This type of training is very big in the USA and it is not at all unusual for traders to charge $10,000 per day for this sort of training.
The idea is that you sit down with a successful proven trader and watch him trade for a day or even a week. Over that time you will learn his techniques and be able to replicate the way he trades.
AS you practice he can also look over your shoulder and correct you when you do something wrong. Over that training period you will gradually morph into that successful trader.
It certainly is a very beguiling concept and sounds eminently sensible and the correct thing to do.
As with most things in trading what feels right is often wrong and what feels wrong is often right.
There are several problems with this method of training. The first one is that it implies that there is indeed a right way of doing things that once learned can be replicated time after time. A bit like if somebody teaches you to change the tyre on your car you can from then on change any tyre on any car.
The problem is that trading outcomes are somewhat less certain then changing a car tyre. So for instance you could see a particular set up on Monday and trade it in a particular way and make $2000 profit. You can see exactly the same set up on a Tuesday and trade in exactly the same way as you did on Monday and lose $2000. One key to trading success lies in understanding the irregular and inherently unpredictable nature of the outcomes and making this work for you rather than trying to change it – “it is what it is” – work with it not against it..
People think that trading success is all about getting a list of criteria and then ticking each box and when all boxes are ticked you enter the trade and hey presto make money. There is rather more to it than that so even if your mentor teaches you great techniques that work on a Monday that does not mean to say those same techniques will work on the Tuesday when you’re sitting in front of the screen on your own.
The second problem is that the implication is that if you watch somebody do something you can then become as expert as them – simply by watching them. This is plainly untrue just ask any of the football fans that watch David Beckham take free kicks each week – how many of them can now kick a ball like Beckham. If you watch Mike Tyson pummel his opponents into the ground enough times does that mean that you can then go out and do the same ?
Successful trading is about understanding the probabilities, quantifying them and having correct techniques to cope with strings of losing trades and indeed strings of winning trades. It may sound counterintuitive but consistent success is much less about picking winners than it is about what you do with those winners and losers as they unfold. It is more about educating novices in these matters rather than simply let them watch you put on trades – that is only a very small part of the skill set required to make money consistently in trading.
Those cynics among you may think that I am saying this because you cannot watch me put on real money trades during our training sessions ? – quiet the reverse – YOU CAN. In fact I am the ONLY tutor in the UK who has his own real money systems trading real time real money as we are training.
I am however saying that it is the additional education that I provide on the day and in the additional resources pack and videos that are provided with both the beginners/intermediates course and auto-trading courses that is truly important and will enable you to achieve every traders goal of consistent repeatable profits.