Those familiar with my blog will know I’m a big sports fan (you can read a recent post on sports and trading here). Now I cannot say I’m a hard core fan of one sports team, as I have a few and enjoy some. But more importantly, I’m a fan of sports, particularly professionals. These are the top in their profession, and every time I see them, I learn something.
They have trained for thousands of hours. They work on every aspect of their game. The best work tirelessly to take things to the next level, and yet consistently practice the basics.
I appreciate the wisdom they show to us, their athleticism, and their mindset of success.
Now along those lines, what do Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, and Georges St. Pierre have in common besides what I listed above?
They all work with coaches and mentors. Tiger has one coach he works with, Peyton has several, and Georges can have up to 20! Yep, the best in their field who are paid millions yearly to do what they do, work with coaches.
No champion or elite athlete reaches their top performance levels without coaching and mentoring.
NOTE: For a couple of good books on elite performers, training and mentorship, check out these books by Coyle and Colvin.
Now the next natural question to be asked is, ‘why do you think trading is any different?‘
It’s not, and there is a reason for this. Woods has spent his entire life perfecting his golf skills, yet works with a coach daily. Peyton is setting records this year at age 37, yet trains with several coaches. Georges is a record setting UFC champion with 4 different black belts. He too has coaches.
Hopefully this is clarifying why you should be working with a mentor as well.
I recently heard the most ridiculous argument that everything you need to learn about forex trading you could on the net. How ridiculous! If that were the case, why would banks spend hundreds of thousands each year training their traders? Why would Top hedge fund traders working with $250m (million) books+ have coaches and mentors they work with? It should be painfully obvious why.
I myself work with several people. There are two I work with specifically on my trading mindset and am about to add a third. I have a programmer with a graduate degree in financial modeling I consult with for risk models and money management strategies. I pay these people a lot of money, but there is a specific reason I work with them. Simply put – they enhance my performance, help me see things I am missing, and provide support along the way.
How to Find A Trading Mentor
If I had to break it down simply how to find a trading mentor, I would suggest looking at a few things;
1) Does their teaching style make sense to you and what they are saying clarify things?
2) Can they simplify things without making them to basic or freshman?
3) Do they respond quickly to all your questions and seem supportive?
4) Do they offer insights beyond trade setups, such as building a successful mindset, and obtaining the proper skill set?
If they offer the four above, and you have a good feeling about them, then that is someone to work with. Now whether you choose me or not, is less important to me personally. What is more important is finding the right person for you.
Regardless of who that inidividual is, find someone to coach, mentor and train you as it will definitely accelerate your learning curve, and increase your chance for success. There is a difference between being interested and being passionate about trading. Look behind all elite performers across all fields, and you will almost always find a mentor.
One more thing I’d like to mention before going that Tiger, Peyton and Georges all have in common. They all train incessantly and are constantly working on their game.
Tag Archive for: peyton manning
Let’s face it – not everyone has the ability to sit down for hours a day building their trading skills. Many of you have full time jobs, families, etc., yet still want to participate in the market.
If this is you, I generally recommend using forex set and forget trading strategies to trade the market. This is done by using rule based systems for to find your entries, exits, stops, & take profit levels. The ‘rules’ save you time as you just have to spot the conditions for a legitimate setup, then put in your order.
The problem is, the more popularized version of this ‘set it and forget it‘ investing style is to set your trades and then ‘walk away’. Perhaps you go read a book, golfing, or hang out on the beach. This is a completely ridiculous idea which actually harms your learning curve.
In this article, I’m going to share the major flaw in set it and forget it forex investing, then explain how you can accelerate your learning curve.
Walking Away – The Major Flaw
Let’s say you only have 2 hours per day to analyze & trade the market. According to the more popularized version of ‘walking away’, you spend say 30 mins to find your setups, put your trades in, then do something else.
Why does this harm your learning curve? Because you already have two hours set aside for trading. If you walk away after 30 minutes, you are missing out on 1.5 hours of screen time and an opportunity to build your skills.
I know what you are thinking – if you have no more trade setups, why sit at the charts?
Wow – great idea. So if I’m not actually in a golf tournament – I shouldn’t practice my golf swing? If I’m not playing a live baseball game, I shouldn’t go to the batting cage, or work on drills, or throws? Ridiculous – and I hope you can see this as well.
What You Can Do Differently
Perhaps your strategy trading pin bars with trend. You have no more setups for the day as you’ve put in your one trade. Does that mean you cannot increase your screen time or learning process? No, have two hours, so USE IT. How so?
Get Trade Interceptor or Forex Tester 2 where you can go back historically to any point in time & trade price action doing live forward simulation testing. Trading pin bars with trend, open up a daily chart several years back on your favorite or weakest pair. In testing mode, it will move the actual bars at a speed workable for you & of your choice.
Anytime you have a pin bar setup that meets your qualifications – trade it the way you normally would your real system. This will give you both increased reps and screen time – both of which will enhance your learning curve. In an hour of live forward simulation trading, you could actually trade 30-50+ pin bars.
What will this do? It will;
a) Enhance your pattern recognition skills
b) Build neural networks in your brain to recognize high probability setups using your strategy
c) Give you more practice and execution using your method, which will
d) When it comes to live trading, increase the chance you just pull the trigger with less emotions or analysis paralysis
By Comparison
What does the person who ‘walks away’ from their computer, gain during their remaining time? Nothing! They build no screen time, have weaker neural circuits for making trading decisions or pulling the trigger, let alone pattern recognition skills.
Yet the trader who practices that extra 1.5 hours doing live forward simulation trading will improve at a much faster rate.
A Top Professional
Just recently, I got a perfect reinforcement of this from a top professional. Peyton Manning is one of the best quarterbacks in this generation – perhaps top 10 of all time. He’s 37 and is still playing at a top level.
Yesterday he was in a high intensity back and forth game that went down to the last two minutes to decide the winner. He’d score – then the other team would score, quarter after quarter, both taking the lead at some point. He just scored the 4th touchdown of the day to take an 11 point lead. What was he doing right after this? Take a look at the photo below.
Is he ‘walking away‘ watching the time go by till his next drive? Nope. What is he doing?
Looking at the plays they just made on the winning drive. He’s looking at the formation of the opposing defense, analyzing what he could exploit, what mistakes they are making, etc. This is maximizing your time.
He’s one of the best ever, yet he’s not ‘walking away‘ from the game. He’s engaging in it every moment he can, looking for patterns, reviewing plays, looking to spot what he missed earlier.
This is what you should be doing if you are trading set and forget strategies – using every moment you have. Each practice trade you do on Forex Tester 2 is like an extra lap on the track. Who do you think gets faster and more conditioned? The person who does 2-3 laps per week, or the runner who does 30+ a day? Rhetorical question – but had to ask.
So don’t be a ‘lazy trader’ and just ‘walk away’ as you’re just losing valuable screen time to do more laps. Utilize your time to the max. Trading, is just like any skill as you need practice, lots of screen time, & a successful mindset.
By doing using your time doing live simulation testing and reviewing trades, you are accelerating your learning curve, creating stronger neural networks for trading, and building screen time which is critical to trading success.