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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I am a total "newbie" in the Forum, (have been trading for years) but wanted to get my feet wet so to speak and saw your post and wanted to reply.
I think that you have accurately represented the major questions/issues that new traders need to address. A trader can't even begin to follow the market or trade in sim without solving the first two items on the list.
In regards to "Formulating your own particular trading style or methodology"; If most new traders were like me, they didn't have a clue how to do this, or what this meant. Maybe starting off, it would be good for a new trader to understand that there are as many good trade strategies as there are good traders. If you've seen one, you've seen one. What I mean by this is that early on, it would have been more helpful if I understood that trading really is personal and I needed to focus on what made sense to me, not how to emulate another trader. Maybe that is what this topic is referring to. If so, I think that this is right on.
In regards to: "Applying sound risk management for the long run", it may be enough that a new trader understand that the road to profitability is paved through sound risk management, meaning that managing risk is what new traders should be learning, and not focusing on the profit. Learn to manage risk effectively and the profit will take care of itself. I'm not suggesting that a new trader trade not to lose, but rather that they begin early to develop the habits of discipline when the market isn't doing what they thought that it would. I blew up several accounts, early on specifically because I did not build a foundation of discipline in my risk management. I kept thinking that price would eventually turn around and I could get out of the trade. I guess that a lot of times traders just need to learn this the hard way.
Anyway, I wanted my first post to be "helpful", since this is what this forum seems to be all about.
As for a name, I thought of a few:
The Art of the Start
START HERE (keeping it simple)
Guidelines/Instructions for New Traders
"In the beginning..." (I stole that from somewhere else)
How to Start Your Trading Career
Great idea to help those that are starting out. It can certainly be intimidating. Thank you for your work!!!
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I think this a great idea for a webinar but I think its getting the cart before the horse so to speak. A better place to start for a beginner would be to start with the mental game. Perhaps some straight up input from successful futures.io (formerly BMT) members in terms of what they would personally change about HOW they became successful and what turned the light bulbs on for them.
The method, broker, data feed, etc are all important but ancillary from where I sit.
Just some random thoughts.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
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I just finished a radio interview with a Clear Channel station in Dallas. Here are the notes I prepared for that interview, they may be helpful on this subject.
a) Searching for the Holy Grail
-> Why does everyone continually search externally for the holy grail? What I mean by this is they continually
are searching for someone to sell them systems, indicators or live chat room services so that they can copy
or mimic trades in order to hopefully one day be profitable. The holy grail is within you, it is not something
you can go out and buy.
- seek out a trading room service to tell them when to enter a trade
- buy a system that trades for them
- automation, to eliminate emotion because they've realized they don't follow their own rules
- buy indicator packages that tell them when to trade
- indicator packages that "filter" out bad trades
- chart ends up being over loaded with indicators, you can barely see price
- full of oscilators that conflict with each other, histograms, all kinds of moving averages
- new thing is exotic bar types like Renko and variations to "filter noise" and "smooth things out"
- left with such conflicting information you can literally be overwhelmed, the "deer in headlights" type of a moment
where you are frozen, unable to make trading decisions
b) Common rookie mistakes
-> Most new traders enter the market asking how much money they can make, instead of asking how much money they
can lose. On top of that, most of them have no trading plan whatsoever and can't even describe to you their stop
loss or profit target in reproducible terms without using emotion or feelings, like "I'll get out when it turns
against me".
- trading with scared money
- maybe you lost your job, and now you want to make trading work for you
- maybe your in a dead end job, and you want supplemental income
- this is income you can't afford to lose, also known as trading with rent money or scared money
- anyone that has ever played with a trade simulator knows how easy it is to make money
- many traders trade on sim for months, even a year or more, just racking up sim dollars
- then they go to cash, and lose everything
- they don't follow the same trading rules they followed in sim
- they let their emotions take control, and they start altering their trading method
- they are blind to what is happening, so instead of trying to work on improving their execution
on cash vs sim, they instead start modifying the trading method that served them so well on sim
- before you know it, they have completely abanonded the method that was profitable on sim and are now
trading a new method on cash that they have not backtested or forward tested, which makes it impossible
to have the necessary confidence in the method to be able to trade it well
c) Setting yourself up for success, not failure
-> To be a successful trader for the long haul, you need to make smarter trading decisions than your peers. You
can't expect to open a $500 forex account and turn that into $5,000. Likewise, you can't expect to open a $25,000
futures account and earn $1,000 a week from your trades. These are things that beginners constantly try to do,
and this is why we have a 90% failure rate in this industry. You need to set realistic goals for yourself and make
sure you have positioned yourself for success.
- so what can you do? well for one, there is no black or white answer, hey go to this website
and now you are a successful trader, or go buy this book and now you can make money trading
- you must create your own method so that you can fully understand it and so that you have complete
confidence in it. You can take bits and pieces from others, but you need to wrap everything up in a neat
little package as your own style of trading.
