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 The party's over
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Well, if you made
it to this page, you already know the sad news. I recall when I stopped doing
the free commentary I got a ton of email expressing to me how badly they felt
about that, how much they looked forward to it, and so on. But since then the
interest in Kane Trading (called KT from here on) has waned greatly. I
don’t think it’s KT specifically, I think it’s serious trading
in general. Sure, there are tons of retail back in now using phone apps and a
few brokers we all know the names of, but to me that is the opposite end of the
spectrum from what the KT project was all about.
Let me go into a little detail
about this project. Most of you know most or all of this, but it’s good to
lay it out here. By my nature I am a teacher. I love to teach. I used to teach
math. In college I was always the one who everyone came to, to ask to start and
run a study group. I enjoyed that role. I just want to be sharing what I have
learned. Once I got in to trading as a business, I quickly realized it’s a
very lonely profession. As it is, I am always so busy and overly committed, and
have lived in very isolated areas, that I don’t have friends in the
conventional sense, you know, to go hang out with.
I also had another issue. As soon
as I started with the trading, studying as much as I could from every source I
could find (I read five hundred trading books in the first five years), I
quickly realized that although I was gaining something from every source I
found value in, no one approach was working for me. I realized I had to create
my own path, my own methodology. This is the much shortened version of how the
KT methodology was born. But on to the issue.
I realized that the more unique my approach
became, the more isolated I became. When I first started we were in the
‘dot bomb’ era, and in the city I lived outside of there were many
market meetings. I met lots of traders there, and we used to get together all
the time. We had meetings at people’s houses, at various locations, and I
met one on one with people. As I became more specialized and more advanced I
found that no one understood what I was talking about any longer. Having
trading discussions was ‘boring’ for me. I’m not being
condescending or arrogant when I say this, I am just saying I had become too
specialized, with a unique methodology of my own making, to be able to discuss
trading with anyone anymore.
I studied on this for awhile, and decided that creating
my own colleagues was my only real option, or just have no give and take and
accept that. The latter seemed just too isolated and non-productive. Now, there
are more details, enough for an entire book, on the specifics of how I started
KT and started to write the books. Some of you know a good bit of the story.
What matters to this discussion, though, is that the concept of creating some
colleagues was my primary motivation. The fact that it evolved quickly into a
productive business that I took very seriously was for the most part a happy
side-effect.
I learned something from a previous life, and business, that I
carried forward to my decision making in this venture. I knew an animal breeder
(I’ll keep the details general for simplicity here, but if you want it to
be more concrete you can imagine these are birds, although that is just for
your own clarity), and he bred rare (at the time) animals and would give the
offspring to people who were interested in keeping such critters. He found
universally that when he inquired back to the people some time later the
animals were either dead or doing poorly. He couldn’t understand this
because the animals were hardy, the instructions provided (which he was very
successfully using himself) were clear, and the recipients of good
character.
He decided to try an experiment. Since these were fairly rare
animals, and many people wanted to work with them and to try to breed them, he
decided to charge people for the offspring, and charge a fairly steep price. He
found two things out doing this. First, people bought all his offspring at the
high prices. I digress here, but this reminds me of a business lesson I learned
long ago.
This shopkeeper wanted to clear out this merchandise that
wasn’t selling very well. He instructed the manager to mark it down to
half price. When he got back all the merchandise was sold, and he was pretty
happy about it. He asked the manager about it, and the manager told him that
doubling the price really did the trick. The manager somehow heard wrong and
though he meant the price now is half of what it should be. Bottom line, people
saw the same merchandise at the higher price, perceived it must be quite
valuable, and bought it all up. Human psychology, as counter-intuitive as it
may be.
So,
this guy had no issue selling out all his rare offspring at hefty prices. But
the second part was the real shocker. In the future when he inquired how the
animals were doing, the answer was always unequivocally ‘Great’. See,
people spent a good chunk of cash for something they felt privileged to have,
and they took incredibly good care of it. When it was free it was like the dime
store goldfish. If it dies because of their neglect, they’ll just get
another one. (I won’t comment on how cruel that attitude is, or how cruel
human nature can be at times, you all know what I think of that…)
Now, how is all
that relevant to my decisions with KT? Well, this would take another entire
article, one I have wanted to write for years but just never did, about what I
call ‘forum people’. Almost universally when it comes to trading
forums the general consensus is that everything should be free, and anyone who
charges is a total scumbag and rip-off artist.
