I've been wondering today, if it's possible for a good teacher to be able to get me onto the path to success faster.
I'm sure many, especially new traders, who have no history in their mind of what worked and what didn't, can be much more open to teaching of specific rules. However the image of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks comes to mind for the "senior" traders.
I had read that the famous Turtle-System of trend-following had been a pretty large success for the teachers and a certain % of the trainees. However I believe that the unsuccessful ones didn't have to pay for the experience. Which I think is fairest solution.
If someone is really so brilliant at seing what someone is doing wrong and being able to not only tell them what it is, but actually get them to stop doing it - change their mind so to speak - then I think that the successful ones will be happy to pay something like a performance fee.
Sadly as soon as you offer something like that you get into murky waters regarding regulation (in the USA anyway). Would be interesting if a pro "offshore" started offering such a deal to someone also in a lax "offshore" jurisdiction. In that case a fair profit sharing or success or performance fee could be put in place and trurly offer a win-win deal.
If someone is offering a fixed price model it would be a possibility to offer a "happy-or-money-back-guarantee". The success rate is never going to be 100%. So unless you're worried that success rate is somewhere below 30% I guess you risk fairly little with such a proposition.
But there's no perfect way I guess. Assuming some rich arab has 100 million he's managing and he can get access to a successful pro trader for a measly 10k (for arguments sake) and change his trading style to get just 1% more return on his 100 million he'll have a huge return % wise.
However if someones starting such an "education" with maybe 20k or even 100k and needs to fork out more than 10-50% of his total assets, then it will take a huge amount of % increase to justify the investment.
On a sidenote: I remember one senior trader once telling me, I should better quit trading and do something else. I didn't have the courage or lust for him to explain to me why he thought so that day, which I'm regretting writing this. He obviously had seen something in my trading psychology that years on the floor had made him weary or alert to. [I think it was because I'd been washed out of an options position in a takeover candidate, taking 5% or so profit prematurely - I'd have more than doubled my total assets had I sat tight for another 24 hours. That was the worst timing of my life.]
Anyway, what attracts most pupils to a teacher is his/her performance track record. But it's a bit like watching those commercials with the muscle bodied people on the gym equipement. It's a rather slim possibility to achieve what is being shown, but it certainly can help on the path to it, should one be physically built for it. Guess it's same in trading, with certain minds you can work. With others the mind will just keep crashing. (Like I seem to do often :D)
No trade today. Went to the river for a run. Nice restaurant location you can see in the shot. Was with my mobile and I think I might have been pointing it in the direction of the sun. So low quality....
