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www.tradersquawkbox.com professional forex training

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:58 am
by soultrader
Hi folks.

I'd like to introduce to you a new service of professional forex training that is launching soon.

Ive pulled some very talented traders together to form a training room which uses live voice and charts.

I will be one of the trainers to be joined by BBmac Fluty and others that you may not have heard of.

The service will have a cost associated with it however that cost will be low and there will be a two week trial available so you can test it out. The trial will be limited to 50 people at a time so to register your interest and find out more please visit the website www.tradersquawkbox.com

Everyone is welcome.

I hope you will all give the room a chance and give honest reviews in here.

All the best for now

Soultrader

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:39 pm
by jhtumblin
My question to you is this:

Why must professional and talented traders create a business out of teaching people how to trade?

It seems to me if someone truly had knowledge and they also wished to pass this knowledge along, they would find a way to do it for free. Otherwise I personally would just take my talent and trade for myself, creating enough revenue to eliminate the need for a "business" shelter.

I don't want to seem like I'm taking a cheap shot here, but rather really want to know the motive for people who open trading related businesses. This is simply because "training" should be done by those who have more proven grasp of the material than the trainee.

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:43 pm
by soultrader
Hi Jthumblin, thanks for the question.

Your question is basically a few parts

1. why would anyone who can trade have the slightest inclination to teach others?

2. if he / she does have the inclination, why not do it for free?

3. do you really know more about trading than me

4. why should i pay for it.

all i suppose interesting questions to which i answer this.


1.
why wouldnt they? it's human nature to nurture others. we nurture our children the way we ourselves were nurtured. In any work environment people teach each other how to do their job and when someone new comes along thhey teach them also. Teaching something you know well is a form of self actualisation as described by maslow in his http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_h ... y_of_needs

2. This could be a long one.

a) I am a trader. I got into trading to make money and before trading i was an internet businessman and before that a sales rep on the road. My whole working life has been spent in the aquisition of wealth. Money is what has driven me from being unemployed in the 1980's to being very wealthy today. Money has been my driving force during my employment and it has done me well. Money is the base of capitalism and is the basis of an economy. It represents the primary vehicle for a trade. In micro economics i would offer you straw in return for wood, however as ecomomics has grown you may not have what i need but still need what i have to offer. Money is the leveller for this transaction. I like money and I like earning it in whatever way i can. it is a part of my make up.

b) I have given much for free. I have trained individual people to traders many times for free. I have given away training materials i have written for free and in fact i have taught people at my own cost where i have actually paid to help them.

What is the value of something you get for free? Studies have found that human beings in general do not value that which is given freely and merely skip over teachings. The value of something free is seen as ... worthless. The human condition is that we crave items of rarity. A 1962 copy of 'With The Beatles' on a Gold Parlaphone is revered in the music world and very sought after. It is intrinsically worth no more than the black label version yet commands a much higher price because of it's rarity. It is coveted and those who own it look after it and appreciate it.

many black label copies lie in a dusty cupboard with no sleeves.

c) The provision of such a service does have a cost associated with it. The chat room itsself will cost me $500 per month and the talented people that i will be introducing to the room can make much more money trading than teaching, however i feel it is a responsibility to recompence them for training when they could be trading. This is what the lion's share of the membership money will be used for and in my opinion, money well spent. You can choose wether to pay or not.

d) penultimately it is a good job that Mark Douglas, Alexander Elder, W Gann, Elliott, Jones and Nilson did not have the same attitude as yourself. otherwise you and many others may never have had the pleasure of learning about market waves, trend following, multiple timeframe analysis, candlesticks and much more that you take for granted. They did it to teach and for that experience which took years and years they expected a return. Teaching someone may seem like it costs nothing, but what price do you place on my years in the market, my busted accounts and my dealings with banks. What price did that experience and subject matter cost?

d) Something for nothing is worth what it cost.



3.

I don't know wether i know more than you or not. I make money trading for a living as will all the trainers. I manage money and generally provide a healthy return for investors. Ive been everywhere someone my junior has yet to see tho i have not been where my seniors are yet - i don't know what i don't know and will not know until I know it.

4.

you dont have to.

In the end this service is not just about trading and learning to trade. Its a life science. Trading is a lonely game we live in and im lucky enough to know these very talented people. We do get bored with each other at times though and we do like a challenge.

