An indecent proposal for Peter

[Dave C]

Say if a chap contacts you and says "I can see how this trading lark can be profitable. I know you have made it work and you are continuing to refine your edges and forever moving forward. Teach me. Teach me everything you know, no holds barred, no spreadsheet unopened. Take my hand and guide me A, B, C through the steps. No one day course but me shadowing you every day in the office, telling me why you did that, what you are looking for. Show me how to automate. Show me your setup, your charts, your equipment (OoooMatron). For all this I will give you 100k in used banknotes and buy you lunch on Thursdays".

Would this be worth the effort Peter?

[gazuty]

I think you have mispriced the proposal.

Current risk free interest rate in UK - say 3%. (This might be the wrong rate but just say). I make £100k per year (just say) from trading, year in year out - ie (just say) I know what I am doing and that is essentially risk free.

How much is that worth? £100k / 0.03 = £3,333,333.

And even then the time and hassle of teaching vs the pleasure of doing. Maybe invaluable.

I'm not speaking for Peter or anyone else. Just an observation.

[ShaunWhite]

You didn't put a time limit on it, but I suspect you could be shown how all the physical and mental machinery works in a single 40hr week, but you'd still be no more profitable. The majority of trading he does (that i've seen on yt) relies heavily on 'feel' and flawless discipline backed up with a good understanding of cause and effect, plus 18 years of eating, sleeping and drinking trading 80hrs a week.

It's like asking Lewis Hamilton how to his car works, sitting on his knee when he drives, and then expecting to be a champ.

You can't buy experience or a mindset.

[Kafkaesque]

You didn't put a time limit on it, but I suspect you could be shown how all the physical and mental machinery works in a single 40hr week, but you'd still be no more profitable. The majority of trading he does (that i've seen on yt) relies heavily on 'feel' and flawless discipline backed up with a good understanding of cause and effect, plus 18 years of eating, sleeping and drinking trading 80hrs a week.

It's like asking Lewis Hamilton how to his car works, sitting on his knee when he drives, and then expecting to be a champ.

You can't buy experience or a mindset.

I'll second this.

Coming from a poker background, I have a bit of insight. First of, unless trading has a "Chris Moneymaker moment", I don't see apprenticeships like this really taking off. Imo, there needs to be a lot more of a "player pool" for lack of a better term, or liquidity as it were, for it to be viable. Without that, teaching others, being a case of handing out too much of your own edge. There's just not enough to go around. In any case, the structure is just too different for a CM moment in trading, to make it mainstream. The thing that made poker such a mainstream hobby, at least for a decade, was the huge gulf between the, on the face of it, simplicity of doing it and how extremely skilled you had to be to do it well. Granted, there's a similar gulf in trading, but the early simplicity isn't the same, making the gulf smaller and less significant. Long story short, in the case of trading it's too hard for the average joe to just sit down and give a go to warrant an influx of easy money, and by extension warrant apprenticeships.

Second, to Shaun's point. I've been on both ends of that sort of deal. Some people just get "it", and some very much don't. No matter which, feeding off the experience of someone talented and experienced would surely help most people along, but it's usually a case of going from a B-grade to an A-grade skill level. The hard work of getting to B-level will have to one's own. To prove the experience and mindset, Shaun mentions. Absolutely noone is taking on someone who's just staring out, or even close it, and simply hand them the keys to the kingdom. At any price. Also, because a much more significant part of the deal you mention isn't a fixed amount, but a percentage of future earnings. And we're not talking 5%. Anywhere from 25 to 75 percent would be commonplace in poker, with it being scaled down over time.

[ShaunWhite]

An hour to learn and a lifetime to master used to be the expression Kafkaesque. That was until the likes of ElkY came along playing 32 simultanious tables and seeing more hands in a week than Texas Dolly played in 50yrs.

[ShaunWhite]

For all this I will give you 100k in used banknotes ".

Sounds like an hmrc sting to me. I'm sure being an honest upstanding citizen he'd rather have a cheque he can put through the books so the tax gets paid.

[LeTiss]

£100k?

You'd have to pay Peter considerably more than that

[Euler]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow

[vankancisco]

Surely it's not about the money as there's no real end game. Unless the end game is to quit and do something else. I've always thought the biggest threat or downfall for a professional gambler or trader is to be too successful. Of course there are exceptions, these tend to be those who can invent new motivations and goals. They have the ability to trick their mind into believing there is actually something at stake once again. It's not easy though, most will fail in this aspect. It's just human nature.

[Derek27]

Whatever you're trying to get good at, it's helpful to get advice and guidance from a professional, to point you in the right direction, but at the end of the day, your best tutor is yourself !

A coach can only take you so far before you have to rely on your natural ability. If you can learn from your mistakes, analyse what you've done wrong, try new strategies to see what works and what will improve your profitability, you'll probably learn from your own experience more than anyone else can teach you.

[ruthlessimon]

If you can learn from your mistakes, analyse what you've done wrong, try new strategies to see what works and what will improve your profitability.

I can explain the exact process of enriching uranium - & it's pretty simple - but it takes the resources of an entire country to actually do it.

Same with your statement. That process of "analysing mistakes", is not trivial (an utter rabbit hole at times) - & I'd say almost all of us don't know the optimal way to correct our mistakes when developing strategies/models.

[Dave C]

..but at the end of the day, your best tutor is yourself !..

...you'll probably learn from your own experience more than anyone else can teach you...

With all due respect, that is utter rubbish.

[Derek27]

..but at the end of the day, your best tutor is yourself !..

...you'll probably learn from your own experience more than anyone else can teach you...

With all due respect, that is utter rubbish.

Sorry, maybe you can't, but I have.

After spending thousands of hours trading, I can't honestly say that I've learnt more in the few hours I've spent reading or viewing videos about trading.

[Derek27]

If you can learn from your mistakes, analyse what you've done wrong, try new strategies to see what works and what will improve your profitability.

I can explain the exact process of enriching uranium - & it's pretty simple - but it takes the resources of an entire country to actually do it.

Same with your statement. That process of "analysing mistakes", is not trivial (an utter rabbit hole at times) - & I'd say almost all of us don't know the optimal way to correct our mistakes when developing strategies/models.

It's not a question of knowing "the optimal way" to correct mistakes - nobody's perfect and does everything the optimal way. The question is can you learn and improve from them ?

We all learn to drive with an instructor sitting in the car telling us what to do, but trading is too fast moving to be compared to driving and most other crafts. The decision to back or lay, and at what price has to come from the trader's own brain, and the skill required to trade comes largely from experience.

[Wildly]

Are you still teaching trading to your daughter Peter?