How long did it take you to become consistently profitable?

Stocks swing trading a few months.

FX and indexes scalping, 9 years, been profitable for 3 years wouldnt say consistent still, but getting close.
 
Piptaker said:
The more you lose the quicker you learn?

Took me 10 years
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i do think losing is the key to learning and disciplining oneself in eventually understanding Risk. get a handle on Risk and you are half way there. took me a long time. i have to disagree with Michael Douglas >>greed is good<< greed will blow your account faster than you can fund it imho. been there done that = pain.

i have been self employed since leaving school at 19. various businesses, amusement arcades, night club, restaurant, bars, standing tan salons and clothes retail.

any and all of the above took 18mnths minimum to break even. before i even started to see any return of initial investment never mind profit. stressful times, as usually had bank loans, leasing agreements, house secured as collateral for the banks and on top of that staff and customers to deal with. since i have been trading for a living the stress has gone. i am never stressed no matter if im on the wrong or right side of the market.

if im on the wrong side and i take a hit its simple. i write it off as a business expense, ie tax bill, vat bill, staff wages, leasing payment or whatever. every business has expenses. trading is no different.

last august i opened a 3k account for my son. I've since helped him build to 17k. now i will leave him to trade it on his own. what do i want from this ? i want him to lose it all and quickly. its only costing me 3k for him to learn the most important aspect of the markets and i would rather he learn that now long before he has a 500k account or more and destroys that in a month, week or day. learning Risk early on by losing is the only way to master it
 
Buck said:
i do think losing is the key to learning and disciplining oneself in eventually understanding Risk. get a handle on Risk and you are half way there. took me a long time. i have to disagree with Michael Douglas >>greed is good<< greed will blow your account faster than you can fund it imho. been there done that = pain.

i have been self employed since leaving school at 19. various businesses, amusement arcades, night club, restaurant, bars, standing tan salons and clothes retail.

any and all of the above took 18mnths minimum to break even. before i even started to see any return of initial investment never mind profit. stressful times, as usually had bank loans, leasing agreements, house secured as collateral for the banks and on top of that staff and customers to deal with. since i have been trading for a living the stress has gone. i am never stressed no matter if im on the wrong or right side of the market.

if im on the wrong side and i take a hit its simple. i write it off as a business expense, ie tax bill, vat bill, staff wages, leasing payment or whatever. every business has expenses. trading is no different.

last august i opened a 3k account for my son. I've since helped him build to 17k. now i will leave him to trade it on his own. what do i want from this ? i want him to lose it all and quickly. its only costing me 3k for him to learn the most important aspect of the markets and i would rather he learn that now long before he has a 500k account or more and destroys that in a month, week or day. learning Risk early on by losing is the only way to master it
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Whats your trading strategy like? Algo or TA?
 
I started when fees were too damn high at $125 hundred shares of stocks, so you had to be a buy and hold investor and when brokers made a ton of money. Then Discount brokers emerged and start of greatest bull market started till then, so stock select monkeys were right. so from day one I been always profitable. I do find stocks even today much easier to trade than futures or options. A cousin was making tons trading Pork Bellies, later to find out buddy on floor was doing the trading, so I was smarter than him, 5 and 7 years of losing in futures to turn it around and easily lost over $100k in each of long term and day trading Commodities, I was no longer married, had house rentals, couple home repair businesses going and government job. Money flowing in from that and me burning money flowing out. Horrible time mentally as you lose your confidence in yourself. Learning to program made huge difference, learning to backtest all my ideas, took 1-2 years off from losing, when I returned to long term trading commodities, BAMM I was profitable as I was doing trading that everyone, even to this day, says it won't work. Day trading took two more years but not losing not nearly as bad, when I started "Breakeven Plus one tick" made huge difference, cause of fees eating away 100-120% of accounts on norm, that one tick for me was huge, took me from losing trader to profitable trader over night. Discipline took over as now I had more confidence. When you are confident and profitable, WOW, it snowballs, ideas are coming at you so fast need small tape recorder to keep them, at some point you hire programmers, and snowball just keeps getting bigger.

Greed is good so long as you are experienced.
 
Buck said:
i do think losing is the key to learning and disciplining oneself in eventually understanding Risk. get a handle on Risk and you are half way there. took me a long time. i have to disagree with Michael Douglas >>greed is good<< greed will blow your account faster than you can fund it imho. been there done that = pain.

i have been self employed since leaving school at 19. various businesses, amusement arcades, night club, restaurant, bars, standing tan salons and clothes retail.

any and all of the above took 18mnths minimum to break even. before i even started to see any return of initial investment never mind profit. stressful times, as usually had bank loans, leasing agreements, house secured as collateral for the banks and on top of that staff and customers to deal with. since i have been trading for a living the stress has gone. i am never stressed no matter if im on the wrong or right side of the market.

if im on the wrong side and i take a hit its simple. i write it off as a business expense, ie tax bill, vat bill, staff wages, leasing payment or whatever. every business has expenses. trading is no different.

last august i opened a 3k account for my son. I've since helped him build to 17k. now i will leave him to trade it on his own. what do i want from this ? i want him to lose it all and quickly. its only costing me 3k for him to learn the most important aspect of the markets and i would rather he learn that now long before he has a 500k account or more and destroys that in a month, week or day. learning Risk early on by losing is the only way to master it
More...

Very true risk has to be understood and training the brain and the minds defense system to accept loses and not let them affect your trading is a big hurdle for a lot of people to get over.I can add finding a method that doesn't require your opinion as the ego can hurt your trading big time too.
Looks like your son is going to do well then with your genes...
I've always been a person who likes to know how something works and the market is no exception, that's why it took me so long...
 
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