Catch 22

If there was a university course entitled 'Trading' - what would the curriculum be ?

Ordinarily, prospective students who want to attend a uni' course to learn about structural engineering for example - would get an outline of the course objectives, a profile of the tutors and a breakdown of the curriculum, term by term, module by module. This would be compiled and written by the course director who, often as not, would be a highly qualified and experienced professional. At the end of the course, say three years, the student is awarded a degree and then leaves the uni' in search of a job. As traders, there are no courses of this nature; we have to devise our own. We are our own course director, only we have no qualifications or experience and are light years away from being professional. Herein lies the conundrum and the title of the thread.

It struck me that it might be useful for the growing legion of new members to T2W, many of whom will be new to trading as well, to have as a starting point a basic framework around which they can devise their own curriculum. Before 'term' starts, the student should have read 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator' and invested in Edwards & Magee's 'Technical analysis of Stock Trends'. A possible module in term one might be to study FTSE Beater's 'The Basic's of Trading' thread.

Now, just for fun, imagine it's day one of term one on your three year course on trading. Your excited, motivated and keen to learn. Your tutor, some bloke called Larry Williams, walks in and greets you with a friendly smile and says, "We are going to start from scratch and tick of the basics that all traders must know. First of these is . . . "

Tim.

Of course out of the 1,000 people that first attended the degree the number who passed was around 10%, the other 90% failed

Maybe universities could offer subjects or majors in trading as part of an Economics Degree or something similar.

Knowledge Lab

How about treating The Knowledge Lab articles as your standard.

Next stage would be to get a panel of experts to test on all aspects.

Feel free to develop this idea and perhaps expand on it.

Counter

timsk said:

Before 'term' starts, the student should have read 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator' and invested in Edwards & Magee's 'Technical analysis of Stock Trends'.

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And there's your first mistake. If you want to learn about the markets, study the markets.

there are no 'basics of trading'. it is all very advanced.

it is also beyond the classroom.

you can study markets if you wish, but it will only take you so far and most certainly will not guarantee any success.

this is why so many fail. all effort is placed in academia and learning market history/past action. most likely because this is the norm in life.

this is why so many fail. they spend all their time reading books like edwards & magee, pring, trade2win threads & the rest. all of it is dog eggs and kebab meat quite frankly if you do not know what needs to be done and when. yet this is not discussed because no one knows what to discuss.

the answers are not so much in market evaluation, but self evaluation - in peratio proportions, not fibonacci i may add!

anyone for a game of endless circles? it really is a very amusing game to watch i promise!

when new rules are introduced to the game, the bringer is scorned for spoiling the nature of the game.

counter_violent said:

How about treating The Knowledge Lab articles as your standard.

Next stage would be to get a panel of experts to test on all aspects.

Feel free to develop this idea and perhaps expand on it.

Counter

Click to expand...

& who exactly appointed these 'experts' may i ask?

sometimes i really believe there are mysterious forces at work that try to ensure failure. this is not however accurate. it is a false perception. the truth is that the 'expert' doesnt know (often), and neither does the student. so who is to suss the 'expert' and call his bluff? not me. i have gotten into enough trouble already, and clearly most donot seem to want their ivory towers to be identified for what they really are - more dog eggs and kebab meat.

although, some of it is factual and right, like what an exchange is and who are the participants, descriptions of the tools etc. but technique? pah!

in most other activities, most information is helpful and correct. not so in trading.

why is that?

timsk said:

If there was a university course entitled 'Trading' - what would the curriculum be ?

Click to expand...

I am actually involved in developing just such a course. A university professor and I have twice taught it during an abbreviated summer term (5 weeks). We are currently working on extending it out in to a full semester type of offering.

The approach we are taking combines the practical side based on experience with elements of standard financial theory. Since there is no one right way to trade, we are directing our efforts toward discussing trading mechanics, market influences, money management, trading method/system development, and trading psychology. The idea is to provide a base from which the student can then progress on whatever path most suits her or him.

If anyone has any thoughts on what to include (or not include) in the course, I'd love to hear it.

the course would be closer to theology rather than science.

there are many styles of trading, some contradictory. ( trend-following/counter-trend; indicator-led / price-led. etc )
ultimately, we have to make our own choices with regards to style.

all we can learn, would be basics, such as economic theory, broad-brush concepts already covered by JJ Murphy, et al.

no course can teach us to trade a system for the eleventh time, when the previous 10 have resulted in losses. This requires FAITH in the system, a wholly religio-mind-gut-feel state of affairs.
( even if that faith was based on statistics of past events. even then, we are assuming the nature of the markets hasnt changed, eg; volatility etc )

I am finding, this game for me, is a balance between broad ideas of S/R, general patterns, and discretionary entries/exits based on this.

Balance between science and art. ( of course, art is individual )

trendie said:

the course would be closer to theology rather than science.

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The "science" is at the foundation, though. In order to trade, one needs to know how to place orders (and what kinds of orders there are), market regulations & standards, how to determine p&l, margin calculations, determining risk, understanding what sorts of things will move the markets, how to assess trading system performance, etc. All of this stuff can be taught.

The faith/art comes more from what follows: determing a specific trading style, applying a trading method/system. A course could not possibly address these things directly and specifically for each student. It could, however, provide a framework to help the individual in those areas.

Someone helpfully suggested that you need to study the markets rather than read books. Well, that's one way. But I'd personally feel a lot safer in the hands of my surgeon if I felt he'd at least browsed a couple of primers on open-heart surgery rather than just watched other surgeons and their procedures.

