Today's Quote: “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.” Chinese Proverb.

There is a problem we sometimes see after a new student takes one of our seminars. Most of the students leave with a strong desire to succeed and a strong desire to put what was taught to work. These are both good things. Unfortunately, one of two things frequently occurs. Sometimes, despite all the enthusiasm from the seminar, students fall right back into their old routine. On Monday morning, they never really apply what they learned at the seminar. Hard to believe, but old habits can be hard to break. They do not review and follow-up so the concepts can take root once they are on their own in the real time environment.

Sometimes the student begins to apply the concepts, but does not follow up on the results. They do not go back to review to see if the play was actually based on, and managed by, the concepts taught. Many over look the basics that were taught. One of the most common failures we see is people not properly applying the basic criteria necessary for the set-ups we teach.

Take for example the VCM Buy Set-up. Most students seem to like the criteria for finding the pullbacks, and increasing the effectiveness by looking for some of the reversal signs. Unfortunately, this is not a fair summary of what is actually a fairly complex strategy. The most common mistake traders make is in the very first requirement. That is, that the stock have the proper pattern before the pullback. For example, being in a power uptrend before the pull back for a buy, or in a power downtrend before the retracement for a sell is a key to the buy set-ups.

This leads to a common question by the student. “Why did that pattern fail”? Now, patterns do fail, and that is why we have stops. However, it is so very important to understand which patterns are good plays that fail (some do), and which are low-odds plays that you should expect to fail. Do you know the difference? This leads to a concept that all must understand. There is a difference between ‘memorizing’ some pages in a book, and truly embracing a concept and ‘making it your own’.

One of the keys to applying any newly learned concept is follow-up. Most new students do no follow-up at all. Those that do, face a glaring issue. How do you follow up on yourself? Having someone skilled in the concepts helping you to understand if you are properly executing the strategies is essential to your continued development. We follow up by letting our traders retake seminars as often as you like and providing the VCM Proprietary Trading Room. See our website for details on these programs, at www.vcmtrading.com.