How many years to get pro

[Sprout]

10.000 hours, man...it's 10.000 hours as always.

3-6 months to build discipline and follow a trading plan? I hope this is a joke. I'm trading for almost 20 years now, it took me 5 to become green without a mentor and I've yet to see anyone to become profitable with less than 1 year in.

That said, profitable means not losing money and making pocket change. Making enough to support yourself usually takes another 2 years minimum.

Think about this business as going to university or learning any other trade. 3 - 5 years ora et labora until you make acceptable P/L.

Can it be done in less time? Absolutely, but this requires a market that is so inefficient that you can make a lot of mistakes and still be profitable...like crypto in 2017.
This would be a once per century opportunity and I wouldn't bet on that.
So 3 years is genius, 5 years is normal....most people blow up after 3 months and this is a fact

To support the notion of 10k hours, while popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, always good to go to the original source of the meme:

"The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance by Anders Ericsson" et al

 

[Sprout]

Takes longer than most have the persistence or work ethic. For those who do, it takes what it takes....pick a number.

Tenacity being an under appreciated ingredient to the effort.

 

[taowave]

You are speaking exception to the rules..

6 months is absurd,unless one confuses luck with brains...

Trading is brutally competitive,yet its the only profession in the world where one can achieve success by 6 months??

Would you have an architect with 6 months of knowledge design your house?? A 1st year med student perform surgery on you??

6 months= pure luck







QUOTE="danielc1, post: 5805299, member: 12978"]It doesn't have to take years.. If you find a mentor or someone you can trust, that has the fruits on the trees, you can do it in 6 months to a year.[/QUOTE]

 

[SimpleMeLike]

Takes longer than most have the persistence or work ethic. For those who do, it takes what it takes....pick a number.

Hello speedo,

I agree.

Actually I think "how long it takes", is the wrong type of question?

I truly think day trading (or trading) is really a lifetime commitment. If I try to put a time on it, it is sort of impossible because of how the measurement of success of trading is decided. And that final outcome varies for each person.

If someone is truly trying to day trade for yearly/monthly income for life, until the age +80 years old, success is measure year after year.

So the real question is "Do I really want to dedicate my entire life to being a Consistent Profitable Yearly Trader"

If the answer is YES, then be prepared to trade your entire life until 80 years old.

It is not an easy question to answer.

I have always looked at trading as supplementary income because I do work a full time job.

Lol, still trying to get the supplementary income

 

[speedo]

You are speaking exception to the rules..

6 months is absurd,unless one confuses luck with brains...

Trading is brutally competitive,yet its the only profession in the world where one can achieve success by 6 months??

Would you have an architect with 6 months of knowledge design your house?? A 1st year med student perform surgery on you??

6 months= pure luck







QUOTE="danielc1, post: 5805299, member: 12978"]It doesn't have to take years.. If you find a mentor or someone you can trust, that has the fruits on the trees, you can do it in 6 months to a year.

[/QUOTE]
Yes savants are few. not many 3 year olds can play Paganini on the violin. Trading is a lot more complex than it may appear to the beginner ("What are some good setups?") and learning to overcome fight or flight impulses along with developing the necessary disciplines can be a lot harder than the technical.

 

[AgatheYou]

So for the suspicious minds here I will give a bit more background. Yes I just subscribed because I thought entering a community could be a nice idea and yes I am a female, they do exist in that world

I am actually in my three years in the trading world. First year has been mostly learning all the basics and trading there and there. I am pretty committed and work many hours daily in trading: reading books, watching instructive videos, etc . So far I have integrated all the technical part of entering and exiting a trade and if I only ‘listen’ to what I know I feel I could succeed. But the psychological part is messing with me and the more I try to solve it the more I get in trouble on the market. Not bad troubles as I have lowered my exposure to little capital. I also know that the psychological part is the problem of many traders and that I am not trading on the easiest level as I am doing scalping (5M) but it is what fit me. I tend do get impatient with longer positions.


Part of me would like to know where I could be on the road of becoming professional (which for me means someone that live of trading), I know it is a question that is vague as every persons are different but still an average would help. Like if many persons would respond it would give an estimate that is still nice to have because for now the road doesn’t have any light and the walk is groping. That was the initial idea of my question.

 

[themickey]

I am actually in my three years in the trading world

So you're a babe, that's ok, but you wont know what you don't know, that too is ok.

and if I only ‘listen’ to what I know I feel I could succeed. But the psychological part is messing with me and the more I try to solve it the more I get in trouble on the market. Not bad troubles as I have lowered my exposure to little capital. I also know that the psychological part is the problem of many traders and that I am not trading on the easiest level as I am doing scalping (5M) but it is what fit me. I tend do get impatient with longer positions.

Let me ask you a simple question. If you were a lone basketball player, who would you prefer to compete against, a 5 person team or a 50 person team?

