Friday, December 11, 2009

What Would An Ideal Training Program Look Like?

What would be an ideal training program for new traders?

It would have to teach the market basics: what a market is, how a market operates, how trends form and change, why markets become more and less volatile, how markets are interconnected, how and why news can move markets.

It would have to teach the trading basics: how to use trading software, how to define and manage risk, how markets move during and across days.

It would have to illustrate patterns that evolve from market operation and then help new traders identify those patterns for themselves: first on paper, then in simulation mode.

It would have to show new traders how traders exploit those patterns as setups: defining risk/reward; entering positions, managing positions, exiting positions.

It would have to help traders tackle those patterns for themselves, first in simulation mode, then in actual trading.

It would have to offer mentorship and coaching: supervision from experienced traders to review performance, correct the mistakes of new traders, and focus the learning process in a goal-oriented way.

It would have to offer these services from actual market professionals who have "been there and done that" successfully.

It would have to be so concentrated as a learning experience that the normal "ten year rule" of developing expertise could be greatly condensed, but it couldn't be so brief that it offers information only without focused skill building.

Developing such a curriculum is no simple task. Implementing such a curriculum is labor intensive--and yet it needs to be reasonably affordable for new traders.

How can this be accomplished? I will be blogging ideas going forward, in the hopes of moving toward such a program in 2010.

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