I note that ljmi has been an SI member for a year and a half so it is unlikely that he is a complete novice, which is too bad in many respects, because a blank slate is a great way to start if you want to learn to trade.
I still think the best way to go, for those not joining a firm as LPS5 recommends, is to try to approximate as many features of being in a firm as possible. Kymar, with all due respect, I think it's cavalier to tell a novice to expect "seemingly endless strings of disaster while you're exploring and learning..." This to me is a recipe for never learning. One disaster is a learning experience. Two begins to be a habit. A novice (blank slate version) actually begins with a tremendous amount of psychological capital: he or she has not acquired any of the negative mental states that arise after a series of trading disasters. This particular type of capital should not be squandered. Implied here is the value of perhaps youth, or better yet the value of not being a habitual loser in some other aspect of life. It's just not wise to bring a lot of losing experiences of any type to the world of trading.
When one learns at a firm, it seems to be the case that the other traders look to protect the novice from losing his psychological capital. As I understand it they monitor the new trader, they don't let him take big risks, they force him to be disciplined at the end of the day. None of this is easily reproduced in a training course or a book or in a remote trader's normal life, for that matter. I think it's important, however, for a novice remote traders to find somebody, if not an experienced and successful trader, at least somebody to just hang around and watch them trade. Somebody who knows at least enough about trading to recognize a big, risky position and who will not let the remote trader take one or stay in one. If it were only true that "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment"! Unfortunately, it is far more likely in the trading world that habits come from experience, and bad habits come from bad judgment.
In my own experience I was helped greatly by the fact that I learned the direct-access type of daytrading in a studio apartment with my pregnant, worried wife walking by my desk all the time looking to see how we were doing. In fact when we later moved and I got a private office, my results were dismal for two months until I threw open the door and asked her to please stop by my desk whenever she felt like it!
In time, a disastrous loss is virtually inevitable for a full-time trader. So one should strive to be as mentally strong as possible to withstand it. That means an absolute devotion to limiting risk in the early stages of one's learning to trade is essential. I suggest that novices should not jump into the market without having an external control, some interested party (wife, friend, father, colleague), looking over their shoulders. |
