Things To Consider Before You Decide To Take A Trading / Investment Course

When you are interested in learning stock / options trading, you might be considering whether you should take a course or just learn it by yourself. Taking a course might help you to have a jump start in learning. However, some people are better learning it by themselves by reading books or trading websites / blogs. It all depends on your learning style / preference, whether you are the kind of people who can learn on their own, or you are better learning by listening to people (mentors) who teach you in person.

As for me, I mentioned before in the previous post that though I attended paid trading courses, I actually learn much more from all the great investment / trading blogs around than what I got from the paid courses. Reading the blogs has helped me tremendously to grow and improve as a trader.

Should you decide to take a course, you will then have to pick which course you should take.
A few things to consider so that you know what to expect or to avoid from a trading / investment course:

* After you finish the course, sometimes they may come back to you and say that just attending that course is not enough. Then they may offer another “more in-depth” courses, couching/mentoring program, etc. And usually, you will have to pay more money for that.

* In some courses, the trading strategy they teach may require you to use / buy their trading software. Hence, you need to depend on their software and, generally, will have to pay them subscription fee and system enhancement fee (if any). Therefore, before you decide to sign up a course, you should query about this possibility if you’re not interested to always depend on their software.

* A trading course may teach you a very good strategy. However, no matter how good the strategy is, it may not work for you, simply because it doesn’t suit your personality / risk appetite. I personally feel that this is very important. One can be successful in trading only if he can find a strategy that best suits his personality and feel comfortable with it.

* Attending a course is only a start of your learning journey. Don’t expect you can master trading and ready to make big money after attending a-few-days courses. You will still continue to learn from other sources, or need to tweak and adjust the strategy to make it your own. Trading needs hard work and determination. You will not stop learning until you stop trading.

* Don’t believe too much in testimonies. Even though it may be true that some of them get this much of return or that much of dollar for only a short time, that is not the important point. So what if they can make a phenomenal return or dollar, but it’s only one time or a few times, or with the helps / tips from the mentor. You never know if those people who give testimonies are only too happy for a few successful trades. What is more important is the consistency & being independent, particularly if you want to trade for a living.