gosu

@zdo: I did read your comments addressed to me. None of my earlier comments were directed at you. There's no comparison between my description of an ideal learning situation and your experience with your student. If any of my statements struck a nerve, that's something I can't help you with. I recommend that you not take my posts seriously. I'm here to bullshit mostly and entertain myself. All the best to you.

@Rande Howell: I live in the same world you live in. It's called planet Earth. Come down and join us. The nexus between us is trading. We think about it from different orientations. My orientation is that of extracting from the markets. Yours is that of extracting from those unable to extract from the markets. I'm 100% in agreement with your statement that people come to trading with skills from other fields that are unhelpful in learning to trade. Extracting from the markets is counter-intuitive. It is not easy to explain, but an explanation is unnecessary to anyone who has taken all the various paths that conventional wisdom says leads to the pot of gold and found them to be side trips. Obviously, my opinion is that what you offer is a side trip. It's a newfangled side trip that purports to deal with anxiety arising from uncertainty while trading, but still a side trip nonetheless. My final comment to you is that the way to deal with uncertainty is to not trade when you don't know what's going on. When a trader does not know the position of the market with certainty, the risk of loss is high. It is the same for the expert trader as it is for the greenest of the green. The difference between the two is that when the expert knows, he knows that he knows. Lacking knowledge, skill, and experience, the greenhorn does not. It is amusing to me that you harp on the qualification that your clients are successful simulation traders using a method learned in a classroom and thus somehow only missing the mental skill you can provide. This is like the counter-intuitive thing mentioned earlier: There's no point in explaining, you just have to experience it to know. In any case, I'll address no further comments to you. Much success to you in your vending business.

Politics aside, the object being discussed is learning how to trade, is it not? This is not so difficult to understand on its own that we need to resort to analogies that miss the mark. You state that there is a problem of rationality as a premise. This is no problem for me because I do not adopt the premise that people are rational. However, I do know that people CAN be rational. Regardless, we can agree that when learning to trade it is good to be rational at all times. As I understand you, the ideal conditions I described rules out fear for the learner. Everyone is aware that such an ideal situation is uncommon. That is beside the point. The point is, treating the symptom (fear) does not cure the problem for the learner. For you, the problem is the “mindset” that causes fear. For me, the problem is being clueless about how to go about learning to trade. You say the coach is not the problem. I say the coach may not be THE problem but certainly he can exacerbate it if he himself is clueless. The learning situations that actually occur are so far from ideal that it is little wonder that so few people become operational. Your story of the “trader teacher” at the Dallas Expo is typical of what's available. Should he send his students home? Yes, with full refunds, if he had their interests at heart. We know that doesn't happen because the one who would lose out the most with an empty class is the “trader teacher” who might then have to support himself with his trading profits. Yes, to learn to trade, one must train the mind. To learn to fail, one must train the mind too. Most people are learning failure and do not know it. A corollary is some people are teaching failure and do not care. The fact that people are paying to learn failure is of little consequence. Left to their own devices, they would likely have lost the fee in the market. In the larger picture, the vendoring industry, of which you are a part, is just friction.

What if Carl could be shown what it's like to trade competently by an expert who is solely interested in successful transference? The first thing the expert might do is make an agreement that he will do the following: (1) the expert will make up any losses in Carl's account when trading together; (2) Carl may keep all profits. In return, Carl agrees to (1) start an account with an amount equal to trade the minimum number of contracts in say the ES ($5000); (2) obey all instructions from the expert without fail; and (3) after the account has been tripled ($15,000), Carl will go off on his own and duplicate the result again using one contract prior to adding additional contracts. The expert will not charge any money and will terminate the relationship if Carl fails to obey all instructions. Once the agreement is understood, Carl will monitor the market with the expert and be shown the rudiments of price continuation using the monitoring setup the expert uses. The expert's monitoring setup is a complete display of the market that rules out all surprises. Carl will first learn to anticipate price continuation and then participate during low to no risk periods. The first skill to learn is the fundamental one to participate without risk, not to extract profits. The instruction is to enter the market and exit at breakeven. This is called the wash drill. Initially, the expert will call out the monitoring elements and continuation sequence. When Carl sees and hears "point 3" he will know he must execute. After entry Carl continues to monitor and looks to wash the trade. At no time is Carl instructed to monitor his breathing or regulate his emotions. If he wastes energy and misplaces his focus on those things, he would not be following instructions and be told to go home.

There are no "must read" books for trading. You are gullible if you believe there is a trading book that contains something that a trader cannot do without. And no, knowing the Japanese names of candlesticks and writing about them in English does not make one a trader.

Your contribution to conventional wisdom is prolific.

Moral of the story: stick to trading, bear huntin's too dangerous.

There are beliefs about trading and then there are truths. Aligning the former with the latter is the foundation upon which knowledge, skill, and experience can be built. You are trained to deal with the former. A person who feels anxiety because he doesn't know what he is doing while in a trade is being quite rational. There is nothing to emotionally regulate, as you would say. His emotions are working fine and in actuality being helpful. They are telling him he has no business being in the market unless he intends to make a donation. No amount of professional therapy to "de-couple" what he's feeling from what he's doing changes that fact. If what I say is short sighted to you, it may be because I do not make trading out to be more than what it is to sell to people. You do state a truth that no one at the start is fully equipped to extract. It is also a truth that most will never become equipped regardless of how many hours they spend on a therapist's couch.

Trading has a way of separating incompetents from their money. This does not require a "hidden agenda." The path to being competent is to understand how markets work and to organize oneself to behave in accordance with that understanding. Behavior can be modified through drills. Knowledge, skill, and experience are the results. The common problem facing an incompetent trader is that he is unaware of the magnitude of his incompetence. What he is conscious of is his fear, stress, anxiety, anger, etc. Therein lies the opportunity for vendors such as yourself, who are also unaware.

Assume market continuous function. A: First l2r of channel, p3; failed fbp, cont.; hold or enter @ p3 if not already in. Exit (not reverse) @ ltl and relax during second l2r; reenter @ rtl for either full or small r2l traverse. B: Second channel, decl. pace; low volat l2r after VE on 2nd r2l traverse; anticipate bo of VE rtl and retrace to rtl of channel. If short from ftt of prior channel or p3 of current, exit or reverse into long for wash practice. C: Nontrending after bo of 2nd channel. Centering and high risk. Exit wash trade and sideline.