- you need to be realistic, it will take years to be a consistently profitable trader. You will spend
enormous amounts of money along the way, better viewed as your tuition or education expenses, and you'll
also spend enormous amounts of your time.
- don't trade with scared money. scared money tends to try and trade smaller and smaller, meaning you use smaller
stops, smaller charts, small time frames. Losing is painful so you are trying to minimize the pain by making the stop
smaller. In reality, you are trading noise. You aren't trading price, you aren't trading the instrument or the market,
you are trading so small that you are just trading noise.
- trade bigger time frames, bigger charts. Use bigger stops and targets, like maybe a 5 day average range.
- that said, minimize your risk in terms of dollars. don't trade full sized futures contracts. instead trade micro forex
futures on CME, or trade spot forex through a highly reputable broker. Now you are trading 10 cents a pip instead of
$12.50 a tick on full sized futures accounts. You can also trade equities or ETF's and control your share size, but
you'll need 25k in your account if you want to enter and exit the same position daily, to meet pattern day trader
rules.
How big is your account? What are you going to trade? I moved around when it comes broker. I found IB is reasonable and it fits my need.
I use IB to trade stocks, Option and ETF. I want to trade the emini S&P in the future.
From a newbie trading point of view, everything you mentioned Mike was true and inspirational. However, I look at it a little different. I beleive that looking to buy, invest, copy or follow other succefull traders doesn't always lead to ultimate failure, like every other art you need to learn from somebody , learn their technique what they look for and try it out. I think everyone must've started somehow by copying, comparing and learning others way of trading and slowly develop their own method . I personaly think if the following is offered to a starting trader, it will definitely help a great deal . I know it's all available at futures.io (formerly BMT) and IM very thankful.
1- definition of price action etc.
2- definition of charts patterns and formation etc.
3- build 3 to 4 charts with several indicators each and explicitly explain how to import them
4- explain what to look on each chart for signals to buy or sell.( good example is Perry's tradind webinar)
5- explain each chart what time frame or range or tick to use
6- build 3 to 4 different simplified money management strategies, risk reward, profit target and stops etc.
7- try each chart on sim for few weeks, then open all and sim tradng for few weeks to see what chart and strategie works best with your personality
8- i'll add few points later on IM sure.
I think this is a good start and later on they'll develop their own charts, strategies, techniques and methods and make it closer to their personality.
Please nobody go by what I said IM just thinking out loud.
Wish everyone a nice Thanksgiving.
Peace,
Robert
As I work on each of these in more detail, I am now leaning towards breaking it up into multiple webinars and just focusing on a couple of topics per webinar. The entire webinar series will still be "Where to start?", with the same theme, but I think it is better to have multiple webinars that are shorter than one marathon webinar.
Is it possible to be long-term profitable by trading only simple directional trades? For example, trading 'long ES' or 'short oil' etc. Just a simple directional trade, which either you or your trading strategy …
I would be very interested in a webinar with the info listed in the original post.
I am just starting and I would like to see all of the questions answered. I have been studying CS chart reading, and I have done a little Sim Trading on NT, but I really do not know where to go from here.
I do not want to learn how to use one charting device and then find that this is not the best to use. I also have no idea how to choose a broker. What should i look for, what should i avoid? What are reasonable fees?
Please keep yhis post updated. The links listed above were very helpful as well.
That's a good idea, a webinar to educate the newcomers.
For me personally the best and only book/course that was capable of showing me the business side of trading was the The Art and Craft of Trading by Rich Leonardi. He has also this same course available in .mp3 (for free) at Squawk Trader.
He explains in detail his trading strategy (not system). The money management chapter is by far the simplest and the most easiest MM I have ever read. He gives all the math necessary to retrieve all the data you need to know to trade in the most secure environment possible.
After spending thousands of dollars in books and courses I never thought that a simple ebook would be the one finally able to open the doors to heaven
Trading is more than charts and indicators, is above all a business and if we don't know how to run a business we are half way to ruin.
If I become half a percent smarter each year, I'll be a genius by the time I die
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THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
THE WEBINARS ARE ALWAYS RECORDED.
....
Success requires no deodorant! (Sun Tzu)
The following user says Thank You to sam028 for this post:
I sincerely apologize Mike. I registered for the webinar and I really wanted to participate. But I couldn't make it. That was an important webinar for me as I am Canadian and the selections of broker and platform is definitely restricted. Presently I trade Scotia iTrade using an RRSP account, so only Canadian stocks. I definitely wanted to talk about different platforms and different instruments. Again, my sincere apologies.
We had about 200 people in the webinar, so a good amount of questions asked. Not as many as I expected, so I guess the presentation answered most of them
Great webinar.
Really, really good.