They never bother to think that
their car mechanic, HVAC tech, doctor, lawyer, plumber, electrician, and on and
on, they all charge for their services. And the very same ‘forum
person’ charges when they go to work. But if it’s related to trading
it must be free. Someday I do hope I get to write the scathing article
this topic really deserves. Keep an eye on the
What’s New page to see if I ever
do it.
On
with the story. I was developing brand new, totally unique proprietary material
that I was using on my own trading journey. In a sense I was formulating my own
recipe for Coke™, only for trading. Do you think that any company with any
formula would give away the recipe for the ‘secret sauce’ for free?
I’ve never heard it done ever in history. But with trading, that’s
the only acceptable path?
So, I started to think what might be the best approach
to achieve all my goals. Keep my proprietary material proprietary, charge fees
that would make people care about what they were investing in, not treat it as
nearly valueless, retain that value for those that did invest, and meet one of
my most important goals, assist those who wanted to, like myself, do this as a
stay at home profession. And all the while create some colleagues I could have
valuable give and take with at some point.
My slogan, on the home page, and mentioned
endlessly around the site and in one-on-one work with me, is ‘For those
who want to do the work’. See, in my experience, the huge, vast majority
of people not only don’t want to do the work, but are just lazy in
general. We live in a world of mediocrity, and it’s gotten a lot worse as
time has gone on.
I wanted to run this as a niche business, only for the serious
people who wanted to work hard. Not for people who wanted to take a weekend
course and be a super-trader after that, making the thousands a day working in
one or two hours, and quitting their jobs, as the ‘dream merchants’
all promise. In a world of hucksters and thieves I wanted to offer a product
based on work and what I felt was a solid, robust core methodology. For
aspiring professionals only.
I have frequently said over the years ‘I am not a
vendor’. Now that the business is officially closed I stick with that. I
was never a ‘vendor’, not one single day of this business. I never
made a single promise the entire time I ran this business. I never discussed
potential rates of return, not one single time. I never said anyone would
succeed if they just followed some magic formula only I knew about. I taught
about taking a robust starting point, making it your own, doing hard, hard
work, all the while always focusing on studying yourself, your weaknesses, your
issues. I tried to help aspiring professionals take the next step up on their
own personal ladder.
I always tried to tell the truth, as I saw it. Read what I said on
the Mentorship Page (I think archiving this
site provides a lot of value, which I am footing the bill for, as a service). I
have said many times I think one should expect it to take about five years of
hard work before one can even hope to be profitable. Not wildly
profitable, not quit your job and rely solely on trading income profitable.
Just have a shot at profitable.
Not that everyone will be, only that they had a
shot at it. Ten years to be a low level master. Low level master.
In forums I read if you are not seriously profitable in six months, give up.
Imagine telling someone who aspired to be a professional golfer that if they
aren’t making money on the tour six months after the first time they
picked up a club they should quit, they don’t have what it takes. Some
advice that was.
I wanted to be a real mentor, a real trading coach,
offering up things that I learned in my almost twenty-three year journey as of
the date of this writing. I wanted to take the focus off ‘the setup’
and onto creating a fully comprehensive ‘Trading Plan’ that not only
included every aspect of the trade itself, but also of the emotional and
psychological aspects.
This is not a journey for most people, but attaining something
truly outstanding rarely is. It wouldn’t matter if it was trading, or
golfing, or building something. What I tried to teach was the approach. Not so
much the guts of the methodology, but the guts of trying to be successful. How
many people truly want to do what it takes to achieve their lofty goals? Well,
the answer I found was very few, and nowadays it seems to be essentially none.
Hence the wind down of the KT project.
In the end, I am very happy I did
this project. I accomplished many of my goals. I found some trading
companionship, if you can call it that, as I have traveled on my own journey. I
got to enjoy teaching and sharing the many things I’ve discovered, some of
them quite profound in my opinion.
