How do you find a day trading mentoring program that will actually teach you how to be a successful trader? How do you know who is the real deal and who is a pretender? Is someone simply charging a fortune trying to be ‘reassuringly expensive’?
You also don’t want to pay your money, watch a few pre-recorded videos and have the occasional email exchange. That doesn’t cut it. The mentor to student relationship is very important and demands commitment and time from both sides.
In this article I’m going to tell what the things you need to be looking out for if you are looking for that extra level of education. I’m also going to be telling you the things you need to avoid.
After that I am going to tell you how I structure mentoring based on successfully mentoring many students over the years. I have seen what works and evolved my process to be highly effective. You want to learn to trade and it revolves around that.
Individual mentoring needs
Of course there are some things that are universally consistent and true. A good example being trading psychology when it comes to essential trading skills like taking losses and running winners. A part of my approach to developing a student’s psychology is to have them watch our 7-part psychology series, but that’s just a foundation to developing their trading discipline and patience. It’s not enough on its own.
Every trader is unique. That includes you. There are so many variables in trading such as:
- What instruments you want to trade,
- Your approach and appetite for risk,
- What time frames you want to trade,
- What strategies you want to trade,
- How many trades you want to take,
- How large your account size is,
- How much time you have you trade.
Numerous trading experiments have shown that a ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t work.
Forget the classroom
Classrooms are inefficient. You have to travel to them and they cost money. Who do you think pays for the cost of them? You do. Classroom sessions are nearly always groups. Teaching a group is not mentoring in my eyes.
Ignore anyone who calls a classroom a ‘trading floor’. A ‘trading floor’ doesn’t consist of a few computers and charts.
You should learn in the environment that you are going to learn in. It’s the 21st century, let’s use the internet.
1 on 1 lessons
One on one mentoring is the foundation of the student’s success. Make sure your mentor is offering you one on one sessions. This should usually occur over video chat. In-person meetings are possible but it’s usually more efficient to use something like Skype to undertake these lessons. This is how I do my one on one mentoring. Primary because I need to be able to share my trades and charts from my computer.
The first one on one session should consist of the mentor finding out what their student’s trading experience and what needs they have. That includes all the variables and more I mentioned above.
From your point of view you need to have a think about some important aspects. What are you expectations? What goals do you have?
You need to discuss these things from the start to form a solid foundation for your relationship.
Your mentor has to be a trader
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? I’m sure, well at least I hope, that you don’t need telling this industry is full of scammers and pretenders. People who will try to lure you in with the promises of quick riches and trading bling.
This is massive red flag and you should obviously ignore this. Trading is hard work and requires serious commitment. If your mentor doesn’t tell you this then avoid.
You need to ask the question, ‘Is the person teaching me actually trading themselves? Are they an experienced trader? Are they a professional trader?’
The second related question is, ‘Are they willing to trade in front of me?’
I answer both of those questions by running (with my two trading partners) a live trading room and have done so since 2013.
This for me provides essential credibility as one key aspect of mentoring is being a role model. Adults learn from seeing other adults do. My students seeing me actually trade is of paramount importance.
Trading mentor. They person working with you needs to be a trader and a mentor.
Beware of upselling
When you pay for mentoring, that should be all you pay. You shouldn’t be subject to later fees or hidden extras at a later date. Beware of this tactic. It’s often used by people who are more interested in marketing than helping you.
The essential education
There are three essential blocks to trading that you need to be taught. .
1) Profitable strategies
If you’re not being taught strategies that have an edge and work in the real market (as opposed to over-optimised back-testing that won’t work going forward). If you aren’t going to have an edge, then there’s no foundation. No starting point. No basis in which to begin the journey. Want to see what a profit strategy looks like? Take a look at this swing trading strategy.
2) Rock-solid trading psychology
Once you have profitable trading strategies, you need to be able to execute them properly. Execution is everything. If you hesitate, jump the gun, run you losses, cut your winners and generally don’t stick to your trading plan, then it matters not how good your strategies are. You won’t make money.
This is an area massively neglected by traders. It’s much more interesting to focus on technical analysis, indicators and other ‘exciting’ parts of trading.
Be under no illusion, if you do not invest the time and energy to educate yourself on trading psychology, you will fail.