As for the 'experts' and who they are. The only obvious ones we we have to examine on these boards are the self-proclaimed ones and (with some variations in degree of usefulness) they don't totally impress. The real experts are those that we each (if we're lucky) individually 'discover'. They are recognisable by their complete lack of self-importance, often self-deprecatory in nature and unassuming in style. They make no claims, but you just 'know' what they are saying is right by simple virtue of the fact you can validate it empirically yourself.

As to the topic of this thread:- How many Uni courses actually deliver the essence of the course or subject it purports to deliver? How many grads get all they need from the course and the set work and readings etc. without 'doing their own research'? How many grads end up 2 years after a Uni course actively involved in a career/vocation in any way linked to their course? Any why is that?

The nature of education as provided in schools and Unis today is completely wrong for 'real' learning. The brain learns fast - not slowly. It shouldn't take 3 years to get degree level education - 3 months should be more than enough.

I suggest a 3-month course on "How to Learn Whatever it is you want to Learn" would be far more useful. That way, you'd be investing in a lot more than mere trading skills.

Rhody Trader,

completely agree with you.
I wanted to make the point that we could only agree on broad concepts.

But I anticipate that this thread may get bogged down on minute details, which may reflect different traders pre-conceptions, eg disagreeing whether indicators shoudl be used, or only price/volume etc.

TheBramble has already pointed out the possible issues about how we decide who the experts are.
( with all the ineviatable (sp) sniping about people having agendas about selling systems etc )

TheBramble said:

The nature of education as provided in schools and Unis today is completely wrong for 'real' learning. The brain learns fast - not slowly. It shouldn't take 3 years to get degree level education - 3 months should be more than enough.

I suggest a 3-month course on "How to Learn Whatever it is you want to Learn" would be far more useful. That way, you'd be investing in a lot more than mere trading skills.

Click to expand...

Well said. The current educational model is incredibly inefficient. The problem is it's so entrenched that changing it is a massive undertaking.

TheBramble said:

Someone helpfully suggested that you need to study the markets rather than read books. Well, that's one way. But I'd personally feel a lot safer in the hands of my surgeon if I felt he'd at least browsed a couple of primers on open-heart surgery rather than just watched other surgeons and their procedures..

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If you were going to have someone else trade your money, you might have a point. Even so, I imagine you'd be more likely to be interested in whether or not the individual can actually trade than in how many books he's read.

The icons that everyone uses for examples did not learn to trade by reading books. They learned to trade by studying the markets they were interested in and trading them.

dbphoenix said:

The icons that everyone uses for examples did not learn to trade by reading books. They learned to trade by studying the markets they were interested in and trading them.

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The problem with making 'universal' statements like that dbp is that they just cry out for verification.

First, what icons does everybody 'use an an example'? Are they ones they've read about... ?

Second, what evidence do you have that these icons (sic) did not use reading as part of their apprenticeship and on-going trading education?

We need to be very precise not only in what we say and how we say it, but we also need to ensure we have sufficiently rigorous proofs for the references we employ.

TheBramble said:

The problem with making 'universal' statements like that dbp is that they just cry out for verification.

First, what icons does everybody 'use an an example'? Are they ones they've read about... ?

Second, what evidence do you have that these icons (sic) did not use reading as part of their apprenticeship and on-going trading education?

We need to be very precise not only in what we say and how we say it, but we also need to ensure we have sufficiently rigorous proofs for the references we employ.

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Livermore, for one. And what does it matter whether or not they "read" about him? And if he used books on trading to educate himself, I'm eager to know the titles.

As for precision and rigor, perhaps you'd expand on the similarities between trading and open heart surgery.

Rhody Trader said:

Well said. The current educational model is incredibly inefficient. The problem is it's so entrenched that changing it is a massive undertaking.

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Unfortunately, there is an object lesson going on here, amounting to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The initial post had to do with teaching people how to trade. A "course of study", if you will. Yet the entrenched immediately resort to the usual: books, lectures, etc.

One doesn't learn about a given market by reading about or listening to somebody talk about it. He learns it by studying the object itself.

DBP - Quote

Livermore, for one. And what does it matter whether or not they "read" about him? And if he used books on trading to educate himself, I'm eager to know the titles.

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Henry Clews, almost certainly? Henry Clews (1973). Fifty Years in Wall Street. (New York, NY: Arno Press, 1,062 p. [Reprint 1908 ed.]). Wall Street; Speculation; Capitalists and financiers--United States.

Maybe there are some others among these: http://www.kipnotes.com/Pre1900.htm

HTH

Cheers

Mayfly

When I was at school, in our business class we use to run a trading/investing competition. Basically, when we arrived in the morning we would have to write down all our buys and sells in a book. At the start of the year we were given a virtual £50,000 to use. I finished the year with over £100,000 and I was hooked to trading/investing ever since, that was 16-17 years ago. It was 10 years after that where I moved from virtual to real money.

Good old Victor Sperandeo achieved a return of 70% plus for fiftteen years with his fund. And he wasn't shy of a book or two. Over 2500 books he'd studied on business, economics,trading and investment and that was by the early 90's. Who knows what this figure is now! I believe a balance of both is a good idea. For me, i had to experience bull, bear and sideways markets first hand before i began to get a feel for price action. But i still believe that even if you just come away with one good idea from a book, then its been worthwhile.

techst@ said:

Good old Victor Sperandeo achieved a return of 70% plus for fiftteen years with his fund. And he wasn't shy of a book or two. Over 2500 books he'd studied on business, economics,trading and investment and that was by the early 90's. Who knows what this figure is now! I believe a balance of both is a good idea. For me, i had to experience bull, bear and sideways markets first hand before i began to get a feel for price action. But i still believe that even if you just come away with one good idea from a book, then its been worthwhile.

Click to expand...

O'l Vic spent almost every spare moment from 1974 through 1976 studying market history via "dow theory"..
Then end result was to define "market movements" in a way that made sense to him.