Quote from geox:
William, I started this project about a year ago. At that time, I never traded futures. The extent of my experience was investing in a few mutual funds during IRA season. I wanted to be independent, make enough money to comfortably support my family and have the ability to donate money to a couple of charities, my favorite being Habitat for Humanity.
I read John Carter's book as a short primer on trading and trading in futures. I read a couple of other book mostly on psychology to see if I had the right stuff to take a shot at this. After that, I was faced with a dilemma. There was so much information on trading that I felt confused and overwhelmed about what to read, which tools to buy, seminars and so on. I did not want to become a trading professor, one who knows everything about all the studies, terms, systems etc. I didn't have time to do that and that seemed like a life long job in itself. So I asked my, what can I do to shortcut the learning curve and increase my chance of success. So I decide to find a teacher/mentor who had a good reputation, solid references and a dedication to his students.
After some research, I decided to take the path of an Internet based model, rather than a 1 to 1 arrangement. I don't live in a big city and if I found people who were interested in taking me on, it would be too expensive to travel, stay in a hotel, etc. since I wanted to interview at least 5 mentors. The Internet seemed like a decent model to do this much more efficiently.
I investigated the following services: TradingZoo, Tsunami, Falcon Day Traders,Simpltetraderway, Kingfish, AceTrades and JPJ.
(I've got to sign off now. This will be continued later when I get some free time)