One of the things that a lot of newer traders think of when starting out is whether or not they need a mentor. Mentors are often seen as someone who you can learn from, someone that you can go to should you need any help, and someone that is there to help you to become profitable, but are they as good as they are supposed to be?
There are a number of different things that you should think about before you consider getting yourself a mentor, some are based around you, and others are based around the mentor themselves, so let’s take a look at what some of them are.
Are they credible?
There are a lot of people out there that will tell you how fantastic they are at trading, and how profitable they are. The problem is that they often have no figures to back these things up, there are often very exaggerated results, they sometimes do this to try and suck people in who want to make a quick or large profit, these often lead to scams. Before you think about approaching someone or signing up for a course, be sure that they have a history available to view, check for reviews, any mentor that has been around for a while or is actually helping people will have a lot of very positive reviews on the internet, just be on the lookout for the shill emails that are present.
Do they want you to copy them, or develop yourself?
There are mentors out there that are profitable traders, the problem with them though is that they aren’t very good teachers. In fact, a lot of them simply want you to copy their trades or to copy their trading strategies, which this is good in a way that you can become profitable very quickly, what will happen when they decide to stop or you decide to leave them? If you have just been copying them, you will not be able to deal with the changing markets on your own.
It is important that a good mentor will be able to teach and help[ you to develop your own style. To create your own strategy from scratch, this is a fantastic way to learn and will enable you to improve and to fully understand what it is that you are doing. If you are able to understand your strategy, then you will be able to adapt it to deal with the ever-changing markets.
Are you good at listening?
Part of having a mentor is having them instruct you and teach you various different aspects of trading, so you are going to need to listen to what is being said, a lot of people do not like this style of learning, it can be quite hard to keep focus. So it is important that the personality of the mentor matches your own, this can make it far more enjoyable and will allow you to keep focus a lot easier.
Are you inspired by them?
When you look at what the person has achieved, does it inspire you? Does it make you want to achieve the same things? There is no point using someone as a mentor if you are not inspired by what they have achieved, where would your motivation come from? If you are trading with someone where you look at their results and instant yeast the same, you want to work so you can achieve the same, this is the sort of mentor that you want. Having this mentor will give you a huge boost in motivation, being able to talk to them directly and work with them will keep you pushing on in order to achieve the same success as they have.
What does it cost?
When you look at a course, some of them can be quite expensive, while this in itself is not necessarily something to avoid, what is important to look for are any upsells, as soon as someone tries to sell you something on top of the original price, be it software or a VIP group, then the alarm bells should be ringing. This is often the sign of someone just trying to make as much money as they can rather than being there to genuinely help others to learn to trade.
So those are some of the things that you should be looking out for, there are a lot of people claiming to be mentors out there, it is important that you look into them a little deeper before choosing one and certainly before you part with any of your money.
