Teaching Principles, not Giving Stock Picks

I am often asked, do you make stock recommendations in your web site? I wonder why people expect this from a site that is focused on teaching? I remember when I first took the Optionetics basic course in late 2002, they offered a few trades as part of the teaching experience. Keenly I went home and tried to evaluate the recommendation myself, invariably I was disappointed, and did not enter the trade. I just could not agree with the assessment of the instructor. They also had newsletter subscription for several thousands of dollars, but I never took that offer. This is not to say that the trades might not have been successful, I am merely saying that I could not find myself to do the trades because my own analysis was opposite to theirs.

I also took McMillan’s excellent newsletter, with multiple recommendation along with daily followups on the trades. They had very specific rational for each recommendation, and one could certainly learn from the experience, but I just could not be on a daily watch waiting for their instructions on when to enter and when to exit, rollover, or take partial profits in one position. This is not my approach to trading, I am more of a swing trader, and I hope that my positions stay in place for several weeks, or months, rather than changing them every day. I simply have a different style.

I suspect that there are differences of opinions between my group members on what are good trades, and what timeframe to trade. I am sure, however, that they understand that my goal is to teach them a set of principles, and rules of entry and exit, hoping that they reproduce my trades in papermoney. Learn from my good and bad trades, and eventually begin to make their own choices. My goal is to teach principles, rather than give them recommendations. You may say that the following Chinese proverb applies here: “Give a man a fish and your feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime”.

I have noticed in many trading “educational” enterprises with whom I have trusted my time, faith and hard earned money, that they usually over promise and under-deliver, with rare exceptions, and I won’t list names, here. This should not surprise anyone because: a. no one really knows the future. b. not every system works 100% of the time. c. None of this enterprises spent enough time mentoring their “students”. This should not surprise anyone because neither them nor I can promise to turn you into a winner. That is entirely up to you. What I can promise you is that I will teach you, without reservation, everything I know. That is my commitment to the participants of my group. Eventually you will be able to learn my principles, apply them or adapt them to your own trading, and eventually, on the balance, end up better off financially that you are today.

My approach is NOT to charge you thousands of dollars for some hours of teaching, and then leave you to test the approach on your own. My goal is to teach you by letting you look over my shoulders (Thursday and Wednesday webinars) and teach you the principles that guide my trading (Tuesday webinars). At the end of a one year period, you will have the knowledge to use or adapt to your own trading reality or even create your own approach. Copying what I do exactly, or following my recommendations will only make you leave disappointed and more frustrated than ever. However, if I can convince you that you can adapt what I teach you to your own trading style, you will stick with it. In order to succeed in trading, I recommend the following quote from Henry David Thoreau: “I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet wih a success unexpected in common hours.