[DB]

As much as I've talked about mentoring the fact is that it is always -- do it yourself -- whether you have a mentor or you get your ideas from books, the internet, watching lizards walk up and down walls, from the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels, or from funny looking mushrooms.

Who has to test and validate those ideas? Who chooses to implement them? Who chooses to violate them? Who do you blame for your losses? Who do you congratulate for your successes? It does not matter where your ideas come from. Give the same trading ideas to 50 different people and you'll have 50 different results and probably 50 different trading systems. It is always do it yourself.

It takes a lot more than thinking to trade well. In fact according to Richard Dennis one of the top traders of all time who was responsible for mentoring the Turtle Traders... intelligence (creative use of thought) was not the key factor for success.... not even a close second... turns out discipline and emotional control are by far the most important factors. There are several personal and system related factors that promote discipline and emotional control but intelligence is not a big factor for successful trading. In fact in Dennis' experience the really high IQ thinkers were typically the worst traders.

My point is that you need every edge you can get. Why be narrow in your thinking about what is the best way to get there? Why restrict your options to a "best way"? You may need one of those other options some time. Why build walls of support and resistance in your mind and emotions -- towards "methods" when you have enough support and resistance issues to contend with in the markets?

Why let such general alternatives as are on the voting list of this thread restrict your thinking that there is such a thing as the best way. I think the ONLY best way is the one that works for the person at the time. Since I've known all of the methods that have been discussed to have worked for some people some of the time and none of them to work all the time for everyone it makes a pretty good case for keeping an open mind.

How can any of us know a method won't work just because it failed once or twice for us before? I went through a lot of music teachers just to learn what a good teacher was. I took keyboard, vocals, guitar, bass, drums, from a variety of teachers and often blamed myself for slow progress until I found teachers I could relate to and saw the difference it could make. You could say that having a teacher failed for me over 90 percent of the time. However I'd never have recognised a really great teacher without having had the mediocre ones.

I'm in no way suggesting anyone jump all over the place but if you ever get into a major slump and your chosen "best" method isn't doing it for you at a time when you or the markets change imperceptibly enough to get you in trouble -- I hope you have maintained the elasticity of thinking necessary to make choices that move you onward.

DB