ok, my performance only recently improved from 5k per month to 10k per month.
5k per month lasted for 1 year+++ (2008 to 2009, 2010), before it got into 10k per month, which lasted only the last 5 months (Aug till now). I'm not sure whether is it because of the recent bull market or wat, but 1 thing i did is that i increase my sizing, and did some fine tuning to my day trading.
And increasing of size increases the bet, you tend to take your profit earlier or cut loss later, stake is higher, and your nervousness increases

, so require some guts
Time is because i thought i may need some time to stable down to get used to the sizing mentally before i increase it further? so require some effort to do
But anyway, i do have some loss days of a few thousands, and that flash crash incident (May last year) still fresh in my head
But my job is really stagnant and not going anywhere, but i deserve this, because i have spent so much time and effort on trading, so day job still remain in low level position, so dragging my feet to work everyday...
I traded only the morning session, after that go to work. So basically i'm working from 8am to 2am, having only 5.5 hours sleep everyday, except weekend, demn tired
Quote from NoDoji:
If you're averaging 10K a month, why exactly does it require effort, time, guts, and luck to increase your profit to 20K a month?
If your account's too small to double the size of whatever you're trading, then the "capital" part of the equation makes sense.
But how do effort, time, guts and luck play a part in this?
The effort and time are exactly the same (you double the amount in quantity field and trade exactly the way you've been trading).
The guts are the same (you're trading successfully, so you continue to do what you're doing with double the size in your quantity field).
"Luck" is a meaningless term combined with a qualifier ("good" or "bad") to describe an individual's or group's outcome after the fact. The concept of "luck" serves no useful function, especially in trading.