Quote from greenery:
So is everyone supposed to find their own edge? No matter how long that takes if ever? The best you can get is someone telling you "hey look in that general area!" ? I know guys who've been losing or bleeding slowly their accounts for years. Some over ten years. The screen time thing isn't working for them. And they're far from either dumb or psychologically weak/undisciplined. And are successful in life/career, otherwise.
Your question is reasonable, and your response to your own question is correct. In order to learn how to trade, you have to experience the entire spectrum of emotions the market can engender in you. For example:
You need to understand what it looks like to try something that seems to make sense 10 times and have it fail 8 out of those 10.
When you get an idea of what was wrong about that setup (probably derived from books or what not), you need to tweak the two that worked to discover new setups.
After that, you must try a new approach, understand what it feels like to miss a great entry, then chase it, then doubt yourself on the first pull back and force yourself out, only to watch it then go powerfully in the direction you expected.
You have to experience the pain of betting way too much on a situation you were confident in, then stop yourself out on the slightest counter-move b/c it's too painful, then watch it unfold perfectly.
You must watch yourself experience the above several times, then sit out then next great entries because you can't take the pain anymore and once again watch it unfold perfectly.
You THEN must start to recognize what all that looks like in the data, and then try to front run those behaviors in a systematic way.
THEN you must get tripped up by becoming too confident in what you first built up out of amassed information and intuition.
Etc. There's a lot more to it, but this is the typical path, and there's nothing wrong with it. This is not a fair game; most have to lose in order for a few to garner outsized gains, so you have to learn to see the market through the lens of every emotion it creates. There are a few people on ET who have shared their knowledge for free that will help you put some puzzle pieces together, but (at least in my experience) no matter how good they are, those pieces will never fit together unless you make them your own. It's a deeply personal journey.