Through teaching others we light the fire in our own trading heart and make life more interesting by meeting others. The passing of information from one generation of traders to the next is important and if building this room helps me meet more people and learn more myself then it's good for us all don't you think?

I hope you understand my answers above and would love to see you in our room - even if it is just for the trial period to see if you like us :)

Take care and good fortune to you all

Soultrader
www.tradersquawkbox.com

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:03 am
by Patch
Hi SoulTrader

Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to answer jth's questions from earlier today. Your answers struck me as containing a wisdom that only comes from experience lived out in the crusible that every successful he or she trader must pass through sooner or later specially designed for the individual's makeup; in my case later and after great costs of time and money invested in essential, must have experiences and necessary education.

The thing you said that resonated with me the most, was your question in 2.d. "but what price do you place on my years in the market, my busted accounts and my dealings with banks. What price did that experience and subject matter cost?" This went straight to my heart. And I add, my heart ache, and the painful losses I've passed through. What price, what value do you the new trader, place on learning from my experience? If I paid in cash, $140,000 in USD, what is the value of my experience to you? And what of the thousands of hours?

And then along comes TRO into my life. The Rumpled One, a man named Avery, came into my life and his motto is that he makes money trading, and shares his programming skills freely to esignal and TS subscribers. Avery is a man who lives out what he believes and is an inspiration to me and many others. I believe with all my heart that Avery is going to turn the trading world up-side-down and on its ear in the next 2 to 5 years.

Lastly and at last Soultrader, I am very interested in your thoughts about auto tradings and controlling emotions in the midst of trades (my biggest problem area). And does auto trading remove the element of emotions in this arena?

Thanks so much SoulT,

Patch the Pirate
In VA

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 7:28 am
by soultrader
Hi Patch and thanks for your kind comments.

With regard to autotrading.

Autotrading is a natural step in the life cycle of a trading system - it is however closer to the last step than the first.

Most who look at autotrading do it like this.

1. find an autotrading strategy / program that others say is good

2. run automated backtests on it to test

3. if the autobacktest says it is good then forward test it and throw some money on

4. spend the rest of the time questioning every trade and closing the ones you dont like.

5. get bored with it and start looking for more autotrading systems.


Now, that's the idle way of doing it and that's what most do. It's easy, free, painless until the real trading comes and utterley, totally pointless.

The right way to look at autotrading is as an extention to a system that you have devised and worked on. using other peoples autotrading strategies is putting the cart before the horse.

This is how it should be done.

1. you devise a strategy

2. you backtest the strategy BY HAND over a long period

3. you tweak the strategy and then re-backtest by hand

4. you analyse the results for flaws, drawdowns, good periods and bad periods. basically you analyse it to death.

5 you then manually trade it for at least 6 months

6. you analyse if the results fit within expectations.

7. you then look at automation, programming and the testing of that also

8. you continue to run tests over a longer period including your live trading and tweak

9 repeat step 8 until strategy fails.


The lesson here is that YOU cannot have the full belief needed to properley trade a system unless you have you own sweat and blood absorbed in that system. the only way to have REAL confidence in a system is if you have tested it yourself and watched it trade by trade across your equity curve.

you need to have some way of deciding that the system has failed (which it will) so that you don't keep on throwing money at something which is dead.

I learned this by doing it. my first auto system which was consistent for 3 years of backtesting and one year real time. - thats 800 trades fully tested and working.

It failed - they all do eventually - the trick is knowing when it's failed and having parameters in place to recognise it.

the second trick is having at least 3 strategies at any one time so that as one fails another takes off.

Autotrading is great - but don't put the cart before the horse. New traders see this wonderful easy autotrading thing as the easy way to riches - in reality it's the manual work beforehand that makes the autotrading work which is most important.

90% of my trading time is spent working on new strategies. My Trading is automatic, wether by robot or manually they are executed automatically if you see what i mean - without emotion.

I put the work into them when i was developing them - that's where your real work lies as a trader, not in the actual trading itself. Most do it the other way around, sweating over trades, staring at charts when they should be clicking buy and sell for just 10 minutes a day and staring at spreadsheets and numbers for the rest of the day.

If trading and developing system were easy then everyone would be millionaires.

Hope this helps.

Soultrader
www.tradersquawkbox.com

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 3:24 pm
by pr
if someone truly had knowledge and they also wished to pass this knowledge along, they would find a way to do it for free.

