From Turtles to Jellies: Trader Don Miller and Success Over the Long-Term

You’ve heard of the Turtles – now meet the Jellies.

The Jellies are a group of traders selected by long-time trader Don Miller in the summer of 2009 as Don searched for a new way to motivate himself after a $2 Million 15-month 2008-09 trading run. Begun in July 2009, the goal of the Jellie project was to forge a unique and intensive trading experience by drawing on the talents and backgrounds of a diverse group of individuals - some with trading experience and some without.

The intense effort consisted of eight weeks of live market tutelage combined with formal evening educational study sessions. And eight weeks later, the results are in. Here’s a portion of what one Jellie wrote as the project was drawing to a close:

"The essence of the Jellies training is exactly that, 'what kind of trader am I and what can I do?' Don Miller’s daily drill has been 'feel the market,' 'feel the pace,' based on this, 'have a bias,' then “sense, trust, and act." I have known this fact, the discovery of the 50’s, for almost my entire previous career, but it hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday. It took Don’s 2 weeks of drilling for me to go through this paradigm shift.”

Yet perhaps even more powerful than the individual experiences of those initial participants in the Jellie effort is the fact that the formal educational portion of the project was recorded and now forms the core for a new educational resource for traders. This resource, the Jellies Effort Study Sessions, reflect Don’s strategies and insights as taught to the 20 traders over the course of eight two-hour evenings, and are now available to average retail traders everywhere at a fraction of their underlying value.

Readers of Don Miller’s blog at www.donmillerblog.com and his educational site www.donmillereducation.com, as well as those who read his two-part Big Saturday Interview with TradingMarkets, will be familiar with many of the themes that support the Jellies Effort and, now, the Jellies Effort Study Sessions. From Don’s trading theory of "wholesale opportunities and market inefficiencies" and the nuts and bolts of setting up a trading workstation, to scalp and swing trading strategies and, what Don calls "trading as a competitive mental sport," the Jellies Effort Study Sessions represent a new, battle-tested, A to Z, educational trading resource.

Beyond the specific techniques and strategies, the goal of the Jellies Effort Study Sessions is to help traders develop good short-term habits as traders, and to ensure that those habits stick in a way that makes long-term success as a trader possible. As Don wrote in reflection on the Jellies Effort:

"Based on feedback from Study Series participants and some of the Jellie traders’ brokers, we’ve have apparently made more than decent inroads in the one part of this industry of which I've long been extremely critical -- trader education from people who can back up their words with actions on a moment-by-moment basis."

Additionally, and as Don notes later in the post, a portion of the proceeds from the Jellies Effort Study Sessions Webinars will go to the American Diabetes Association, a charity with which Don Miller has long been involved. An initial donation of $11K, 15% of the proceeds from the Study Session portion of the Jellie Effort, has already been made.

For more information on the Jellies Effort Study Sessions Webinars, including viewing a video overview or to order the package of eight, two-hour study sessions (16 hours total), click here.

David Penn is Editor in Chief at TradingMarkets.com.