How long did it take you to become consistently profitable?

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...
how does it work?
 
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 ?
Impressive to say the least. Was this futures or stocks or options ?
 
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.
Can you explain what is the "breakeven plus one tick" strategy ?
 
I'm going on 1.5 years of full time back testing and trading after blowing up last year and losing 2k. definitely spend more than 40 hours a week for sure. I turned my paper account of 10000 into 1.1m through TOS. Just in the last few months it's all really been coming together though, I finally feel like I have a definite edge and that I'm going to make money. Super excited, accounts funded w/ IB. going to be playing small size until i'm up a few hundred then size in. Conviction to me is super important, I want to know for sure I have something easy to follow and makes good points.
 
I'm going on 1.5 years of full time back testing and trading after blowing up last year and losing 2k. definitely spend more than 40 hours a week for sure. I turned my paper account of 10000 into 1.1m through TOS. Just in the last few months it's all really been coming together though, I finally feel like I have a definite edge and that I'm going to make money. Super excited, accounts funded w/ IB. going to be playing small size until i'm up a few hundred then size in. Conviction to me is super important, I want to know for sure I have something easy to follow and makes good points.

congrats, that's awesome!
 
Can you explain what is the "breakeven plus one tick" strategy ?

After 3mins,if in profit he moves SL to +1 so small profit, if he's in a loss then he sets the TP to +1, he's very much a scalper, if the trade doesnt work quick like then +1 better than a loss.
 
It took me 16 months to get consistently profitable. From there I have definitely had some 0 months but I rarely have a losing month and overall have been able to support myself from trading. But barely. I'm single and get by on very little.

This is my 5th year, which is almost hard to believe. I thought

Step 1) get consistently profitable

would be a bigger hurdle than

Step 2) size up and make more

I have been stuck at Step 2 for years.

Sometimes I honestly think the job is getting harder at just about the same rate that I'm getting better.

One of my favorite authors has a saying, "It is a privilege to trade."

I try to keep this in mind when struggling. If you're able to have one of the biggest struggles in life be with the financial markets, you're already pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things.
 
15+ years ... years that led, not necessarily to the "consistency" of the profits or even the premise of "profits" being the motivation and goal behind the process, but to the construction of models whose evidence and signaling regimes instill a confidence and belief in the premise of "asset accumulation" and compounding over the "long term".

James
Director, Quantitative research
XXX
Boulder, CO

"money is made by sitting on one's hands"

Stealth vendor Alert!!!
 
Minimum 2 years, to become skilled in any industry, but I encourage you to have your wife, girl friend, or mum by you when you do trading. Because I've realised that they don't really like taking too much risk , and when you have them by you when you trade, you start to trade better (I don't mean that you will become a more profitable trader in the short run, but definitely, you will lose less, and over the long run, you will likely to improve your skill as well). But to do that, your personality has to be not very aggressive, and you have to listen to what others say and your motivation of trading is to feed/care your family better. This is just one way to improve your profitability.
 
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