One of the most common questions that I am asked when people initially enquire about our training courses runs along the lines of “once I have completed your course how much money will I make each week” from trading forex or the emini futures.

The short answer is that you could see returns from the very first trade that you put on – but nothing is guaranteed in trading.  This is  because we are dealing with the future and none of us know how the future will pan out. All we do know is that it probably will not be identical to the past.

However the question is really  based on an entirely understandable but none the less  false premise about trading – which is:

Most people initially believe that learning to trade is like learning your school multiplication tables. The teacher teaches you the tables and once you have learned them  there is nothing more to learn. You can always repeat them endlessly and perfectly  every time. So under this scenario the question makes perfect sense “once you have taught me my tables how much will I get paid each time I repeat them perfectly” – job done !

In fact mastering trading  is more similar to learning to play golf (or indeed any sport).  Certainly you need to be taught how to hold the club, correct stance and swing etc. But the fact that you have mastered these essential elements does not mean that you will go out and play endless perfect rounds or indeed any perfect rounds.

This is because other internal and external factors affect your performance and each golf hole (or trading day) is different.  You can for instance hit  exactly the same shot two days running and one day the ball will land 10 feet from the hole and on the next day it will land in the bunker. This can happen for a multitude of reasons many of which are not completely under your control. External reasons  might be that the second shot could have been caught by a freak gust of wind or the greens could have been running faster than you expected. Internal reasons only partially under your control might be that you may have just fractionally tightened up in the swing etc

So with Golf and trading it is not simply about learning a  technique by rote  and then achieving instant and perpetual perfection. The game is more challenging than that.

In trading this should not really come as a great surprise to people because this is a business where even a modestly competent part-timer can earn much much more than a barrister  or surgeon . The rewards in this business are potentially astronomical which means that  long term success  requires a little more than simply learning  and then repeating the equivalent of your multiplication tables.

It is therefore important to look upon trading as building up a real business for the future.  So it is not so much about what you can earn tomorrow or next week  but much more about what you will earn over the rest of your life. There is a learning curve to trading and your initial goal should be to master and practice the techniques and then the money will come automatically and the compounding techniques that we teach will make those returns grow exponentially.

This is why it is critically important that you get your education from somebody who can prove that they actually trade and make money from trading. Otherwise you will end up simply being taught your multiplication tables (a few meaningless indicators)  and not made aware of all the other nuances that you must be aware of and master before success will knock on your door. Both the beginners/intermediates course and the auto trading course do exactly this.

In Golf we will never play a perfect round or become perfect at the sport – and so it is with trading. Big success in either is more of a journey than an instant destination.