I've lost 15 minutes of it, since it was dinner time here, but I will watch those 15 min right after you post it, since you were talking about trading SIM accounts.
Looking forward for the next ones...
Regards.
If I become half a percent smarter each year, I'll be a genius by the time I die
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When trading spot forex, you need to use your brokers data feed because it will be the only one that has the correct and valid price for them as an ECN.
When trading currency futures on the CME FX, if your broker doesn't provide the backfill or quality data you wish, you can use DTN IQFeed (compatible with all major platforms), or if you use NinjaTrader then Kinetick which is IQFeed rebranded and less expensive for NT users. I've used eSignal in the past and would recommend DTN instead, but do your own homework and reach your own conclusions.
As I said in the webinar, some platforms take on the duty of giving users historical backfill. Sierra Chart is one. NinjaTrader does as well, but only for Zen Fire customers unfortunately (not TradingTechnologies customers). Sierra Chart provides quality backfill to all Sierra customers regardless of broker, a nice bonus.
I know that I am late to the party with this response - but so what!
When I started out, I was looking for the Perfect Instrument, The Right combination of charts, the Best combination of indicators and backed tested every indicator in my collection to give me the Optimum settings.
After doing this for a couple of years (I can be a slow learner), I began to realize this approach was getting me nowhere.
I hired a teacher. The teacher taught me a lot - it was worth the cost - but I was still not satisfied.
So I decided to try something different.
I picked an instrument, ES (I like the volatility and volume)
I played around with charts - and eventually realized it doesn't make too much difference what you decide on - I use a 104 and 416 tick chart.
I realized that I like short term predictable trades, so I decided to Scalp.
I used a simple indicator - an EMA
And then I started.
I watched my charts and began to understand what the Market was doing.
I became intimate with ES
I began to understand my EMA.
In other words I just committed to something and worked it.
Since then my understanding has grown exponentially - and I am finally becoming a successful trader.
The best advice that you could give a trader - is to start somewhere, anywhere and just work with your decisions. Ask questions; what is the market doing, why did my trade fail, is my Risk/Reward balanced correctly for current activity (who gives a crap about the perfect stop, or optimization, or which time frames to use, or whether you swing or scalp or ...)
If you made a profit but left money on the table - So What - You Made a Profit! If a profitable trade turns into a loss - Shame On You - Greed WON! If you miss a profitable setup - learn to wait because there will be more.
When I designed TRex Trader - I really had no idea where to start - so I picked (what I thought was) the obvious place - I designed a chart. Then I installed feeds, then a collection of indicators, then an analyzer - and so on....It all fell into place. I have redesigned TRex numerous times - each iteration better then the previous one.
The only way to refine your trading skills, is to acquire skills that you can refine.
Start somewhere, anywhere, and work from that point - if you have the patience and the smarts, then the questions will become obvious and hopefully you will be able to answer them - if not, you always have Big Mike's Trading Forum!
,...Gustav
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Hi Big Mike,
I listened carefully to the webinar and actually you did not mention from which company you lease you remote server (you read this question at the end saying that you had discussed it earlier).
Could you share with us please?
Philippe
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Dedicated servers from Steadfast. You can also rent VPS's from @sam028 as he offers VPS to futures.io (formerly BMT) users, he uses Steadfast but will be cheaper than a dedicated server.
One More vote for the VPS from @sam028. I took the trial test and loved it. I will be renting one just as
soon as I am ready to return to live trading. @sam028 is pleasant and helpful also.
AJ
Nashville, Tennessee
"Life On The Edge of SR"
The following user says Thank You to tderrick for this post:
If you want a VPS with no specific co-location requirement (*), you can also have a look at OVH in a near future. They are settling in North America. I have been using them in France for 8 months (**). Quite nice.
Nicolas
(*) I mean: you want something reliable and fast, but you are not specifically performing high frequency trading requiring to be as close as possible to the exchange.
(**) I have all my trading applications on the VPS (feed, platform, broker, etc.), and not on my personal computer.
Make sure you are using the latest version of Flash, and disable any third party add-ons or blockers on your browser. You might also try from a different location (home vs work or vice versa).
I want to announce that "Where to start as a trader (Part II: Trading Platforms)" will occur on Thursday, January 17th @ 4:30 PM Eastern US.
Yes I realize it has been a whole year later. My bad.
But the important thing is, we can move forward to Part II now. I will be putting together a presentation that talks about how to select a trading platform when you really aren't sure where to start. I am going to try to do my absolute best to be impartial and just demonstrate the facts about different platform choices, and why one platform might be better than another depending on your trading style and your own requirements.
If anyone has any particular items they would like for me to focus on in "Part II: Trading Platforms", please post to this thread so I can consider it as I create the material.
I will open up registrations for the webinar as we get closer to the date.
I want to ask if theres a platform out there that caters to the price action trader. Most offer very sophisticated stuff that a price action trader dont use.
