Does Your Trading Plan Benefit from Continuing Education?

Does Your Trading Plan Benefit from Continuing Education?

Jun 27, 2007

After the Traders Expo in San Diego finished this past weekend, I asked several members of our team what their impressions were and how things went.

Traders are not like CPAs, but in one regard they should be

One reason I think it’s important to share these thoughts is to help you judge whether or not events like these are helpful as a source in what should be your ongoing education in the markets. Traders are not like CPAs or attorneys who need to take credit hours throughout the year to stay abreast of new developments, techniques, and technology – but they should. Traders would do well for themselves and their trading plans to invest in continuing education – with free resources as well as paid ones – for the same reasons.

To help you with the decision to attend a future Expo, consider what we thought of the experience. This was our first experience with our own booth and independent of our partners with whom we’ve exhibited in the past.

Great Customer Interaction
  • It was pleasant to meet our customers on our home turf. Without exception, the feedback from our current client-base was positive and validating.

  • It was good to meet a lot of happy customers. Because of my position in the company [Note: our Chief Technician’s thoughts here], I usually only meet people when they (a) have a problem and (b) the problem is too complicated for our normal customer support to handle it. This is especially true for all of the Scottrade customers who I met.

  • I liked seeing people wearing our T-Shirts at the convention. I know that we give away a lot of T-Shirts. But most of those go through the mail, so I don’t see them in action.

Good Partnerships Say Alot About Each Company
  • Scottrade partnership: The benefits are numerous and it was continually reinforced by the loyal Scottrade/TI users; many of whom stated the Trade-ideas integration was a major reason for their brokerage choice or at least the reason they continue to maintain their account at ST. [Note: See our commercial on the right hand side of the blog below]

Some Expos Are Better Than Others
  • Size and caliber of attendee: Candidly, I was a bit disappointed in both the count and quality of the walk-by traffic. I did not see the numerous savvy electronic traders that seem to be present at past NY, LA and Vegas shows. The exhibitor count seemed relatively small. Am I confusing the Trader’s Expo with the Online Trader’s Expo of the past? Regardless, we were speaking to a segment of our target audience.

  • New York and Vegas are certainly the largest. We’ve decided to attend but not exhibit in Las Vegas this year in order to concentrate on New York and San Diego again since these represent our “home turf” on each coast.

Booth Ideas for the Next Expo
  • We had nice booth graphics. Let’s step up our hardware infrastructure with giant a Flat Panel (36”) and multiple other means to view the software. Let’s have scheduled TI Pro product demonstration, tips & tricks and How to use the OddsMaker presentations at the booth vs. in a separate seminar room.

  • We had originally planned to let people sign up at the convention, but due to unforeseen circumstances we had to ask people to sign up when they got home. In the end, I think that may have worked out for the best. We had more time to focus on questions and answers. And people from the convention have already started signing up.

  • Booth babes? Is Lindsay Campbell available?

What do you think? Is this the right thinking or might there be a better way you’d suggest for us? Please let us know.

RELATED ARTICLE

Here’s what we thought of the last Expo we attended in Las Vegas.