The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

How long did it take you to become a consistently profitable trader?

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The process of learning to trade is similar to developing other skills such as learning to play an instrument, working on a side project, or becoming more effective at work.

https://typesense.org/blog/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-just-showing-up-everyday/

PRACTICE... practice, practice, practice...

As it relates to trading, you'd be surprised at how far your intuition and knowledge will develop just from practicing everyday for 1 year.

For example, if your goal is to become a profitable Futures scalper, all you need to do is practice everyday. Start with only trading 1 lot of a micro contract like MES.

If you have a day job, it is important to still be able to practice everyday. Let me know and I can set you up with a test trading server so that you can log into your trading workspace on your phones while at work.
 
Yes to all of that except for one important thing.

You must LEARN PROPER TECHNIQUE... THEN, practice, practice, practice.

I used to be a professional bowler. (And I was good enough to be included in the USBC Hall of Fame... so I know of what I speak.) I knew a guy who practiced all the time/daily*. One time someone made the comment, "he must be really good... he practices every day". My comment was that he was NOT good and would NEVER BE GOOD, because he practiced poor technique*... doesn't matter how much you practice if your technique is wrong.

Same true for trading.

Question... where does an aspiring trader go to learn "proper technique"? (How many even KNOW what "proper technique" is??)

* I used to bet bowlers $10 that they could not throw the ball 10 times between the 4 and 6 pin without hitting either. He is the ONLY one who every beat me out of a $10er on that bet! (Others would think, "that looks easy, I can do that"... not as easy as it looks.) :)

Second side note... my usual double partner and I once played the same game.. after 400 tosses where both of us succeeded, we called it a draw and went to the bar for a beer. :)

"Throwing the ball between the 4-6 pins is the equivalent of "hitting the #1 head pin" 400 times in a row. (Not as easy as it sounds for 400 tosses. Pretty easy to screw up a little and miss.)
 
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Took me 10+ years and most was on accumulating capital. The probability of being successful in trading is positively related to the amount of trading capital available unfortunately. Margin doesn't do s*** anymore.
 
I'm barely consistently profitable. Should be doing better, but the emotions that keep me from staying in a good trade or that overtake me when I've lost and I think I can make it back by trading some way other than my plan (still don't understand why that happens) are still what I'm struggling with. Some of that might be from finally making the step to trading live almost every day instead of only demo.
 
studentofthemarkets said:
I'm barely consistently profitable. Should be doing better, but the emotions that keep me from staying in a good trade or that overtake me when I've lost and I think I can make it back by trading some way other than my rules (still don't understand why that happens) are still what I'm struggling with.
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Don't feel too bad about yourself... you're likely in the majority.

Obvious... your "rules" need reworking.... and/or your disciple to execute.

I'm not being intentionally critical... the "problems of working it out" are the same for all of us.
 
studentofthemarkets said:
Should be doing better, but the emotions that keep me from staying in a good trade or that overtake me when I've lost and I think I can make it back by trading some way other than my plan (still don't understand why that happens) are still what I'm struggling with.
More...
At least you have narrowed the problem.

One thing I found that helped is writing the plan down; committing it to paper; for what ever reason you are more likely to do something if it is written down.

Judge your success on whether you followed your plan or not.
 
Scataphagos said:
Yes to all of that except for one important thing.

You must LEARN PROPER TECHNIQUE... THEN, practice, practice, practice.

I used to be a professional bowler. (And I was good enough to be included in the USBC Hall of Fame... so I know of what I speak.) I knew a guy who practiced all the time/daily*. One time someone made the comment, "he must be really good... he practices every day". My comment was that he was NOT good and would NEVER BE GOOD, because he practiced poor technique*... doesn't matter how much you practice if your technique is wrong.

Same true for trading.

Question... where does an aspiring trader go to learn "proper technique"? (How many even KNOW what "proper technique" is??)

* I used to bet bowlers $10 that they could not throw the ball 10 times between the 4 and 6 pin without hitting either. He is the ONLY one who every beat me out of a $10er on that bet! (Others would think, "that looks easy, I can do that"... not as easy as it looks.) :)

Second side note... my usual double partner and I once played the same game.. after 400 tosses where both of us succeeded, we called it a draw and went to the bar for a beer. :)

"Throwing the ball between the 4-6 pins is the equivalent of "hitting the #1 head pin" 400 times in a row. (Not as easy as it sounds for 400 tosses. Pretty easy to screw up a little and miss.)
More...

Agreed, it's focused practice.

But one thing I can't figure out? How on earth do you get the ball to curve like that? I am mystified.
 
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