Picking up on the thread from Those Who Can’t Trade Teach, ducati998 authored Selling education and trading methodologies. Actually, he’d entered a previous post on the subject, but that was just cutting and pasting my own entry and not anything which contributed immediately to the discussion.
By the way, if you’re a blogger, web author, or someone looking to do that sort of thing, a couple of quick points. First, if you mention someone, spell their name right (ducati got mine wrong).
Second, if you use someone’s content or refer to it, have the common courtesy to provide a link back to the original source. A lot of stuff out there (including on this site – see the bottom of each page) is copyrighted, so if you just use it willy-nilly you could have the author getting irate and giving you grief, especially if you don’t link back.
Third, keep in mind that the search engines (like Google) can penalize sites for duplicating content. That means if you grab someone else’s content, especially if they have a higher authority than you, you could actually see you own search ranking reduced. Not good if you want traffic.
Getting back to the subject, though, in the fourth comment to the post ducati998 finishes with the following:
Which returns to the initial question, does coaching of psychology, require a successful practitioner, or can a purely theoretical teacher suffice?
I think this question really gets to the heart of many things where trading education and trader coaching are concerned.
Here’s how I break things down.
First of all, there’s information. This is the stuff which can be had from books, course, seminars and all of that sort of thing. I’m talking here about the mechanics of the market, how to calculate a technical indicator, the definitions of market terms, the elements of a trading system, and all the other hard fact type of things.
The second part is the actual trading. This is the realm of performance and psychology. It’s the part of trading which is beyond just knowing the details about the markets and methods. It’s the part which encompasses the execution.
I would say that anyone with the requisite knowledge and ability to effectively convey the facts can teach stuff in the first part. However, it takes someone who’s got at least some trading experience to be an effective coach, mentor, or whatever for stuff in the second category. I’m not saying one needs to be a top level trader to be able to effectively operate in the second arena, though. What I’m saying is that it requires the ability to relate to what another trader is going through. I think we can agree that someone who’s never had money at risk just can’t really understand what it’s all about.
Let me relate what I’m saying here to volleyball coaching, something I have many years experience with, as you may know.
Anyone can learn the rules of volleyball. Anyone can learn the technical skills involved in the sport. Books explain these things. So do videos and seminars and all that kind of stuff. One with that knowledge can share it with others. After all, it’s straightfoward and not open to interpretation at that level.
In order to effectively coach a person or team, though, playing experience is key. It might not be an absolutely necessity, as someone who’s played other sports might be able to translate that over, but having that well of experience as a participant helps the coach relate to the players - to guide them in their training, to help them develop a strategy for defeating an opponent, to help them overcome the issues related to their performance ups and downs.
You’ll notice, these are basically the same things a trading coach should be able to help a trader do.
As has been noted by me and others, being an elite performer is not necessary to be a good coach. In fact, it often is a hinderance. More importance is the teaching ability to present the material in an easily digestible and useable fashion. Many great coaches were at best average performers.
By the way, while no playing experience is required to teach the basics of volleyball, it definitely helps to be able to relate those basics to the playing side. The same is true in trading.
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About the Author
John Forman, author of this blog, has traded for more than 20 years, is a professional market analyst, and authored The Essentials of Trading. He is an active participant in trading forums, consults for trading related businesses, as published literally dozens of trading articles, and has been quoted in a number of books and in the media.
** See John’s full bio.
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