By Ray Barros
Cross ref:http://tradingsuccess.com/blog/why-traders-fail-1244.html#respond
BarroMetrics Views: Why Traders Fail
I make no secret that one of my passions is to leave a legacy. Few have heard of Bernard Baruch – in my view, one of the best traders of any era; many more have heard of W D Gann – not because he was a better trader but because Gann attempted to pass his ideas on.
Over the years, I finally hit on a format that seemed to offer the best chance to fulfill a dream. It was a two-fold program:
1. An inexpensive course that taught the foundations of success (Habits of Success [HOS]) and
2. A one-on-one mentor course.
The first provided the means which when followed would lead to success, and the other one attempted by weekly meetings and personal tuition to ensure the student followed the course. Both have drawbacks. The first suffers the same drawback facing all seminars and webinars: the students are not taught to apply the material in any structured way. The second took too long – 2 to 3 years.
The end result is the usual trader education model, like that of the Army Air Corp in 1934 where flyers burnt and crashed, just as traders burn and crash.
I believe that my application of Coyle’s model (See A Quiet Revolution in Learning and The Talent Code Revisited) will play same role for traders as the Link Simulator did for novice flyers.
The current results of the program show that most of those who had taken my Habits of Success webinar in 2009 , and gone out and traded, they would have lost money. Either because they tried to trade without learning the material or because they misunderstood what I was saying.
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
The trading strategy taught at HOS is a simple one. It has one essential element and two main ones. It also has what I call warnings of a possible change in trend. The exercise for this week has called for the students to identify the trend – that’s all, nothing else.
These are the 5 HOS students.
Of the 5:
1. One got it almost 100% correct – a small error on the warnings.
2. Three were totally lost. They did not know where to start – even though I thought I had laid out a clear checklist at the webinar.
3. One introduced two or three indicators of his own. Only problem is, he failed to give me the answer to my question: ‘what is the trend?”.
Now let me stress that the 5 are among the most passionate students I have encountered. The commitment is there but the learning was not. Now think about this – how true is it of you? If you are struggling, the probability is you have not learnt to succeed.
Idkit
Ag Moderator