Trader Development

Jigsaw founder Peter Davies has been a friend and DTG member for many years, and we are long-time users and fans of Jigsaw tools. Prior to the Jigsaw website redesign, he wrote this on our link page which we still think best describes the community today:

“I first came across Discovery Trading Group (DTG) when an industry friend recommended I chat with them. I then discovered a number of Jigsaw customers were members of the community. I’m used to seeing lofty claims on trading web sites and when I came to DTG site the first thing I read was that these guys also run a quant firm. That was a red light for me – I thought it sounded like something a company would put up to try to ‘wow’ people. Funny thing is, it actually turns out to be true.”

DTG is quite unique in what they offer. They do have a detailed sample methodology for defining where to enter and exit the market but they are clear in disclaiming that its just presented as sort of anchor for the community and one of many methods which can be a backbone for your own trading program. They advocate that each traders’ own personality and psychology should drive the specifics of their process. This is the trader development aspect of their community. They absolutely expect you to drive this process yourself. You do that in the form of a trading journal on their forum. In return for you posting your trades, your performance and your thoughts, you will have REAL professional traders giving you advice on where you might be getting stuck along with reinforcement of what you are doing right and should refine and build on. They demonstrate that provided you focus on the things that really matter, almost any specific entry/exit approach can be modeled into a profitable method. Specifically, they continually focus on these core principles:

• Trading with confidence– Second guessing keeps you out of the market. You MUST have risk on to make money.
• Risk and Bankroll Management – The vast majority of what institutional traders build on. The risk model itself should be a BIG part of your edge.
• Plan your Session and Follow your Plan – Knowing things like the average number of trade events per day and total risk per week/month is critical to constructing the risk model.
• Advantaged Reward to Risk – The single greatest edge free to all. Can you make money winning only half your trades? And not unravel psychologically if you do? Most pro programs have win rates in this range.
• Trading IS Gambling – It’s not a dirty word at DTG. Each individual trade absolutely IS a game of chance. So manage your risk like any professional gambler does.
• All markets are auctions – They are not textbook auction market theorists but focus only on price discovery and order flow within the auctions

Many companies offer you a ‘simple solution’ to trading. You know – pay them $5k and soon you’ll be sitting on the beach, just going indoors to trade at midday for 20 minutes before your daily back rub. What DTG offers is genuine help in making your OWN trading approach work for you. Many are industry professionals and don’t make their living as trading educators. DTG evolved as an experiment and is effectively just a portion of an internal “think tank” style approach to development and sharing of ideas they use in their own group opened up to a limited number of retail traders. They are adamant about requiring every member contributing and working the process to make it worthwhile for all.

Ultimately, DTG is a community venue for the continued personal development of traders rather than a site you join to grab a trading technique. The small fee (and it is really small) helps to weed out the people that aren’t really interested in trading as a skill but are looking for magic bullets which don’t exist.”