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I got many personal responses and questions to my post about my experiences
learning to trade and being mentored in trading. Like I said earlier, there
is a lot more to the story. Here is a bit more that is relevant to this
thread.
I am not the first in this bloodline. My mentor, Mike, had a mentor
himself. This goes back a ways, and I only have sketchy details on this.
But I recently asked Mike about this. This is what he wrote:
"I sure wish I hadn't lost contact with my mentor DD. He knows he helped
me, but I will never get to let him know just how much he changed my life,
which I regret. I know he was frustrated by those just didn't get it, and I
get the same way. I guess it's kinda like "you can lead a horse to water
but..."
"DD charged a modest fee initally, but he tutored me mostly by phone for
free. After he ran somewhere around 10 sessions w/ 3 traders I think he
quit doing it. Burned him out he said. But he set up accounts on Teleshare
for those who wanted to still get the daily numbers (he had about 7
proprietary plus the ado's, mcosc, and volos) plus a daily comment (by
popular demand from those who still need a crutch I think, although I just
wanted to see if his work agreed w/ mine)."
So you see that I am not the only one who has been mentored by a successful
trader. I have no idea what a "modest fee" means, but it is obvious that
(to me at least) that there was a lot of value for that fee. I know that
Mike has added an enormous amount of research and method to what he learned
from DD, but he did get the groundwork to make a VERY successful career.
I don't want to lecture here, because I am no Market Wizard. But if you
want to be a trader, you need to get serious about it. Others in this
thread have stated this far more eloquently. Playing with the indicators in
Tradestation is not getting serious. Asking people what they think of "x",
the latest oscillator is not serious. If you read between the lines in
those paragraphs above you can see that neither DD or Mike would have any
patience for this. If you asked them what their favorite indicator is,
would they answer? Why would they?
Finally, I have shared a tidbit that Mike emailed me once with a couple of
people and they really liked it. This is not rocket science, it is a lesson
you all know. And I knew it. But knowing a lesson and trading it is two
different things. Mike sent this to me after I confessed to letting a 4
point profit on an SP daytrade turn into a 9 point loss. This is what Mike
sent me, my apologies to those readers not familar with American football:
>Don't know what your profit was, but if it
>was like 3 pts or more I'd compare it to something like this. Jeff
receives the
>kickoff at the 20, runs upfield to the 30 or 40 yd line, then as the defense
>starts to swarm, Jeff, instead of going down here, tries to fight the
defense and
>starts retreating as they charge. He's now back to the 25, the 20, (the
announcer
>is wondering why Jeff given up and gone down by now) and before he knows
it Jeff
>sees himself now at the 10 yd line and finally goes down. You've no doubt
seen
>this on TV, so you know what I'm saying. NEVER let a decent gain turn into
a loss,
>football or trading it's the same concept...
Like I said, this ain't rocket science. But this analogy drove the point
home to me. I printed this out, put it in my trading journal and I have yet
to make that mistake again...
good trading,
Jeff
jwalker@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.lowrisk.com
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