As a swing trader, I took roughy $5000 to $35 000 in a year before I had read a single book on trading. I withdrew most of it.You can read it here:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=278064&highlight=fortune&page=5
As a day trader, I started out losing on my first shot at trading. At this point, I had read over 100 books, done a lot of testing, but not enough simulator trading. I was also using too much leverage.
Stopped what I was doing, did a massive amount of backtesting and simulator trading. Re-wrote my trading plan.
Came back and made a killing as a one lot trader for a good period. Sized up and took huge losses in a short period of time.
My story is longer than that, but the point is, there's a difference between being profitable in a short time period, having some winning trades and being consistently profitable year after year. It's much harder than what the gurus are telling you.
While some people may perceive me as being negative in this thread, I would rather call it being realistic and I'm actually sincere in my postings, since I don't want people to get their hopes and dreams too high and I hate people who's bullshitting others.
All I'm asking is a little transparency and honesty.