I tend do get impatient with longer positions.

So we get to the crux of some of your problem.

Like if many persons would respond it would give an estimate that is still nice to have because for now the road doesn’t have any light and the walk is groping.

You will probably never ever achieve success, ever!

So your question, how many years to turn pro? Answer: A lifetime.

I could possibly count on one hand the number of successful short term traders on ET.
But long term traders, possibly scores of them.

Here's the reason which I don't recall ever heard mentioned on ET.

Traders, not all, but most 'pros' trade a system, a methodical, mechanical, repeatable systematic way of going about it.

Now there are millions of traders, trading hundreds or thousands (dunno) methods.
They are all variations usually of indicators or Price Action.
Moving averages, rsi's, gann, EW, Fibs, OBV, MACD's, volatility, breakouts, etc etc.

There's a type of bellcurve when it comes to timeframes.
The majority of traders congregate around the short term, the minority of traders trade the long term.
Now what happens in reality, the shorter the timeframe, the more competition in terms of methods and these clash with each other.

You may have heard it said for example Fibonacci method (or any well known method) becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if a belief system is well entrenched, traders then trade in synch with each other.

Cutting a long story short, shorter the time frame, less synch, more clashing, more noise, more volatility, more unpredictability, more times that one system which has dominance only lasts a moment before another system takes control.

You a fighting a losing battle against many machines, like a noob playing Chess against an army of methodical robots which never tire, never get frustrated, never get ruffled and are programmed to win.

 

[Sprout]

So for the suspicious minds here I will give a bit more background. Yes I just subscribed because I thought entering a community could be a nice idea and yes I am a female, they do exist in that world

I am actually in my three years in the trading world. First year has been mostly learning all the basics and trading there and there. I am pretty committed and work many hours daily in trading: reading books, watching instructive videos, etc . So far I have integrated all the technical part of entering and exiting a trade and if I only ‘listen’ to what I know I feel I could succeed. But the psychological part is messing with me and the more I try to solve it the more I get in trouble on the market. Not bad troubles as I have lowered my exposure to little capital. I also know that the psychological part is the problem of many traders and that I am not trading on the easiest level as I am doing scalping (5M) but it is what fit me. I tend do get impatient with longer positions.


Part of me would like to know where I could be on the road of becoming professional (which for me means someone that live of trading), I know it is a question that is vague as every persons are different but still an average would help. Like if many persons would respond it would give an estimate that is still nice to have because for now the road doesn’t have any light and the walk is groping. That was the initial idea of my question.

You're asking an ineffective question. There's no meaningful answer possible with the information you have given. It's not a one size fits all solution, nor is it time-based. Many will spend years poorly executing ineffective methods and strategies. It's not how much time you are spending, but the quality of work you are doing during that time.

With the right market conditions, methodology, strategy, proper mindset, consistent discipline/execution, calibrated R:R, one can earn a living very quickly. Private tutoring reduces that even more. Tutoring, itself is a mixed bag for one can easily be duped starting out until they've developed their discernment. Even then, one can plateau and not challenge themselves with "out-of-the-box" thinking of the box of their own creation. In lieu of a tutor, this is where coaching is effective.

As you've discovered with your psych issues, it's a you against you profession. It would be prudent to become curious about your thought & emotional landscape, chances are there are triggers that take you out of the present: doubts, fears & anxieties both real/imagined.

Developing rapid, incremental, and aligned feedback loops are essential both to build confidence as well as forward test your approach.

The notion of 10,000 hrs came from the previous mentioned psych study based on a substantial amount of data. Not entirely applicable to your question of "making a living" since it explores eminence, yet underlines the importance of "deliberate practice" time distinct from performance time and what a difference in applied algorithms make.


The basic principle is applicable to trading.

 

[deaddog]

I am actually in my three years in the trading world. First year has been mostly learning all the basics and trading there and there. I am pretty committed and work many hours daily in trading: reading books, watching instructive videos, etc . So far I have integrated all the technical part of entering and exiting a trade and if I only ‘listen’ to what I know I feel I could succeed. But the psychological part is messing with me and the more I try to solve it the more I get in trouble on the market. Not bad troubles as I have lowered my exposure to little capital. I also know that the psychological part is the problem of many traders and that I am not trading on the easiest level as I am doing scalping (5M) but it is what fit me. I tend do get impatient with longer positions.

What have you learned in your three year journey?
About the market you are trading (whatever that is) and about yourself?

 

[easymon1]

So far I have integrated all the technical part of entering and exiting a trade

You may be closer than you think.
On a scale of 0 to 100, (0 = None, 100 = Complete)
What number would you say represents your level of confidence in your entry / exit to produce productive trades?
trading
https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/...solid-trading-plan.340340/page-4#post-5031706