By Darrell Martin
When learning to trade, you can take the long, hard way or the short, smart way. The long, hard way is to do it all on your own. It is full of mistakes, frustration and losing. You find some online courses or a book at the library and try to make sense of it all. It is confusing. You search online for some charts that seem to go along with what you have read and studied. There is no one to help you. You try your best; you quickly lose your account.
The short, smart way is to go to a website like www.apexinvesting.com where all education is free. You try out some of the videos and read a few of the articles. You like what you see and decide to subscribe. You take several of the courses and ask questions in the online trading room, the forum. You learn what mistakes you made while trading in a demo account, before trading with real money. You are happy and successful.
The best traders are those who ask questions. Traders need not be discouraged or have an ego. They need only ask plenty of questions in order to become great traders. It is a good indicator that you will be a good trader if you are asking questions. It is traders who don’t ask question who make the educators nervous.
Perhaps traders think they will ask a dumb question, waste someone’s time by posting a chart, or mislead another trader with their faulty chart example. This is like going to college, paying tuition but not turning in homework because this will waste the professor’s time to grade the homework! Not to mention, raising your hand to participate in class, thus giving feedback, because that too, would waste the time of the class and the professor. Since you are there to learn, make sure you get your money’s worth.
Learning to trade is like attending college. You want to learn all you can. Put your ego aside and ask questions. Get the feedback on your trades. Mark up your charts and submit them to someone who can help you see the little or big mistakes you made. It may have been something simple or it may have been a losing trade, but if you don’t know and you don’t ask, you may not learn the things you need to know to succeed in the next trade. The trader helping you may know a cool little technique you can use on your trades that will save you a wealth of time, money and heartaches.
Remember, not everything will be included in the courses you take. Can you imagine how long those courses would be? They would be so long most people wouldn’t take the time for them. This is another reason why it is important to ask questions in the forum when you feel you don’t understand something entirely.
Of course, the first step is to take a course. Understand some basics and then start asking questions. Visit the forum and clarify what you do know. You don’t know what you don’t know until you ask someone who does know.
Do not be afraid to ask and learn. Trading on your own is a waste of time. In most cases, another trader has already figured out the answer to your question. Ask and be teachable. Then you will be ready to share your knowledge when another trader has the same question.