Not every member has a hidden agenda.
Few are :60:
Choosing a mentor that fits oneās needs is IMO a pretty tricky affair.
First of all you need to ask yourself what do you expect from a mentor or a mentorship.
More knowledge, better trading, profitability, better resilience, better mindset, you name it. In my opinion you canāt have all of it in one course. Start small, then grow.
Then you must find someone who seems to be a āgoodā mentor - whatever this means for you.
And here comes the crux: Being a reputable mentor is one side of the medal. However, YOU need to get along with this person, appreciate the material and the mentorship must fit to YOU. This is quite a lot that must be in place!
I just wanted to point out my experience with one of the very well-known mentors here.
A couple of years ago I chose one of the best instructors who were listed on Forex Peace Army, a person with an impressive track record. So I thought if so many people write so many good things about him, he simply must be the best for me, too!
I enrolled in one of his courses, price seemed reasonable to me. Furthermore the course covers a lot of different aspects of trading. Cool!
When I went through the videos and forum posts, I noticed that the content was presented in a rather long winded way and I thought "well, this is pretty basic stuff, but so what, I have to follow through whether I like it that way or not."
However, my desire to further my knowledge dwindled and became less and less because I really, really underestimated the time necessary to deepen my knowledge. Any I couldnāt stand to watch videos lasting sometimes more than 2h only to find, one can condense the real meat to just about 15 minutes.
To make real progress you have to have at least a couple of hours spare time EACH and EVERY day, which is completely impossible for me because I have a strenuous job, need to commute for hours, and small kids. I had hoped such a course would make me a good trader quickly. How wrong I was! Now I know at that time it was a completely false assumption, but there wasnāt any disclaimer that would have destroyed this assumption right away.
The next āinterestingā thing I got to know was the way this mentor interacted (not only) with me. I confess here right away: Iām a skeptical and more often than not (overly) pessimistic person and I do not take anything for granted and if something looks weird to me or I have a different opinion I voice it. Unfortunately, this mentor takes on the stance what he writes and knows is the law (since he has many, many years of expertise) and he needs to prove the other is confused and does not understand. What he also doesnāt like is someone posting material from sources outside his courses. Something which is completely normal for a forum like this.
I donāt want to comment on this. See it for yourself.
What I want to say is: You donāt know this behavior upfront. You pay the money and then after a while both of you notice you donāt get along nicely. Thatās tough luck, but your money is down the drain! To keep this argument in check, this happens with all sorts of teachers. Recall your time at school. Some teachers you liked, some you didnāt. Itās human and itās natural. So enrolling in a course is inevitably an experiment. Keep that in mind.
Also donāt fall for the fallacy that finishing a course makes you a profitable trader! In my (of course very limited view) some students of the course seemed to mature quickly and became profitable, but others struggled on and on. You never know on which side you may end.
One other word of warning may be in order here: Signing up for a course, going through its contents is only the tip of the iceberg. The most time consuming part of trading is the application of knowledge, backtesting, journalling trades, etcā¦ Be sure to expect a marathon!
All the best to your learning process!
3 Likes
You do realise this is a dead thread, last entry was July 2012
Yes, I know. But why not revive it again? The question about a good trading mentor is still vital, isnāt it?!
1 Like
There are other, more recent, threads asking about this. Surely they would have been a better place to post, with thrm having an active audience
Okay, Iām getting a bit more specific. Maybe, only maybe the one I was talking about was mentioned in this thread ā¦