How long did it take for you to find/discover your trading edge?

[Handle123]

7 years.

What you think is "edge", changes every few years, and now nearly 4 decades, I can't tell you what it is, you just develop, little by little and it you are good this never stops cause you trying to get even better, less losing trades, better entries, understanding price and people, and of course your social life cause it you not content there, you won't do well when you doing your fun job/hobby. I use to first think it was the systems, you get into a grove of just knowing, risk management is tough but have to fully understand or you have no system, risk management is the difference for me to be able to average down, knowing what has happened in past fourteen years and being confident that I will have incredible losses and losing days in a row are yet to happen, and being able to prepare for it now. Most keep maybe $1,000 in account for every ES and I use ten times that amount, cause if something horrible happened, 2 weeks late you could wake up to $7,000 in the hole per when exchange opens. Is this part of the "edge" or just overall knowledge one learns everyday or week or month?

I believe in other direction, learn to adapt and use common indicators, but then I also believe I use them in much different ways as well.

 

[apo99]

2.5 years and about 4 to make decent money.

But once you find your edge doesn't mean your set, you must always keep working on something new and keep learning. Just like a regular business you must keep adapting.

The fish who stops swimming gets eaten.

 

[lawrence-lugar]

How long did it take for you to find/discover your trading edge to the point where you are consistently profitable?

This answer can vary greatly, I must imagine...for this trading world.

Some people will continue to do what their doing, grinding it out for years or even decades. Not realizing their potential mistakes or flaws. While others will be more naturally intuitive, and hungry, and more open-minded.

It took me about four years, before my 'trading edge' light turned on
Prior to that, I was just simply hoping and praying that in the end...I would have more positive trades then negative one's.

 

[DTB2]

There are certain things that happen in the market which are identifiable (by some) and exploitable.

These do not require any indicators, trend lines, S/R.

Took about 4 years to identify them by taking a 10,000' view instead of trading the noise.

Good luck.

 

[wartrace]

There are certain things that happen in the market which are identifiable (by some) and exploitable.

These do not require any indicators, trend lines, S/R.

Took about 4 years to identify them by taking a 10,000' view instead of trading the noise.

Good luck.

That's what makes trading great. Must be 100 ways to skin the cat. You avoid the noise and that's all I trade.

 

[ET180]

Took me 8 years. Although honestly, the amount of time is irrelevant as it will vary from person to person and be influenced by several variables for example amount of capital, amount of time one can dedicate to study, mentors or possibly education, and risk appetite. My best advice to someone starting out is that the market is not random or efficient at all times as some academics / economists want you to believe. Just look at the price action in XBI over the past 24 hours or NVDA over the past month and tell me that those instruments are trading efficiently or randomly. You don't have to find a system that trades all the time to make money. What's more important is filtering -- knowing when to trade and when not to trade. Also, I'm a bit skeptical of simple strategies that can be easily automated because everyone else would have automated it by now. My first attempt at technical analysis about 8 years ago involved feeding all the indicators in TA-Lib into a genetic algorithm to create the ultimate indicator. It turned out to be an exercise in curve fitting. I could fit my test data set fine, but the indicator would fail on the validation data set. Given enough free variables, you can fit any data. Of course, you could try that...maybe a moving average system can be made to work, but it wouldn't be the first place that I would start.

 

[s0mmi]

When I first started at my prop firm it took me 10 months to discover something that worked. I only could confirm that it worked after 2 months from that which makes it about a full year.

Recently I had to erase most of my learning and re-learn new things and it's been about 3 months so far. If I have turned the corner now I wouldn't believe it until 2 more months have passed (40 trading days of consistency).

A lot of people fall into this trap; just because you are doing something random does not mean you will get better at it after you repeat the activity for 3 months or 6 months or even years. You need to do deliberate practice with deliberate research. This means you have researched and observed your trade, planned it, and now all you have to do is practice executing it to get rid of the nerves.

I'm heading towards 6 years at this job now and I can tell you that even the most successful still fall in the range of taking 6-12 months to discover an edge. If you are taught properly or are given a product/spread which is super-safe for a period of time I've seen a few golden children get the hang of it in 3-4 months. But let me tell you that it wasn't really up to them, it was because the spread they were given was super safe.

Becareful of using indicators
Really becareful. They are laggy in nature. I found that when it was "working" for me, it was just because I was at the right market conditions. It will change very soon and you'll need to adapt. The best indicators to me are simply Price and Volume because you cannot formulate a strategy off them which is the same every time. They are the most pure footprint of the market.

 

[comagnum]

I am discretionary/swing trader based on 20% classic chart patterns and 80% aggressive risk mgmt. - it took me about 8 years to get dialed in, that was about 14 years ago.

I do believe strongly that a trader can have several edges - just got to think outside the box, and do what others are unwilling to - like holding futures for days/weeks/months.

 

[Traderjohnsblog]

It took me a couple of years and a lot of hard work but it was worth every bit of it!

 

[MagicMike]

Seven years.