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Hate Your Mentors


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Hate Your Mentors

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 Jaguar52 
NY + NY/USA
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Ninja
Broker: Optimus Futures- Rithmic
Trading: CL, 6E
Posts: 236 since Nov 2009
Thanks Given: 11
Thanks Received: 1,270

In this business past performance is no guarantee of future results. All traders go through highs and lows, draw downs, bad trades, series of bad trades, good trades, great trades, and make all kinds of mistakes. No matter what level of trader or how much experience, we all go through similar times. The difference between consistently profitable traders is that they go through the negative experiences much less than most other traders. But they still go through them.

When you study with someone who has made themselves available to you to help you with your trading, you have to take the good with the bad. If you are not willing to do this, then you may as well not study with that person. There are many ways to trade with others. You could even use another trader as an indicator of what not to do, and what trades not to take. If they are losings on a consistent basis and take a long trade, then you go short. They may prove to be a really good indicator.

A good mentor is more of a trading buddy because no one is perfect, or the authority on your trading. However, your mentor has one thing that you have not, and that is a consistently profitable trading record. But, that could also change tomorrow and he may lose miserably the next week. A good mentor learns as much from you as you from him, at least that is one main reason why I do what I do.

When you have a trading buddy it is important that you understand your own trading self, and trade your own plan. If your trading buddy has a similar trade signal in your direction, then maybe this could help you have more confidence in your signal (if you need more confidence) and the end result could be either you both get stopped out, or you both win.
However, there is another outcome that is very often the most common between mentor and student. You take a 5 tick win, and your mentor makes 40 ticks. Also, another common outcome is you take a -5 tick loss, and your mentor sits through the pullback and risk, and winds up making +30 ticks on the very same trade. Why do these scenarios happen?
Firstly, it is your mentors fault for not holding your hand throughout the trade. It is your mentors fault for not guaranteeing that the trade was going to succeed. It was your mentors fault for getting you in the trade in the first place, and for not getting you your winning ticks. You trading results are all your mentors fault. It is all your mentors fault. So, go ahead and hate your mentor.

There, now that you are feeling better, let's concentrate on the other reasons why you lose or make little and your mentor trading buddy gets large winners, and small losers. Did your mentor ever tell you about a trade plan? Did he ever tell you that you need one, and that it was absolutely crucial? Did he ever tell you it needed to be written down and that you needed to use it to trade by? Did he ever tell you about keeping a trade journal and detailed trading statistical records? Did he ever tell you to detail your trading and analyze your performance in as detailed a manner as possible? Did he ever tell you to trade with realistic expectations for the strategy you are using? Did he tell you to take small losses over sustained risk once price has reached the trade failure point, and to not exit your trade until price fails or target is reached or some price event tells you that the risk of giving back the gains in your trade is greater than continued advance in your trade? Did he ever ask you what your statistical consecutive win rate was, and to how much target? Did he ever mention the importance of preserving your gains by using proper money management designed to protect your gains once you are close or at target? Did he ever mention things like scratch is better than loss, and positive 4 ticks is better than negative 10 ticks? Did he ever mention things like trade in the trend direction, or to keep you eye on dynamic developing s/r, or to concentrate on price first everything else second?

Go back and examine all those things your mentor has been telling you and see how many of those things you are doing? Yes, it is a lot of work you have to do. but didn't he ever mention that trading successfully was going to take a lot of work? If your mentor never mentioned these and similar things, then you really should hate him, and maybe get as far away from him as possible.

However, if all these things were mentioned, and were continuously mentioned to you to the point were you can't stand to hear them anymore and his voice in you head is just making your eyeballs bleed, then you have only 3 options left. Either start listening and doing, or continue to not listen or doing and blame the losses on your mentor (the winners you can take all the credit for), or hate your mentor and go trade with someone else who is just like you.

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