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A Difficult Choice...
Classrooms vs. Hotel Conference Rooms
There are only a couple ways to learn how to trade stock like a professional:
1) An Internship: Get an internship at a brokerage house and learn at the feet
of a master picking up tidbits of information over several years
2) Online: Gather as much information from as many online resources as possible
3) Conference: Pay for a Hotel Conference on certain investing strategies and then follow it up with their online training and interactive seminars.
4) School: Go to a bricks-and-mortar school with classrooms full of computer stations where you learn how to trade live and follow up with additional online interactive seminars.
My Learning Experience
I learned from a mix of Online Websites and Hotel Conferences, and thought about an Internship, but didn't want to work for people that enjoy screaming at people about how their latte' order was screwed up. My Father learned from a bricks-and-mortar school with teachers flown in from around the world that were expert traders in their area of securities trading. Guess who is a much more successful trader? If you guessed my Dad, you'd be right. Here's a breakdown of your choices...
The Internship
Let's be realistic: If you're over 30 years old, you aren't going to just walk into a major brokerage house and decide to do an internship. And if you are anything like me, you aren't going to tolerate anyone screaming at you for more than a couple seconds. There is a little bit of "sell-your-soul" when you are interning, and if you don't have two dozen people with over a million dollars that you know that would want to invest their money with you, I wouldn't recommend this for you.
Online Self-Education
You could spend hours online learning about the various strategies that people use when trading. But the majority of the free resources online that you can use really don't tie into each other and help you develop a sound trading strategy. And there is a lot of well-meaning information out there that is outdated and very very wrong... Some of which you'll pay for up front... Some of which you'll pay for when you lose money trying to trade an outdated strategy.
If you do choose to sign up with an online course, I caution you to vet them by doing extensive searches online for the name of the online school and "review" or "reviews." The online coursework (if not part of an in-person training session) has never come close to getting my endorsement... They are just too unpredictable, and too many people do not learn effectively online unless they are able to question what they are learning in person with their instructors.
Hotel Conferences
You could do what I did first and attend a series of hotel conferences. This isn't a bad way to learn, and if you live near a major city that doesn't have a bricks-and-mortar school that teaches you how to trade, you might be able to find a conference that is worth your money. I learned how to trade with Investools, but their program has a lot of limits, and you have to pay $100+ to retake a class... And you might have to travel to get to some of the more advanced classes.
When you attend an event, you'll be learning with anywhere from 100 to 400 conference attendees, and you'll probably pay a little more than if you were to go to a bricks-and-mortar school. Hotel conference programs typically start around $10,000, and can quickly balloon up to $40,000 (more if you have to drive or fly to a distant city to catch a training that isn't offered close to you). On that note, just because they offer the basic classes in your city at a hotel doesn't mean the advanced classes will be offered in your city at a time that is convenient for you- Check out their future training dates and whether or not you'll be able to complete your training without having to travel.
You'll also find out that there are a lot of people out there that are "conference junkies"- people who go to the conferences to feel good about investing decisions that have led to confused results. They keep coming back to hopefully learn the one trick to investing that eluded them.
NOTE: If you are stuck in this pattern, you might want to consider attending a bricks-and-mortar school for a smaller classroom size and some over-the-shoulder coaching that makes a big difference when it comes to trading consistently.
If you do find yourself going to a series of conferences to learn how to trade I'll give you the secret to becoming a success, and it is three fold: 1) Create a trading strategy that is written out so you can reference it for every trade you think you want to make 2) Share its successes and failures with as many experienced and successful traders as possible to help you improve it 3) Engage the presenters and try to get their personal contact information so you can ask them questions after you leave the conference.
NOTE: The easiest way to get the contact information of the presenters is to become a "spokesman" for a group of people going through the training program together.
The Bricks-And-Mortar Classroom Experience
Finally, you could go to a school and learn how to trade stocks, options, futures, forex, and/or real estate securities. These schools are not "Institutions of Higher Learning" in the traditional sense that you will be awarded a degree. Instead, they are a series of week-long courses of study that have daily online meetings to follow up on your progress and make you as good or better than a professional trader. They focus on one thing only- Trading. The classroom experience is intense. I've heard a lot of people say that it is only slightly easier than taking a foreign language immersion class- and you will learn very quickly to "speak a different language."
Today, the only school I know of with an international presence that allows you to take your class as many times as it takes for you to "get it" at any of their locations in the world is OTA. OTA stands for "Online Trading Academy", but don't let the name fool you. Every course you start with them you will start at one of their schools. (They get their name, because they were one of the first to provide training resources for "Online" traders when NASDAQ first came out.)
OTA has nearly 30 schools all across the US (See map below) and a sprinkling of international schools including locations like London, Singapore, and Dubai (in the UAE). People that attend OTA will frequently attend a class overseas and extend their stay so they can write off the flight as a business expense. Training Programs start around $5,000- which is a lot less than the majority of hotel conference training programs I've looked into attending. You can also buy their introductory courses on CD and DVD if traveling to an Online Trading Academy school seems like too much of an investment, but if at all possible I strongly encourage you to invest in an on-site experience. The CD's and DVD's are good (and you'll pay anywhere from $50 to over $1,000 for a series), but there is a lot to be said for the over-the-shoulder teaching you get on-site.
Online Trading Academy literally wrote the training book for NASDAQ. There are no "re-booking fees" like many of the hotel conferences now charge. (As OTA gets busier and busier they may have to resort to charging a re-booking fee, so make sure you get it in writing.) You'll trade with OTA's money when you are in their classrooms with no penalty if you get something wrong. And their instructors are all trading professionals that had to prove their long-term trading success by revealing their portfolios to OTA.
Perhaps most importantly OTA will sit down one-on-one with you and help you pick your investing strategy and help you decide what types of securities you are going to trade and how you are going to trade them. Online Trading Academy has daily on-line meetings every trading day for several months to over a year after you go through your classes to help you put your trading strategy into play. This is the best school I have found at guiding you through your transition from novice to advanced trader- and the only school I would recommend to friends and family interested in learning how to invest money in the markets.
Don't just jump in and sign up for courses! (Even if you are an experienced trader and know exactly what classes you want to attend.) Instead, I recommend you attend one of their FREE Power Trading Workshops first. (Once on the OTA site, scroll down to "Select a Location".) This is important: The workshops usually include special inducements that combine the basic course work and some advanced education offers that expire the day of the workshop, so it is almost always worth going to the FREE Power Trading Workshop.
When you are at the workshop, remember: There are no strings attached if you don't think OTA is for you, and you'll get to talk to an educational counselor in person. If you would like to talk with an OTA education counselor toll-free on the phone before committing to a free Power Trading Workshop Click Here.
Online Trading Academy School Locations
The below map shows the cities that have an Online Trading Academy bricks-and-mortar school that specializes in training people how to trade stocks, options, futures, foreign exchange currencies, and (more recently) real estate securities. (You can zoom out to see their international school locations, too.)
View OTA in a larger map
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