Thanks
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I've notice more and more traders adopting price action on this forum and removing those complicated indicator. Forum members evolved together and looking at something simple and requires just drawing tools to identify support and resistance to make a trade.
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I checked out the webinar. I think you did a good job.
I converted it to a number of WAV files and transferred those to 2 CDs which I plan on
mailing to my friend out east. There is little to actually see compared to what there is to
hear, and he has a 70 minute one way drive to work, so he might check them out. HE would
be a great addition to the forum. He's thinking about trading full time in 2013 if all goes well.
He has only traded stocks with his system but I really think if he gets into this full time he will
move to perhaps futures and/or other stuff. To me, that is the reasonable progression.
To me, the minimum definition, would be making enough in trading to cover all of ones bills, but
not luxuries.
To be very successful would be making enough in trading to cover all of ones bills, and yet have
extra left over. (Whether that goes to trading 2 contracts instead of 1, or buying a Cadillac, or something
philanthropic is another matter.)
Something I heard years ago went along the lines of: Your trading profits should be robust and consistent.
That sounds good, though that's not something that can be evidenced until X amount of time has passed.
Perhaps after a minimum of 3 years of trading???
- Stephen
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I agree with you. The perfect platform to me would one that is rooted in an authentically object oriented architecture. A platform that would offer distinct parts where charting, programming and indicators capabilities would be separated to name a few. You would buy what you need, nothing more. It's like any word processing application. Who needs all the bells and whistles that come with them? I am sure developers would make more money selling the various parts if that would be in their marketing plan.
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I'm going to have to delay my own webinar a bit, sorry. As some of you may know, I've been fighting a respiratory illness for over six months now, and it has taken a lot out of me. I thought I finally had got past it late November early December, only for it to resurface a couple of days after Christmas with a vengeance and really do some damage on me. So the last few weeks have been very tough, and I've had no time to prepare for a webinar scheduled this week.
I'll update again when I get this more under control.
Health is more important.
Do the webinar when you get better.
Maybe you might want to consult Chinese physician/doctor for your respiratory problem.
I know it may not be too widely accepted in the West but it works well in the East.
God bless.
I was wondering if you can let people know if there's a difference in the use of platforms depending on if the person is trading from the US, Canada, Europe or another country.
And hope you recover soon. The respiratory illnesses can last a while sadly ><
Part II will be on my short list once the June 4-year events (18 of them) are completed. That is why I've left it on the upcoming calendar, to remind me...
Long time trader here looking to make an overdue switch to a new platform. Since the options out there are completely overwhelming, this Webinar would be a great way to get a grasp on things. The forum has lots of info but a video with everything gathered under one roof would be awesome.
I look forward to seeing this come together
BTR
If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you....The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son. - Kipling
I'm assuming there is no part two. I've searched through the webinars and can't seem to find it. Is there another webinar that covers the same topics?
Thanks,
Brian
If you want to start on the right foot, as a trader or a good decision maker in all aspects, you become practical and pragmatical. If you learn the true definition of both, and apply them in real life, you would by far (in my personal opinion) make better decisions.
When you become practical and pragmatical you move from the realm of hope to the realm of reality.
This is when you question ideas that look good on paper and ask if things would be the same in real life.
It is not an easy task to be practical and pragmatical because the sense of hope leads us in a different direction.
Look at many moves you have made as a trader: courses you bought, methods you applied and traders you tried to copy just to realize that you have adopted practices you could not execute.
You will eventually find your way as your own decision maker, but the path to practicality starts with you rejecting 90% of ideas being thrown at you.
Good luck,
Matt
Trading futures and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. You may lose more than your initial investment. All posts are opinions and do not claim to be facts. Please conduct your own due diligence. Use only Risk capital when trading Futures.
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Hey Mike, I was hoping you had a video about yourself, your background, how you got into trading, how you progressed to becoming successful, the things you tried that worked and that didn't work, how you prepare yourself for the trading day, what setups you use to enter, how you scale in, how you scale out, when you stop trading, etc.
It's not that I want to copy you, I just find it interesting to hear other people's stories. If you don't want to do a video on it, maybe you can point me to forum pages where you discuss this stuff. Your website is huge and something like this would take me forever to find.
I watched video 1 and I just figured out that videos 2 through 6 were never completed. I realize this is thread is now pretty old and I'm sure other priorities have gotten in the way, but I think you should reconsider finishing this series. I was really looking forward to part 3,4 and 5.
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The "where to start as a trader" is simply excellent work! I was just so moved to see the quality of info n the great intent you put in. HIGHLY HIGHLY APPRECIATED! I was hoping if you would continue to finish making all these awesome webinars. I know you made it years ago but I just feel like giving you the words that your efforts to help others are well spent n I'm sure so many newbies would be very grateful. Thanks so much again.
