You reached your conclusions in two short years? Sounds like you bot systems and started trading them with real money right away and lost. Sure way to get busted. Any system you trade that was taught...or bot..gifted or one you yourself discovered you should first test over and over on a simulator. Over a period of time. If it won’t for you work on a sim it will not work for you with real money. Some people even backtest. In my style of trading I can’t. I have to forward test. I am a discretionary trader.
Once you see you can make it work on a sim then you test the waters with real money. That is where the psychological weaknesses...defects...will show up. Then you will have to learn to straighten all that out.
Back to sim as you work on that. Then test waters again. Over and over again. This way you are not throwing your money away to us ravenous traders here on Elite Trader while you learn. It takes time to learn trading and you can’t just let someone sell you an airplane then jump in the pilot’s seat and try to take off. You can watch pilots fly planes. You can study books on flying. Doesn’t mean you will be able to fly. You got to PRACTICE flying once you have the theory and knowledge down. You can watch football. You can watch every game a good quarterback plays. You can study football. Hundreds of plays and strategies. That, while perhaps necessary, doesn’t mean you can walk out on the field and start playing quarterback, or any other position. You gotta PRACTICE what you have learned. Even after you learn it and practice it and play it in real games you still have to go back to practice it again and again while you are getting ready and prepared for the next real game. You gotta keep yourself sharp. I know this may sound silly but rarely will I get up ..drink coffee..switch on the computer ..logon to my real money account..and start trading. I first logon to a sim and see if my brain and eyes can discern..read the markets..well enough to trade with profit for THAT day. That is, I practice my craft for a bit. Why should I just start throwing real money at it? Of course, I am a discretionary trader and even though the brain is a marvelous instrument but that does not mean it is always as sharp as it should be. It has to be tested each day. It doesn’t need to be tested with real money. Sim will work just fine. Once I swap over to my real account then I will very quickly be testing my psychological mettle for the day. If it is not working for me then best to shut down the computer and forget trading that day. Not all days are equal. Somedays it is like one can do nothing wrong. Other days it is like pulling teeth. The short sim practice and the first few real trades test my abilities for that particular day in the market environment for THAT day. Why throw money after something blindly. Preservation of capital is very important.
You may be broke having spent all on systems and trading but you can practice on a sim for a couple of years until you find your way and can zero in on what works best for you. It won’t cost you anything to sim but your time. In the meantime you start back over saving money and in a couple years build yourself a perhaps large enough supply of $$ to at least open another account and test out what you have practiced for sometime. I suspect many here have blown their accounts before and some multiple times before they became profitable. Being broke can go with this business! I have never blown my account and some of my tactics allow me to average down..a no no according to many traders and pundits.
To not pursue trading anymore is a personal decision but being broke is not a reason not to. One can always practice on a sim for a couple of years while building back their account for live trading.
Good luck
Gotta get to sim. The markets been open nearly 1.5 hours and I haven’t even tested my mettle out yet today before trading with money. But no problem as i usually find multiple trades through the day..
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