faithdefender 

I was a subscriber to Etienne, but that was mentioned already. I would NOT pay for his subscription again. He is marketing himself all over YT. I have learned to be skeptical of Vendors who charge enormous amounts for education (called a trading room) and enormous amounts for indicators. But they never show their trading history. More and more it appears to me they use the revenue from their education/indicators to fund their trading habits.

+1 on both. Etienne is a typical vendor. He used to teach Bollinger Bands strategy, but then decided to enlighten people in algos, then how easy scalping can be, all for a fee, of course. He is also almost dysarthric: I have to rewind some of his sentences to understand what he said.

Many vendors have long marketing pitches on their landing pages. I contacted a few, mostly to ask for the price of the course, and was always met with a pretty aggressive pitch by a sales representative, never the "mentor" himself. They play the game of "let's see if you are a suitable student for us", "Do you think you have what it takes?" "What do you think is holding you back?" and so on. Then they offer you a discounted "right now" deal: "usually it is $12,000, but for people like you (who are......... have the experience of ................ etc.) we run a special of $4,999, "and you also get ABC which is usually sold separately for $100000000000". I have this rule, to never buy anything on the spot (learned from past fuck ups), and when I tell them that they get more aggressive in their sales talk. A couple of times it was difficult to get off the phone.

I think a mentor is very important for one reason: learning from him gives you confidence that the method works. A mentor with a verified track record of course. The irony is that most mentors (from what I heard from others) teach simple methods - trendlines, pivot point breaks, breakouts and so on. At the end of the day you have to figure out your own version of that method yourself. Just like learning boxing. You can have the best coach in the world, but you are still going to get punched in the face, sometimes hard

Small Dog 

+1 on both. Etienne is a typical vendor. He used to teach Bollinger Bands strategy, but then decided to enlighten people in algos, then how easy scalping can be, all for a fee, of course. He is also almost dysarthric: I have to rewind some of his sentences to understand what he said. Many vendors have long marketing pitches on their landing pages. I contacted a few, mostly to ask for the price of the course, and was always met with a pretty aggressive pitch by a sales representative, never the "mentor" himself. They play the game of "let's see if you are a suitable student for us", "Do you think you have what it takes?" "What do you think is holding you back?" and so on. Then they offer you a discounted "right now" deal: "usually it is $12,000, but for people like you (who are......... have the experience of ................ etc.) we run a special of $4,999, "and you also get ABC which is usually sold separately for $100000000000". I have this rule, to never buy anything on the spot (learned from past fuck ups), and when I tell them that they get more aggressive in their sales talk. A couple of times it was difficult to get off the phone. I think a mentor is very important for one reason: learning from him gives you confidence that the method works. A mentor with a verified track record of course. The irony is that most mentors (from what I heard from others) teach simple methods - trendlines, pivot point breaks, breakouts and so on. At the end of the day you have to figure out your own version of that method yourself. Just like learning boxing. You can have the best coach in the world, but you are still going to get punched in the face, sometimes hard

""They play the game of "let's see if you are a suitable student for us"" That is always funny!! That was our first intro to OTA before they took almost 40 Grand of our money. They made us "work for it" as customers, lol.

As for the mentor? Maybe it is me, but I have never understood when the "mentor" says "you have to learn your own system and follow your own rules". But what if I want to copy your rules? "Nope, gotta be your rules." They never tell you what THEY do to be successful, but you have to come up with your own plan. I always scratch my head and ask myself if a "strategy" works, doesnt it work for anyone? Or does the Market Maker select a few they want to allow to proceed? I get it, if you want to deviate from a chart to a different time, things will change. But I sure would like for a successful trader to show me what he or she does that makes them money most often more than not. THAT, I would pay for.

DavidHP 

Best to just find your own edge and trade it.

This is unarguably the hardest part if someone is starting by themselves alone.

Say, on the same note, how did you start your journey and what helped you find your edge, if I may ask?

(Not trying to derail the topic, so please only be brief).

Thanks.

lightsun47 

This is unarguably the hardest part if someone is starting by themselves alone. Say, on the same note, how did you start your journey and what helped you find your edge, if I may ask? (Not trying to derail the topic, so please only be brief). Thanks.

I've traded since 1995 (approx) and done it all.
Purchased courses, attended seminars, watched Training Videos.
The things that helped the most were:
READING EVERYTHING about trading
Joining Big Mike Trading (now Nexusfi)
Learning to do simple programming.

Developing your edge takes time and watching the market.
Similar to having a relationship with someone, you learn THEM.
You know when they are angry, or happy or moody and respond accordingly.
Developing an edge takes time and is not an overnight process.

Good Luck on your journey.
IMO: Use your own $ no prop firm money (teaches risk and mgt)

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/@JadeCap[/yt]

DavidHP 

READING EVERYTHING about trading

I think this is underrated.

Two examples

1. I had a strategy that I traded for many years that made decent money purely because I understood extremely well how the matching engine calculated implieds. It doesn't work any more because people have caught up on this knowledge, and people with better and faster systems than me have compressed the volume and margin to the point that is no longer worth pursuing.
2. Back in 2014 I bought the book " Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems: A Trader's Journey From Data Mining to Monte Carlo Simulation to Live Trading" which was written by World Champion Trader Kevin Davey who is here on nexusfi as @kevinkdog. I did this, purely as @DavidHP said, to read everything - for knowledge. I then joined Kevin's mailing list and was impressed enough that in 2016 I actually took his Strategy Factory course. I took the course, not because I intended to start trading like Kevin, but so that I would understand what he did, hoping that would be valuable to me. In the 9 years since, Kevin and I have become good friends. I still watch all his video's, and am still a member of his Strategy Factory Community. In this time and I have learnt an amazing amount from him (and believe he would say the same about me) and from his community. It's experience like this that I credit for making me the successful trader I am.

In my opinion, Meir Barak is a good trader on YouTube. He stopped steaming and uploading content on his YouTube channel.