We talk a lot about your learning process at Jim Dalton Trading.
But we’re going to talk about me for one second! Don’t worry: This is still really about you. Why? Because some of the pitfalls of my own educational efforts are what gave rise to our highly sought-after immersive education program.
Initially, my educational efforts were centered around an old-school traditional linear pedagogical process. I talk; you listen and take notes. The result: The student couldn’t actively participate in their own learning and see how all these pieces were integrated into rapidly changing daily market activity.
So, I graduated. Sort of. My next effort had me on the podium of a large conference setting, often using live markets to demonstrate many of the factors involved in arriving at daily trading decisions. This was far more satisfactory than my first linear approach. However, these three- to five-day seminars had two drawbacks:
- First: The student’s exposure was limited to only viewing five days of market activity. The sample size was too small to see more of the combinations and permutations of factors that lead to meaningful short-term trades.
- Second: The human mind can only absorb so much information to arrive at meaningful trading decisions.
And then the A-ha moment happened! My business partner at the time, Julia Stuart, suggested that we could conduct an online educational program — over several weeks — that would serve to allow me to reveal my personal observations, developed over four decades of trading, under multiple, ever-changing, market situations. This, in turn, would allow each student more meaningful time to gradually accumulate and digest real-time market experience.
During the early years of the Intensives, beginning students were often quite overwhelmed because many were used to employing systems they had adopted along the way. In short: bad habits. They wanted something they could digest quickly and which would give them an instant magical understanding of what drives price action in the market.
But, if you’ve been a student of ours before, or are familiar with any of our teachings, you know that the kind of magic we employ is teaching you how to be your own market magician!
How do we do that? We show you — in real time — how market understanding is heavily dependent upon understanding the expected behavior of those traders employing momentum, systematic, and technical approaches.
And, we show you how self-understanding is transformative to your trading. When you understand your own personal biases that impede you, you can then arrive objectively at sound trading decisions.
I’m thrilled to say that eight years later — off the podium and into the Internet — we’re getting ready to embark on one of our most exciting immersive courses yet: Mind Over Markets Advanced: The Intensive Series, beginning February 26. The response to these programs has been phenomenal and transformative for many of our traders. We routinely hear that once you embark on one of our programs you will never view the markets the same way again.
I hope to see you in “class,” and hope you experience the A-ha moment in your own learning — whether that changes your trading or something else meaningful in your life!
— Jim