Cost of an trading education

Assuming there are legitimate trading educators out there who charge anywhere between $4-10K for tuition, that is a relatively minor price to pay when compared to the average cost of a college degree these days; and there is no guarantee you'll find a decent paying job after graduation, let alone start your own business in which you own 100% of the equity. I view trading education as a capital cost in starting up a new business and, compared to most other businesses, the cost is small including the initial bankroll for working capital and eqiupment.

Can you lose your entire startup money? Of course you can. But statistically, 80% of all new businesses fail within the first two years anyway. So why not spend some time and find a service that can give you a good start? The alternative, trial and error, books, DVDs and the like may be more expensive.

It's not so much spending the money to get the education or the materials. One of the major problems is getting the students to read and learn the stuff.

I've seen this happen in a number of trading rooms. Take a Market Profile based trading room for example. The trader should buy and read all the Market Profile related trading books (maximum cost must be $100) before they join the MP trading room. Do they? Never! They would rather spend hundreds per month to have someone spoon feed it to the them and read the book to them.

There is a large responsibility on the new trader to read and learn the material before starting a class to gain the maximum benefit from it. I've been guilty of this in the past and it is very unlikely that anyone's going to listen to me anyway. 80% to 95% of what trading educators will teach you can be picked up in regular trading books. The other 5% to 20% is their twist on it.

I'm not knocking trading educators because it appears that 99% of would be traders would rather have the book read to them for $500 than buy the book for $25 and read it to themselves. If that's your style then there's a place for the educator.

But the student can shortcut the process and spend way less money and time by reading the book and then asking questions on public forums such as these. The points that he/she doesn't understand will be explained by someone who's been through it. Kind of like a class discussion.

I don't believe that asking questions and waiting for answers in a forum should replace realtime 1 on 1 communication. My observation is the forums cannot replace a classroom environment.

What many students want, after spending a few thousand dollars, is to shadow the trades of a guru and get rich in the process. This is a major pitfall of the novice. The great traders I have encountered are more skilled in trade management after their entries than they are about the entries and targets. Professional traders are like boxers who must be flexible and not locked in to a certain way of fighting after they enter the ring.

IMHO to trade the markets in a successful manor requires an education. Not only does it require an education but also requires time, similar to an internship. Unfortunately, the screen or internet trading is still in it's infancy which lends itself to crooks and con's. Having a forum such as this, at least gives people a fair chance to weed out the bad and spend more tme concentration, asking questions and spending time with the legitimate trading educators. I never quite could understand the idea of shadow trading? Even if the client is successful at shadow trading along with a leader, what do they really have? In my opinion at the very best , a part time job with little to no job security. What happens when this leader decides to close down shop? The people in the room, who may have been making money, are now fresh out of a job. That is exactly why I started this message by stressing the importance of an education. The education must come before any attempt to try and shadow trade someone. I would also hope, that if one did have an education first, that the shadow trading is strictly in effort to help the trader increase his learning. Finally, and again IMHO, I do beleive there are some excellent training educators that are a whole lot less then $4-10k. A very important lesson to be learned in finding a trading system or course, is the more that one charges for their course does not necessarily equal a better quality course. Look around, ask questions and visit forums such as this to get information. Good luck.

I've spent some time in rooms moderated by tape reading traders and it was almost impossible to shadow their trades. They call trades on the fly and I either missed the entry or couldn't get a fill. Who needs that?

I wouldn't touch any method that didn't give ample time to enter the order before the entry price in a FIFO market regardless of the price.

Larry