7/9/2025 – One vital question for those who are early in the process of learning how to trade:
* Are you actually getting mentoring, or are you only getting information and instruction? Because trading is a performance activity, teaching is not the same as training. Can you imagine someone pretending to teach you football by emailing you diagrammed plays and showing you clips from games? Would that really teach you how to play the sport and what to do in specific situations? Mentoring means directly observing the performance of an accomplished professional and being able to ask questions about that performance and–eventually–trying the performance on one’s own with direct supervision and feedback. The saying in medical school is “see one, do one, teach one”. The way junior analysts learn trading on a hedge fund team is by seeing the actual, live trading of the portfolio manager and reviewing what was done and why, as well as what could have been done differently. If you’re not watching your mentor trade live, you’re not getting mentoring. You’re getting instruction. No one ever learned to perform on stage or perform on a basketball or tennis court in a classroom or through videos. True mentors mentor through live performance and supervise your live performance.
7/8/2025 – Here are three more questions that reflect best practices from successful traders and hedge fund managers/team members:
1) How do you begin your trading day to ensure that you’re in peak condition in terms of energy, focus, and preparation? My experience is that the day is often won or lost based upon what the trader does before placing the first trade.
2) How do you spend your time outside of trading to ensure that you’re in a state of maximum well-being? That means making the most of activities that are enjoyable, fulfilling, and energizing, including relationship activities and physical workouts. For the hard-working professional, the great enemy of performance is burnout.
3) What research am I doing today that has the potential to open new doors of opportunity for my trading going forward? Successful traders don’t have “an edge”; they are constantly searching and re-searching new sources of edge in different instruments and market conditions. If we’re not innovating, we’re going stale.
7/6/2025 – Successful traders, I’ve found, are distinguished by the questions they ask, not just by answers they’ve come up with. Here are a few questions that can shape our success:
1) What is the one lesson I can learn from the day that can make me a better person? A better trader? How can I apply that lesson to tomorrow?
2) What is the market’s personality right here and now and how has it been changing? Are we becoming more or less volatile? More or less correlated from sector to sector? Broader or narrower in strength and weakness? Look more closely; step back further: what are traders/investors failing to see?
3) If I wait patiently for great trading opportunity, how can I best learn and grow during the waiting period? How will my learning and growing benefit my future trading?
4) What makes my best trades different from my other trades? How can I recognize that in real time to take greater advantage of my strengths?
5) What makes my worst trades different from my other trades? How can I recognize that in real time to reduce my vulnerabilities?