In reference to your question, in options education all I can say is you get what you pay for. This is not to say that you cannot learn things on your own via free tools and websites and books and low cost courses. You can and for a beginner there certainly is plenty out there to choose from as opposed to when I started out with this. I followed that same path over the course of 3-4 years, I learned a lot on my own, and admittedly you can always teach yourself new things. However, when it comes to trading though there are pitfalls in this philosophy. The main problem is that if you do not learn the right way you can make some very costly mistakes. So much so that in the end it would end up costing you much more money through losses than if you had just paid for professional education right up front. There are no guarantees in trading of course but If you are serious about this you will treat this as a profession. Dan Sheridan is fond of calling it a craft and he is right. If you wanted to learn how to become anything in life be it a plumber, electrician, doctor, nurse, attorney, teacher or engineer you have to undergo a number of years of either formal professional training or an apprenticeship of some sorts. Why then is trading any different? You wouldn't think twice about enrolling in college to study engineering because that is simply what it takes to enter the profession. Unfortunately some people are of the opinion that you can just read a few books and presto you are a trader...that is wrong and deceptive. My unsolicited advice is if you are going to choose this path, is to trade small, very small until you are absolutely sure you understand what you are doing and can manage a variety of trades and trading situations. They say that to become an a real expert at anything it takes 10,000 hrs to achieve mastery of a subject. I tend to buy that argument. But I didn't buy into that at first and thought that I could do it myself. So I began by using almost every free and low cost method that there was to learn the basics. And while that might work fine at first it takes thousands of hours of reading and studying to get proficient at trading. And again everyone is different so your mileage may vary on this. If you have the time to invest by all means try this. But sooner of later you may come to realize that you are really spending a lot of time trying to figure it all out on your own. At that point if you are serious about learning to trade options just know that there are other solid ways to learn. And that involves taking courses from a pro. The singular advantage in this is that it can shorten your 10,000 hrs of learning because presumably if you study with the right coach or mentor they have already made the mistakes and broken the code on how to be successful. There is also the idea that somewhere along the line you will plateau and to get to higher more advanced levels you are going to need some coaching. Most of us don't know any former professional floor traders or market makers who can teach us. Fortunately though as a retail trader we can purchase this knowledge. One day this just hit me. And once I thought about it it made real sense. So I looked around carefully and as a first step, I enrolled at Options University and took the Mastery Course from Ron Ianieri which was a great course by the way for learning all the basic fundamentals of options. While for some people OU might be enough, In my case I realized that I wanted to learn more so I enrolled as a student with Sheridan Mentoring. So far with Sheridan I have not been disappointed. If Ron Ianieri was the Bachelors Degree in Options Trading then Sheridan is the Masters program. In the end its not really about Dan or his teaching, I think that after OU I might have been able to learn almost as much on my own. However its the community of traders that Sheridan has that makes it worth the cost of membership. Being able to look over the shoulders of seasoned traders, many of whom trade full time, manage a lot of money and make their livings from the markets, this is aspect that is invaluable to me. So its worth considering. I'll leave you with just the following thought. Tiger Woods is arguably the best and most successful golfer in the world, but even he has a coach. I wonder why that is? Cheers Scott --- On Thu, 3/25/10, Becki Kain <anaisdog@yahoo.
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