What has been ur experience with COACHING?

The coaching game's getting busy!
Quite a few of the people who i've been following on twitter who were previously just posting their (very average/breakeven overall?) trades are now offering 'coaching' for thousands of dollars.
Similarly with youtube traders. A number of them seem to be making the transistion into mentor/coach, and have a link in their youtube vids for private coaching etc!
Tempted to get involved in offering it myself!! $$$$$
I guess if people are willing to hand over thouosands of dollars with just taking the mentors word for it that they can make money, then it'll always be tempting for some!
 
Again:

This is the chief difference between a coach and a "mentor". If somebody's coaching you, he will first determine your goals and objectives and learn something about your personality. He will then explain how to formulate hypotheses about the market and how to trade it, whether this focuses on price action, indicators, automation, whatever. He will then explain how to test these hypotheses so that eventually you have a thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable trading system. IOW, he will work to help you navigate the course you've chosen for yourself. He will also sound any cautionary notes if and when he believes for whatever reason that the course you're plotting for yourself will eventually be a losing one.

Someone who focuses instead on his own method and on teaching it to you regardless of who you are and what you want is a mentor. If for whatever reason you agree with the mentor's views and his approach, great. If not, then you're in for a lot of wasted time.

If you want to draw an analogy to sports, no coach insists that every player play exactly the same way, holding his club, his racket, his football/soccer ball/ baseball exactly the same way. Physiology if nothing else requires some flexibility. Nor does he coach those who want only to play at the country club the same as those who want to play the pro circuit.

In any case, neither should be promising anything. If they do, look elsewhere.
 
dbphoenix said:
Too true. Give something away and people won't even look at it. Repackage it into something with a little gloss and charge $5000 for it and they line up.

Maybe Tharp is a fine coach. I doubt it as he couldn't cobble together a decent trading plan, so it's unlikely he'd be able to help somebody else do so. And he hardly qualifies as a mentor as he failed at trading. But, on the third hand, he might be a fine psychotherapist. But you can find good psychotherapists for a hell of a lot less than 20k. Unless you plan on being in therapy for several years and want to pay for the job rather than by the hour.
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Exactly, and if you have so many problems where it going to take several years to iron out, most likely seeing wrong psychotherapist, I been to the ones who do hypnosis and that works for me well. I go 3-4 times a year to reinforce what I want to do in life and in trading, we all get sloppy, but this works much more for me than discussing my childhood, I know where and why I have problems, and cause you know doesn't cure them, I believe by the time you get beyond three years old, almost impossible to change who you are.
 
Handle123 said:
Wall street professionals get company to pick up tabs, and when it comes down to psychology, having one or even a dozen sessions won't do much good if you don't believe in what they selling. I don't believe in psycho bobble but did find Tharps' book heavy enough to keep office door from closing is all I found it good for. A good trading book, has much fluff in it to fill pages but most good systems can be done on one page.

That is America's stupid ways, "it got to be good if it costs a lot", no it don't, some of the best ways to get into the markets I learned reading on Internet, but where the profits are in money management. I believe we all know what our problems are and we all have the answers, but especially men have trouble to actually solving them as we tend to want to take easy way out. Too often the answers are in the hard way of accomplishing something.
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Not just the American, exactly the same mentality in Russia.
 
Interesting Handle123, it s not the 1st time I hear abt hypnosis, and its results in trading. Could you develop a bit?

("what is expensive must be good" is human, no matter the country... the whole point of luxury items in the first place. 200$ shirts have the same plastic buttons than 30$ ones...)
 
barcadia said:
The coaching game's getting busy!
Quite a few of the people who i've been following on twitter who were previously just posting their (very average/breakeven overall?) trades are now offering 'coaching' for thousands of dollars.
Similarly with youtube traders. A number of them seem to be making the transistion into mentor/coach, and have a link in their youtube vids for private coaching etc!
Tempted to get involved in offering it myself!! $$$$$
I guess if people are willing to hand over thouosands of dollars with just taking the mentors word for it that they can make money, then it'll always be tempting for some!
More...

