Trading Skills; Can it be learned and taught?

Last week I saw Steve Nison’s “Candlesticks Webinar”. Steve is the author of the book “Japanese Candlesticks”, the very first book that I bought when I started trading 20 years ago.The emphasis of the webinar is education and surprisingly, most of the participants are experienced traders. I totally agree with Steve when he says that education is a life long process.

That brings me to the title of this article. In my years as a trainer, my main responsibility is help staff of a brokerage house on market analysis and trading profitability. Some did very well, while others not as good. During my training sessions I always try to simplify things and present it with more graphics because, I’ve read somewhere, that the mind thinks in pictures. The participants are always lively and energetic. They’ve always asked, “Why didn’t you come much earlier when my account was healthy?” My answer will always be, “Better late than never.” 

Unfortunately, not everybody is happy about the training sessions. There was a branch in Sumatera whom the management thought that I merely copy my materials from the internet. Furthermore, he was proud that the staff that he terminated got better positions in other companies because the staff are already knowledgable. He was adamant that the staff got their training from him every morning. I wonder, what I was doing there for a few weeks before the staff got terminated?

Trading is an art, very similar to martial arts. With the burst of internet, you can practically learned everything and anything, without limits. You may be able to learn and practice your martial skills without a ‘sensei’ (teacher, Japanese), just from reading the articles in websites. The same goes with trading, you are able to learn technical & fundamental analysis from thousands of websites, for free. You may be able to learn new skills easily. But like martial arts, trading requires discipline. And discipline can be instilled by the sensei. This is one of the hardest attribute to have in a profitable trader.

Discipline, especially self-discipline has to come from the inside. Usually one learns from mistakes, in trading, its losses. So, everytime when you encounter a loss, look back where did you go wrong. Was it the analysis or was it the timing. 

Timing = Discipline

Masters in martial arts do not attack their opponents haphazardly. Usually, they’ll wait until the opponent weak or lapse in concentration, then the masters will strike. The same goes to trading, you’ll have to wait until the signals are all there for you to execute. Discipline ?