Everyone Pays Tuition

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Many people aspire to trade, but take very different paths to get there. Some seek out a roadmap to get put on a directed path to speed and enhance their progress; others decide to go it alone and grab information from numerous sources.
Trading takes smarts, work, finding a lens to view the market and learning basic trading principles. Next is determining what to trade and a specific style. Then identifying or creating one or more trading strategies, and adopting tactics to implement the strategies.
Next is paper-trading to gain comfort with tactics, process and execution, then low position-size, real-money trading. Once you achieve a certain level of competency you can then start to create trading goals connected with personal financial objectives. Paramount throughout is risk management, proper position-sizing and emotional discipline.
Like the markets, a trader’s progression doesn't follow a straight line and it’s not without hiccups. There are light-bulb moments, setbacks and periods of despair. Virtually every trader, both those who are successful and those who aren’t, go through everything above.
But while the general things aspiring traders experience are similar, the specifics widely differ based on how they approach their education. Variables include:

• seeking out “free” trading education, e.g., introductory in-person classes, meet-up groups, seminars, and webinars
• seeking out premium self-study from trading books, magazines and websites, as well as paying for education following taking a shot at free education
• joining an online traderoom
• identifying a structured educational program that takes one from novice to trader by spelling out a clear path to learning to trade
• opting to first learn and understand a core set of trading principles
• eliminating the trading principle step and looking for short-cuts by immediately grabbing at strategies and tactics. This is like learning to fly by reading the cockpit instruments without knowing what they measure, or trying to follow a complex recipe knowing nothing about the basic principles of cooking
• someone’s level of patience and willingness to put in the time and work required
• the overall time and effort one expends in the journey
• whether the effort is a solitary effort or done with others
• the person's emotional makeup
• the inevitable initial trading losses and having a good risk management system to keep them small, or not

At PTL we refer to everything expended hoping to make money trading as “paying tuition.” Everyone pays it in some manner, only the form and amounts vary:

• direct outlays for trading education and services, e.g. formal programs and coaching, online traderooms, self-study courses, publications,
• pick-services
• toys and tools, e.g., “magic indicators”
• money lost in losing trades
• emotional duress
• direct time expended
• opportunity cost of time taken away from other pursuits

Some people are comfortable with trial and error, losing money to the markets and expending substantial time and mental energy drifting from method to method. Others treat learning to trade as a serious goal and put themselves on a structured track to learn efficiently. They want to reach milestones en route to trading without wasted time and detours, and spewing out unnecessary losses to the market. They seek out learning a methodology that will lead to a potential lifetime of trading profits and have confidence that they’re following a roadmap to success.
As an aspiring or novice trader you should take a serious look at your development path…Make sure you’re wisely spending your tuition.