Folks
I think this thread has sort of been sidetracked by another discussion about Morris and his supposed "secret sauce" and his marketing. The original question I think was does SJ Options have merit as an educational service and that question is getting lost in this discussion.
If you consider all the ways that are available to learn to trade there are books, newsgoups, mail order courses and of course mentoring programs. Mentoring programs certainly have a place in the Options Education universe. If you look into it there are about 4-5 services out there actively offering options education courses + some sort of personal mentoring component to the individual investor. (By the way this list is certainly not all inclusive as there are other schools where you can learn options trading techniques (Investools, Better Trades, Optionetics, Options University, Options GPS, etc) but I am not certain about an individualized or group mentoring component. The ones below are offerings that I know for sure have some kind of mentoring included.
- Dan Sheridan
- Discover Options
- SJ Options
- Dan Passarelli
I've found that all these offerings have some kind of marketing hook and perhaps Morris is a bit more aggressive than the others in trying to get his name out there to establish his business.....ok its a free country and the guy is trying to market his business so I don't personally have a problem with that. He can say what he wants as far as I'm concerned as long as at the end of the day he can back up his claims and they can pass the truth test. In fact there are many more people out there in the educational area making much more outlandish claims to sell their crappy newsletters and talking about fantastic rates of returns etc. I've seen his stuff on youtube and I don't see where he does that, although he does say that he is doing things and teaching things in innovative ways that not a lot of other people are teaching and ultimately its to better manage the risk. And that might be true, I have not seen a lot of people teaching Broken Wing Butterflys to the main stream, although I have seen Skip Strike or Unbalanced BF written up in various places. We all know that everything that has ever been known about options or basic positions has been written about. If the guy has figured out a unique way to manage his risk and turn basic trades into less risky trades by combining options in certain ways and to make adjustments or hedges to the trades or by obtaining better entries and exits via his timing techniques or whatever then great that is where the creativity and innovation come in, and if he is teaching that to students who are willing to pay to learn what he knows then where is the problem in that? Sorry I don't see it nor should we be snickering and trashing the guy over it.
Out of curiosity and fairness even, I looked at his site and they do seem to have some innovative things going on there that some of the others lack. There is a self directed course to teach the basics of options theory , technical analysis and the greeks and then it moves into multi legged spread techniques and risk management. They also offer group sessions and like Dan Sheridan everything is recorded. The other feature that I thought was interesting is that they have a live trading lab and post their trades. After you purchase and finish taking any educational course I think an important factor is..... ok now that I am done now what? SJ seems to have handled this problem in a unique way by allowing students to join a mentored group that focuses on specializing in certain bread and butter trades like Iron Condors. So there seems to be a way here to continue to learn and grow in trading.
I think the central question in all this is the following.....How do you learn best. For any new trader or even a more experienced person who is looking to improve their skills where do you go to do that? Read a book? Use forums like this? Certainly that can help but what if you don't learn well that way, what if you learn better by having someone show you how to do it and explain it to you and look over their shoulder while they do it. That is depends on the individual of course and it makes sense to me that for those people who might want to get all the instruction and information in one place offerings like this are very viable. So to stroke a check ranging from $3000 for SJ's course all the way up to about $6500 that Dan Sheridan charges for their offerings makes sense. I am an IT Systems Engineer and I can tell you that people think nothing of writing checks like that and more to go to Cisco Systems or Microsoft or Oracle or any other types of specialized vendor training to earn certifications in their products. Its a question of ROI and increased earning power and so forth that justify the cost of going to any of these schools. What makes learning to trade options any different?.
Circling back around to the original question....the person was asking I think whether anyone knows if SJ Options has a decent offering and I think they where wondering if the program was solid and had anyone taken the course and would they offer an opinion. I could ask the same question about Sheridan or Discover Options Mentoring programs......are they good? What are the pros and cons of taking courses like this? What about the cost? Sorry to get up on a soap box about this but I think that the person asked a good question and then the discussion got off on a tangent and never really answered the question.
Cheers
Scott
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