How traders learn to trade

When you want to learn some new skill, if just general instructions are given and no specific steps explained or demonstrated, it is unlikely to help a person learn the skill. That is why apprentice based model of learning has been around since human beings first established society along the banks of Nile river.

When I worked in advertising , I studied every single learning theory. You can only create good communication if you understand how consumer learn and process information. There is overwhelming body of research which shows skills are only learned by demonstration and by practice. That learning theory has universal application.

The reason for that is skills are processed in procedural memory part of the brain. Procedural memory can not be built by just reading instructions and providing general guideline like saying everyone must develop their own trading style, or saying do not follow others, or become a hermit or psychology is the real key to trading. There is zero evidence to show these kind of things build procedural memory. 

Procedural memory as name suggests is memory about how to perform a process. To trade you need procedural memory specific to trading a setup or style of trading like growth investing or value investing or swing trading.

If you want to learn trading follow the apprentice model. Work under someone who knows trading , wash dishes for them. Observe how they select stocks, where they enter, where they put stops, where they exit, how much do they risk and so on. Those process oriented details are extremely critical to learning to trade. Absent that you can spend years and you will never learn trading.

As a new trader, or new to a method or instrument unless you work from some one else template, you will find it difficult to learn. 

Let us say you are not familiar with options and you want to learn to trade option, ad if someone gives you general advice saying buy when IV is low and sell when IV is high or saying never buy calls or any other general coverall statement. How useful is that. What you need is step by step hand holding. You want to see an actual trade and broken in to process step by step and you want to see it executed hundreds of time in real life situation to learn. That will help you learn faster than any other way to learn.

The same thing can be said about Triple ETF or any other instrument. And same thing applies if you want to trade a new style like say value investing or some other approach.

Once you master someones approach then you take it, innovate around it and build your own method around it. That is how learning works for vast majority of people.

Unspecific trading advice without step by step breakdown is not worth even one cent.... And it is available all over the place with hundreds of oft repeated aphorism and rules. They sound good but they do not enhance your trading ability.

Think about it and just don't get influenced by any and everything you read. You will see some people just get quickly influenced by every new flavor of the week trading idea or aphorism....

Learning theories have not changed since civilization was formed and they are not going to change in our lifetime...

If a trade is based on valid logic and well thought out market structure, it is going to work whether you tell everyone about it or secretively execute it or sit in a cave and do it....