Why, specifically, is that? IMO, this makes no sense at all. Do you think public school teachers and university professors are idiots or frauds because they accept payment for practicing their profession?

but rather really want to know the motive for people who open trading related businesses.

The motives of people who open trading-related businesses span the same range of motives as for people who open any other kind of business. Isn't that obvious? (It is to me, sorry!) Why would their motives be any different? Motives are as individual as the people they reside in and as common as the need to pay the light bill.

I have to say, I think SoulTrader has been very gracious is providing his own thoughtful answers to questions which evidence little thought on the part of the questioner.

I also think Patch has written in a though-provoking way on the subject of perceived value.

You know, "free" sharing is a wonderful thing, and if you give to your neighbor green peppers from the abundance of your garden, and your neighbor gives you tomatoes from the abundance of hers, then it's a happy thing for both of you. Nevertheless, when you go to the grocery store, you expect to pay for your food in coin of the realm, and you don't call into question the grocer's intelligence, character, or motivation for requiring it! (At least I don't ...)

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 6:11 pm
by cvax
pr.
Are the better teachers/professors the ones that are in it for the money or in it for the love of teaching? Either way the money is just a necessity for them to survive. On the other hand, a successful trader that is now capable of teaching is not strapped for cash to survive thus charging for his/her teachings is to satisfy a desire above that of basic survival. This is probably why jhtumblin questions the motives of SoulTrader. Don't get me wrong though. It is every mans right to seek wealth, but would you rather be taught by someone dedicated to education or dedicated to making money for themselves? This is not to say SoulTrader does not care for the betterment of his clients. It is just a case and point made as a generalization.

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 9:51 pm
by Patch
Hi cvax

TRO has had a hugh impact on my thinking in this area of trading and the buying and selling of trading aids and information. I wonder, if I was making real money trading, how much would I sell my method for? If I added my $150k inherantance I lost right off the bat due to my greed and a crook broker, the years and $60,000 in buying systems and indicators for more years than I want to admit, et. al. I ask, what should I offer a simple system to make forex profits for?

To answer your question, I personally perfer learning how to trade from a man or woman who is first and foremost a successful and profitable trader. I chose trading after reading Stock Market Wizards, because I figured if so and so can make a substantial income trading the markets, so can I. I just have to learn what they know. I love people and being with em, and I am trading to make a sizable profit, slowly and as fast as I can slowly. The weekend Katrina hit New Orleans I was in Chicago with a very good trader and he was entertaining, and a good hearted teacher, I spent some tuition money and tuition time, and came home and hadn't learned anything I could really use to trade profitabley, without discretion.

And all I've wanted to do for many years is learn a simple method to trade profitably. That is all. If it costs money, so be it. If it doesn't, so be it. I want results.

Patch the Pirate
In VA

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:39 am
by jhtumblin
cvax hit the nail on the head. There is a huge difference between those who are truly qualified to profit from teaching others, and those who teach as a way to profit because they can play the part. Of course i'm not throwing soultrader into either one of these categories because I have no knowledge of his operations. However, I have been around the business, and I more often than not see people trying to take advantage of others with their self proclaimed "knowledge."

I am a successful trader, and I try never to offer my knowledge to others unless it is dually requested, especially not for a fee. The reason for this is because even if I know for a fact that I am talking to a greenhorn who has never placed a trade in their life, I can never assume that my advice is going to be better than their own analysis. I have seen many traders speak the wisdom yet they can't trade their way out of a paper bag, and that, to me, is no wisdom at all.

On the other hand, when ideas are shared openly, with no fees attached, the only person who can be held liable ethically, is the person who acts upon that information. This is what is so great about Kreslik and what Avery and Michal do. Here, ideas are completely open to scrutiny and testing by the masses to determine their validity. I think we all agree that there is no "holy grail" in existence, and if someone had an idea or method which was even close to it, we again agree that it wouldn't be available for a "subscription fee" if it was available at all.

So in closing, once again I am not taking a shot at soultrader. It does however boggle my mind how many people think their teachings are worth paying for. This goes for every aspect of life, not just trading. Especially in trading though, I personally seem to notice a lot of MDs who can't diagnose the common cold.

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:09 pm
by soultrader
well, for those who want to find out for themselves we are now processing free trial memberships - just see the website www.tradersquawkbox.com and fill in the form at the bottom of the page

Take care y'all