I don't have an exact date picked yet, but sometime in November I plan to put together a webinar that aims to cover the basics for a beginner trader, including:
Selecting a broker
Selecting a trading platform
Formulating your own particular trading style or methodology
Applying sound risk management for the long run
How to measure yourself in a useful way
Setting realistic goals
Right now I am searching for an appropriate title or name for this webinar. If you have a better suggestion that what I came up with let me know. The intended audience for this webinar is the newer trader that is overwhelmed with where to begin, and needs some help to get going in the right direction.
Now each of these topics could almost be its own entire webinar, but the idea I had was to limit this to 2 hours or less and spend only about 20 minutes per section including Q&A.
The webinar is not designed to make specific recommendations on which broker to choose, or which platform to choose, but is rather designed to help you make an informed decision on your own. I constantly get questions from traders wanting me to recommend to them which platform they should use, or which broker to go with. My aim is to be able to point to this webinar as a basic foundation of ideas so they can then go and make their own informed decisions.
Likewise, I am not going to teach you a trading method, instead I am going to show you how to formulate your own trading style or method that is best suited to your own personality. Again, I constantly receive questions from traders wanting to know where they should start, what instrument should they trade, what type of chart should they use, what trading method works best, etc. My aim is to be able to point to this webinar, and educate these traders enough so they can answer their own questions.
I welcome your feedback, in fact I am counting on it, so don't be shy -- speak up.
some input regarding which broker to choose if one is considering opening one for investment purpose (in stocks) and which broker is the best for non-US folks.
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Talk about defining success. What is success? What length of time? How many trades over that length of time, surely more is better? How much money? Why not just double that figure if you are successful, trade twice as many contracts?
In hindsight, to me the most important thing I could have done better as a beginning trader is to trade simulated longer. Most of us are ready to jump right in and start making money. But trading is an extremely complex skill that requires a lot of patience, practice and study to understand even what type of trader you may be.
If I was going to present a topic to beginning traders, it would put a heavy emphasis on waiting to trade live until you had a proven method for success in simulation. Show how to learn backtesting, show realistic odds of wins vs. losses, give examples of traders who lost everything, offer links on where to find information on the study of market movement, discuss who offers the best simulators and why some are better than others (like TS giving instant fills), explain that there are hundreds of indicators that mean nothing until you learn how to interpret them.
I read something by Mark Cook, where he was lecturing to a group and explained to them that roughly 90% of traders were going to fail. Then he asked for the traders in that room who thought they would be successful to raise their hands. Nearly the whole room raised their hands...
Start a sim trading competition (I thought that was in the works?) Give starting traders a place to compete, be involved with others, feel good and/or feel motivated to try harder, without risking real money.
The next big move is always tomorrow. Having money to ride it with is the key.
I too have been asked this a few times. It's kinda a slippery slope in the sense that when you start giving advise based on your experience. People can tell you know what your talking about and will want to imitate what you are doing. Once it gets out that you trade one market, they will start watching it and want to be just like you even though it's not a good starter market. Its hard for them not to want to trade the market that you are on and so on and so forth.
Learning to trade really takes time. I like the idea and practice of just trading candle bars, Nothing else on your chart but price. It takes time to learn all the bars/patterns, your setup and to get your mind right for the game. It's just like being a pro athlete. Gotta put in the time and learn it for yourself don't expect to be the next Michael Jordan in trading next month. Maybe I'm getting a little ahead of what you want this webinar to be.
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