Being in the trading business for the least 13 years, rarely does a week go by where I don’t get a solicitation from a desperate trader to provide “education” for that individual, which is more likely a cry for “tell me what to do” than actual education. My response is generally the same to those individuals: what traders need most is training, not education.
Now I know you all likely look at various websites, blogs, and books devoted to trading and the stock market. If success were only a function of education, surely we’d see a much higher success rate for all traders, both short and long term. I love teaching and helping traders, but I do recognize that providing a struggling trader just blog articles and YouTube videos is not a solution. Actually, it’s not too dissimilar from giving an alcoholic a cocktail. It feeds an addiction and does little toward solving the underlying problem. That’s not to say that education is not crucially important, but more than anything, you learn by doing. Look at what most consider successful training programs: medical school, music schools, the military, sports organizations; you will see evidence of hands-on teaching. None of those institutions pretend that you will make a great surgeon, master violinist, baseball pitcher, etc. by reading about it in a book; you have to get out in the field, take your lumps, and learn from your mistakes. Training builds upon education by providing structured opportunities to learn by doing.
This is how I learned and while it may not be the easy route, I believe it’s the only route. To put it another way, the surgeon trains with a senior physician: see one, do one, teach one is the motto. A musician is assigned songs by a teacher and executes these many times in practice and in lessons before performing to the public. Fighter pilots spend many hours in simulation and then in the cockpit with an experienced pilot before flying the jet on their own. Learning on a trading simulator can have some value, but the best way to learn is by starting off with small size. You can feel the sting of losses and exuberance of gains without digging too big of a hole—both in terms of confidence and money.
Like those other competitive arenas, trading is a performance skill. Education informs; training develops skill. Both are important, but each is useless without the other. So if you are lacking education, attend a training course taught by successful professional whose strategies mesh with your own goals for trading. If you need training, put yourself in an environment where you can trade and get feedback from experienced traders. The T3Live Virtual Trading Floor and Active Trading Lab provide chances for you to gain the expertise and experience necessary to think like a professional. Every young performer, whether an athlete or a trader, needs role models and mentors to point them in the right direction.
