The difference between most other teaching endeavors is that trading is a zero sum game. In order for you to be on the upside of a trade, you have to find a counterparty who by will end up on the downside. The methods and models used by an individual trader are those that he believes give him and advantage of ending up on the “right” side of the trade. If those methods become common knowledge, then their utility in providing the trader an advantage in the market cease to exist (or at least are materially diminished.)

That leads to a couple possibilities:

1. The information is so general that it provides no insight into the details of the traders system. While this might be of great use to the novice, the belief that it will provide any real advantage in the markets is misplaced. I believe at least one poster referred to this possibility up above.

2. The information contains details of a successful system, however leaves out a few key elements that effectively obfuscate the traders true strategy. I call this the “MacGyver” method since the 80′s show of that name typically left out a few key elements of the inventive solution to MacGyver’s problem.

3. The information contains the full details of a successful system, however does not indicate that while the system was very effective at one time, market conditions and correlations have shifted rendering it no longer useful.

Not knowing much about the author or his credentials, my guess would be that this is a case of #1. Even if it is #2 or #3 there can be utility in the information in providing an example of a marketview that was, at least at some point, successful.

Just trying to reframe the conversation into something a bit more constructive (of course, this is the internet, and no place for constructive discourse…)

Interesting that your post struck a cord. I wonder why it is that the same criticism is not leveled at say surgeons and medicos etc. The fact is all successful traders I know have stood on the shoulders of someone else. If not, we’d constantly be re-inventing the wheel.

That’s not to say that there aren’t ‘trading teachers’ out there that don’t deserve label ‘teachers’. But this is true of any educational endeavour. It was certainly true of some of the lecturers at Sydney Uni’s Law Faculty when I was studying there – and at the time that was the best Law School in Australia.

Not all successful traders teach – so? That doesn’t mean that the successful traders that do teach can’t trade. My trading career turned around because of Pete Steidlmayer and he is certainly a successful trader.

LIke any profession, you have good and poor educators. Our job as students is to distinguish between those that have something to teach and those that don’t.

My view

ray

Second, is your statement the pools of water don’t spontaneously pay you money supposed to imply that trading somehow does?

Thirdly, just because someone doesn’t share the exact techniques they use to trade doesn’t mean they aren’t providing valuable information. The Market Wizard books are a great example. You got some of the best traders in the world offering advice about how to tackle the markets. They aren’t providing details of how they come up with their buy/sell decisions, but you could make a very strong argument that what they do provide is more valuable. Some of them trade in ways the vast majority of folks could never do. That doesn’t make what they say about money management or market analysis or whatever any less useful.

Is he going to write in detail about pharmacological support that every elite athlete recieves or anything else that must remain secret (and really makes the difference between gold medals/nobody) ? No.

Pools of water don’t spontaneously pay you money. It’s not trading.

DTrump “writes”/makes TV shows/etc because he’s already famous and it will sell. And yes, he sucks. Hasn’t he been bankrupt a few times, or nearly so?

Soros always wanted to be more than a trader, and his books have little to do with trading, he does not teach how to trade. Unfortunately, he really sucks as a philospher, when compared to his trading/schmoozing prowess.

The only successful money manager that wrote books that really had to do something with actual strategies, is Toby Crabel, and maybe Ed Thorp (a little questionable).

Why isnt Jim Simons writing trading books? He has plenty to teach about real trading.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I have not seen paragons of trading wasting time on writing books about how they are raping other traders, they seem to prefer to keep their cards close to their chest, is it not clear why?

Before somebody mentions Niederhoffer, please make sure you explain how he did not really blow up a few times.