The vast majority of coaches are people who cannot trade profitably (FACT), they realise that after years of trying they cannot trade profitably and they take this route. It's a much easier option for them to 'coach' and grind out a $50k p/a living rather than continually lose money trading. There is a seemingly endless queue of new and not so new traders who are willing to hand over their cash to these people. Throughout my trading career I have paid for the services of various coaches, I didn't ever pay mega bucks but over time when you add it up it's not an insignificant amount.

My last experience of coaching was an 'ex prop futures trader' who charged £79pm for access to his trading room. I stuck with it for 2 months, I put down his poor performance in the 1st month due to bad luck. He continued to do his ring consistently in month 2 that's when i bailed. All of the bravado and veneer of profitability strewn all of twitter was washed away as he called loser after loser with tight stops lol. I think at one point he made 9 losers in a row. After I cancelled I then got emails asking why i stopped subscribing lol When I replied that i stopped as 'you were continually doing your arse on a consistent basis' no reply was forthcoming.

I would advise anyone who is looking for a coach to ask for brokerage statements showing say a 3 month period of trading (if day trading). It is very unlikely these will be supplied of course.

I now predict a hail of ETers saying 'coaches don't need to be profitable themselves' and things like 'Pete Sampras coach wasn't a great player himself'. It doesn't work like that in trading, if you know what you are doing over time you will at least make modest profits.
 
Thanks for sharing your experience londonkid.

Yeah coaching is definitely a contentious topic. I am one of those who would tend to think option 2 si true: coaches don t need to be great traders, cos otherwise (unless bcos?.. it fits their personality of trying to..? help maybe.....) there would be no coaches, they would never take the time to coach. In football Mourinho is one of those examples, knew he was an average player, yet he is a great coach (meaning his teams tend to win, not play beautiful..). So if they are not great traders, they definitely need to bring something to the table: great strategists, great deal of experience working with traders, great psychologists etc... But then I don t know... which is why I started this thread.
Now does a coach need to have some experience of trading? For sure...

I know my signals are as good as anyone else, so the trading room, I don t believe much in it (think a trading room is more abt mentoring, see above in thread for differentiation with coaching).
 
lemarche said:
Thanks for sharing your experience londonkid.

Yeah coaching is definitely a contentious topic. I am one of those who would tend to think option 2 si true: coaches don t need to be great traders, cos otherwise (unless bcos?.. it fits their personality of trying to..? help maybe.....) there would be no coaches, they would never take the time to coach. In football Mourinho is one of those examples, knew he was an average player, yet he is a great coach (meaning his teams tend to win, not play beautiful..). So if they are not great traders, they definitely need to bring something to the table: great strategists, great deal of experience working with traders, great psychologists etc... But then I don t know... which is why I started this thread.
Now does a coach need to have some experience of trading? For sure...

I know my signals are as good as anyone else, so the trading room, I don t believe much in it (think a trading room is more abt mentoring, see above in thread for differentiation with coaching).
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see i knew someone would chime in with a sports analogy lol all anticipated in advance. The difference with sports is that success requires a high level of physical performance. So in Mourinho's case he didnt have the physical attributes necessary to be a top football player. In addition football is a team sport and a group of humans needs leadership. Trading does not require physical peak performance and it is the opposite of a team sport.

I don't buy into the argument that coaches are people that want to help. In general humans do want to nurture and help each other (at least to start with), we are rewarded with Oxytocin each time we engage in this activity. I believe the primary driver behind people wanting to coach is to scratch out a living rather than help others and overload on Oxyotcin/Vasopressin/Dopamine. This forum wouldnt exist if pair bonding didnt exist, thats a different topic though.

Thinking about it logically if you could actually trade and make 5%-10% per month then why would you coach, sell $99pm subscriptions or $30 ebooks. you just wouldnt.
 
Sports is just an analogy.. I don t want to dwell on it, but psychology plays a huge part in any sports... anyone can think of dozens of example regarding their favorite team/player etc Not only "physical", no... Also many sports are not played as teams (you mentioned tennis earlier)

As for helping, exactly, coaches coach to make a living, and that is fine ! my point is that no successful trader would coach UNLESS they really wanted to "help"... a bit far fetched yes, hence all the "?.." in my post. So what I really meant is that the fact that coaches are not great traders is a given, not a question...
 
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