how to teach people correctly" that everyone would succeed. That is not the reality. My firm is definitely one of the best true proprietary firms in the country. Am I the greatest coach in terms of coaching new traders? Nope. Not close. Can't say that I am. There are 150+ traders in my office, along with people that perform very detailed quantitative analysis on our trading performance. My firm goes further than most firms in providing resources so that new traders can succeed and so that experienced traders can go from six figures to 7 figures and from 7 to 8 figures.
What people here seem to fail to accept is that, even with great resources (a great team of traders, quantitative analysis team) and say the student is energetic, focused, diligent and comes early and leaves late (basically an ideal student) he still may fail because he may not be built to be a trader. Facts are that (1)most new traders aren't the above ideal student and, (2) something like 90% of people fail as traders and never net enough profits to cover lunch at Burger King. [/QUOTE]
What you have described to me is the trading equivalent of the big open office in a global company's factory, and if anyone has worked for some of these companies they will know only too well how disorganized they really are.
Buzz words are all the fad, and textbook processes are consumed like kids eating sweets!
Then, at the top, the leaders, the senior management, who really know nothing about what actually happens on the ground, play around with budgets, projections, profit targets and golf outings.
Why a would be trader would want to put themselves in such a position, is beyond me.
Oh, btw, any money that the trader lost is trading related, as that is the business he is in, it does not matter if it was your commissions or the bosses next golf outing!
If you want my humble opinion, I would not be caught dead in such a place, as it has everything that a successful trader does not need, mostly the people make up!
It is obvious that making money is the main objective of the company, and the bosses might just be pleasant surprised if they actually took an interest in the individual trader, as opposed to just seeing him as turnover!
If you really want t help some new traders out, then start posting some live trades and explain to them the rational behind the trades, and just in case you are worried about your ego, they do not have to be winning trades.
You do not have to show any proprietary details, just plain and simple numbers, posted in succession as you execute the trades.
It is really that simple, no need for talking about mentors or million dollar traders, just some plain old simple trading, simple as ABC, or 123!
This is of course based on your experiences.
What makes you think that others have to do what you done?
You got what you got as a direct result of the thoughts you held, which, by your own admission were not good.
Mentors are not required, but some pure and basic simple rules are definitely required.
I will repeat again, and 100, 000 times if I must, any person that charges another person money for helping them to help themselves is not really helping the person, or themselves, as this is not right, and eventually what goes round comes round.
Of course many of our social services are based on charging people money to help themselves, but look at the state of the world we live in!
do unto others as you would have them do unto you
I guess you think you said something relevant here. I don't. This firm existed before the internet bubble and it's still around. So...disorganization must be part of the fad of sustainable success along with all those buzzwords.
Then at the top at my firm, our CEO was and is an incredibly successful trader. $17 million net was his best year. Our entire firm is beyond you.
Okay. Thanks for enlightening me.
"...everything that a successful trader does not need, mostly the people make up!" Huh? Your sentences don't make sense. You couldn't get inside the door of our offices. You speak just like the rest of the self-important wanna-be traders on ET that try so hard to sound intelligent in order to present themselves as competent, profitable traders.
HAH! I would think that any for-profit company's main objective is "making money"! "The bosses?" You don't even know what firm I work for, yet you know all about us. You're hilarious.
I'm not going to waste time trying to justify my firm with you.
I know that tomorrow morning I'll be trading the stock market with a staff of brokers, quants, and IT supporting me if I need shares to short, my computer freezes, or I need anything that will help me make more money tomorrow.
Most of the people here will be logging on to Elitetrader periodically throughout their workday at their jobs wishing that they were able to trade full-time.
Think what you want "MrCharts". According to you my firm sucks. The very laptop I'm typing on, I purchased with trading profits. My wireless connection, I pay for that with trading profits. The couch I'm sitting on, the bed I sleep on, the TVs I watch, were all purchased from trading profits.
Can you even take your co-workers out to lunch on your trading profits? When I say profits, that implies that you're net positive BTW -- I'm not speaking in regard to the few winning trades that you may have experienced among your sea of losers.
Where in anything that I said, did I ever imply that I was interested in helping random traders that I do not know make money?
Tell me exactly why I would ever do such a thing? I can't think of one good reason. Clearly you're looking for some guidance. Apparently trading isn't easy, isn't very easy, isn't so damn easy for you huh?
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Thoughtful points,BP-T;
smarter you are, the longer it takes, as they say in Chicago.
Also it depends on what you trade, more the leverage the harder it is to consistantly profit, [years]. Younger the trader the more they unwisely ignore the later statement.
Also its nowhere near ''hard as hell'';
you can get out of a bad trade, & trader can drink a V8 or water.
REAL ESTATE IS A BIT EASIER, BUT EVEN OVER THE DECADES WOULD NOT EVEN CALL THAT ''EASY''.................................
Strong trends are easier[ maybe not easy] but more so;
than sideways trends............................................................