3) Recording and analysis
A major area that is neglected by traders is the recording an analysis of their trades. There aren’t many things we control with trading. We have no control over the market’s movement, which is the thing that we often spend too much time focusing upon. We have control over when we get in and out of the market, and what we use to make the decisions to get in and out. It’s also essential for money management.
Recording and analysis is a big part of what we control and provides us with an objective view of our trading and allows us to make improvements to our trading strategies and identify areas of trading psychology for improvement.
Help and support
Another essential part of the trading mentor and student relationship is support. The mentor needs to be accessible and flexible in this respect. Some students like frequent contact, others like to save a few things up and then get in touch. It depends on their personality types and learning styles.
Email isn’t good enough these days. No when there are things like Skype, WhatsApp and Telegram.
You need to be able to contact your mentor to keep your development moving in the right direction. Your lifestyle and circumstances are as important as your trading style.
How I do it
Ok, so I’ve told you what to look for and what to avoid. Let me describe the Trade Room Plus mentoring program we’ve developed and fine-tuned over many years. I know this system works and greatly helps traders to become successful.
Before there is any commitment I like to speak to the potential student. I need to know they are going to put in the time and effort to match mine. If not, they greatly reduce their success. I also want to make sure they have realistic expectations about trading. Anyone who thinks they are going to get rich quick or breeze their way to trading success through some magic formula isn’t the right sort of student.
Once the student and I have decided to work together, I want to know all about them in the first one on one session.
I want to know their trading goals and desires and their trading experience. I want to know about their wins and losses. Have they blown accounts? Recorded their trades? Where is there trading psychology at? What are their motivations for trading? What got them interested in it? When had they started trading?
So many questions, but it’s about setting things up properly from the start. The more I understand them, the more I can help them.
Step three: The courses and live room
At this stage I will have the student start to watch our Master Trader Course, our Trading Psychology Course, trading strategy videos and other material in our members’ area. They can do this at their own pace. These courses provide them with what they need to succeed.
Of course access to our live trade room and telegram channel.
It’s at this stage I’ll purchase the student a trade log from EdgeWonk. We’ll then talk about how it needs to be completed and what trade data they should be recording. This is the foundation of the student’s recording and analysis. It also allows me to review the log and provide critical feedback. Having someone (who knows what they are doing!) looking at your trading is highly valuable.
Now I don’t define how many one on one sessions I’ll have with a student. I like to think I am available whenever they need (obviously within reason). Some one on one sessions will be structured i.e. months, one, three, six, nine and twelve. Others will be more casual. “Simon do you have 30 minutes to speak this week?” etc.
These sessions revolve around what the student needs. It may be me showing my charts and recent trades and explaining the strategies behind them. It may be analysing the markets, going through their trade log with them, talking about a specific area of psychology.
This is why a rigid, or ‘classroom’ approach to mentoring doesn’t work. It requires an individual approach for an individual person.
Day trading mentoring program
We’re asked whether we offer a day trading mentoring program. The answer us ‘yes’. This falls within offering you what you need to fulfill your trading goals and trading desires. We teach swing trading, longer-term strategies, strategies that work across the Forex, index gold, oil and stock markets.
A couple of points though.
Firstly, you need enough time to day trade. This comes back to being realistic. You are not going to be able to day trade if you’re working 9-5 and trying to trade from your mobile.
Conclusion
There is much to consider when assessing if you want to work with a trading mentor. Remember they need to be realistic with you and be willing to put in the time and effort to help you reach your goals. The sessions should be one on one. A group doesn’t give you the focus you deserve.
If you want to find out more about our mentoring program, then please contact us on WhatsApp or Telegram and we can go through step one (which is free!).
Here is our membership page for you to look at, too!
Another great post. Informative and well explained. I think that a certain amount can be learned in the classroom but as you rightly say, you can only learn trading by doing and you will def. need a good mentor to help you along the way. To use an analogy you can read a book and pass your theory test but you cant drive, ( classroom education) You can get in a car and figure out how to drive but chances are you will fail (trading on your own) so you need an instructor to help you along your way! (Trading mentor)
Thanks Wayne. Problem with this industry is most instructors can’t drive.
Great article, I think what you said scam artist on the internet I have paid money to these people. I am interested i will be speaking to you soon KEEP up the great stuff you doing I only be in here very little time and so far you have not ask or send any dogy offers
GREAT WORK KEEP IT UP
Thank you