I got to run a successful business my way (for example,
did you notice that I never ran a single ad on this website in its entire
lifespan of over seventeen years as of this writing?). Not a huge moneymaker
(which was as I expected for a niche approach), but successful in my eyes. Over
the years I have gotten to know many people, some who still keep in contact
with me from time to time. And I did manage to ‘create’ some
colleagues, two in particular which stand out.
One of the two I have collaborated
with on some projects, and we still remotely link up our comps and work on
market stuff when we have time. He was the first mentor student I had, and he
was surprised when I told him that the mentorship program was created for him.
He had contacted me and asked if I would be willing to mentor and he was a very
serious candidate (he’s a professional money manager), so this really fit
into my idea of how to actually create a colleague, hence the mentorship
program was born. It was nothing I ever intended to do.
After that we kept in contact, and
discussed projects we might be able to work on together. After some time had
passed we hadn’t communicated for awhile, and we hooked back up. By then I
had developed a lot (and I mean a lot) of new material and made many new
discoveries. I really wanted to share some of this with him, and he wound up
mentoring with me again. He basically became on ongoing student for quite some
time, the single person I did the most work with during the entire project. As
it was becoming clear the project was winding down, and ‘someday’
I’d close up shop, he commented how cool it might be if he was the first
and last student that I had.
Fast forward to today, and it turns out that was,
indeed, the case. During this long process I showed him things that I’ve
only shown to him and the one other person I mentioned above. I sometimes joke
‘And then there were three’. A club of three. Anyway, I was telling
him one day about the unique role he has played as far as my legacy, and in my
transfer of knowledge so that some day when I’m gone hopefully my material
will live on. He joked he was ‘The Chosen One’.
We still joke about
that to this day. It seems I’ve come full circle. I ended where I started,
in a sense. I sent him an email the other day after listening to the song
Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. (As an aside, that was the
first video ever played on MTV.) In the song it says “You were the first
one. You were the last one.” What a fitting place to end it.
So, that’s the
super-condensed version. Like the movie version of a long book. I want to thank
all those that participated in this grand adventure. I hope you learned a lot,
whether you chose to continue pursuing trading as a profession or moved on to
other things. I especially want to thank all my mentor students. That was some
serious fun for me, and I hope also for you. It helped me, too, by forcing me
to really think about what I was doing. This has truly been a great time, and I
hope my honestly and integrity throughout have been a beacon of hope for
everyone in a world like the one we now live in.
As for me, my focus remains, as I
have said all over this website and in my works, on my own trading. I am at the
high point of my skill set so far on this journey, and I hope it keeps rising.
I have reached much farther than I ever thought possible, or even imaginable
for me when I first started. I have seen things that have honestly scared me.
There is so much order to market movement, and the universe itself, that it
boggles my mind.
One time I discovered something that seemed so ordered,
so unfathomable that I nicknamed it ‘The Mind of God’ technique. This
isn’t as spiritual as it sounds, as I named it after something Stephen
Hawking said about the Higgs boson. If I am paraphrasing this correctly (there
are more versions of what he actually said/meant than there are teach you to
trade charlatans out there) he said if we can find it we will finally know the
mind of god. He was basically saying if we can verify its existence we will
understand a lot more about how the universe is constructed.
When I discovered
this concept I actually felt a bit frightened. It was the oddest sensation
I’ve had with respect to trading, and perhaps in my life. I once said to
‘The Chosen One’ that it was like I was peaking under the edge of a
tent, looking inside and seeing something I wasn’t meant to see.
That’s what scared me. And trust me, I’m not kind of person who gets
easily scared by things. For example, I love spiders and snakes, we once had a
bear rubbing on our front door and I thought it was awesome, and if I saw a
Bigfoot, I’d be fascinated.
All I will say is that there is something definitely
going on here that is beyond just banging trades out. There is some kind of
order to all things, and the more I dig into the market, the higher the base
from which I am working as far as skills, the more I can see. I have no
intention of ever stopping my work on trading. This is my life’s work, and
I hope that when my time is up they find me slumped over, mouse in hand, at my
work station. Hopefully my stop holds and the trade I was in gets closed out
:-) Good luck, my friends.
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