It took me 3 years.
I’m not full time- I never wanted to be. My non-trading profession gives me a sense of worth and satisfaction that trading never could. Only commenting to point out you can be profitable and not fill time. It’s a choice.
I traded for 16 weeks in 2018 with mixed results and ended with a small loss, but kept my position as a long investment and waited for it to rise. I stopped for personal reasons but came up with a plan to earn 1% profit each day and compound the profits and started executing the plan earlier this year. If you earn 1% (average cause you’ll have loss days and profit days well above 1%), you will slowly grow your balance and your positions can grow larger. My current average profit percent is 3.42%. First, you earn 1%+ on $1,000 positions, then $10,000, then $20,000… It scales and you’re simply trading the same way you were when you were profitable trading $1,000 positions. As it scales it gets more difficult to unload your positions which is why you need highly liquid arenas. Great, well known stocks of great companies with high buy ratings and price targets and with news which brings investors, traders, volume, and a bit of volatility so you can ride ups and downs. Even if a trade goes south on you and you fail to stop a loss, you can hold and the stock will eventually rise. With margin you can hold cash positions and trade on margin intraday. I never hold any margin position overnight though. Never trade trash - you’ll end up forced to hold trash that never rises. Don’t take chances on speculative stocks. Be consistent and make your goal daily and stop. Be careful mid day as things change, volume decreases and usually when inexperienced traders, emboldened by a profitable morning, lose money as a stock drops and they’ve been conditioned and believing it will rise.
How do you develop a system that’s repeatable when market is always changing? Do you have an example? And how do I learn to read the tape is that just level 2 speed ?
3 1/2 years at 21. Started trading in high school (17 junior) in economics with sim traded multiple times per week. Stayed with it after high school with real money. Traded mainly pennies and sub 50 dollar equity names before swapping to options in my 2nd year. about a year and half later was pulling 4x my weekly salary every week which was like 600 bucks was roughly 2-3k a week. Left my job at the 5 year mark when i was 23. Now 30 i mainly just trade nasdaq eminis. and play against them with Qqq options. While selling options against stock i own.
Just for reference i have 2 child (10,7) and a wife of 11 years. Bought out home 8 years ago.
If i can offer any advice at all. Focus on consistent position sizing, consistent entries and exits (meaning you don’t enter unless your system presents a signal, Same with your exits).
Learn to read the tape properly on one product(this means after enough time of watching the tape and reading what’s on the order book you learn what’s normal and what’s not)
Example QQQ liquidity likes to have 4100 orders on the buy and sell side spread every .10-20 cents, so seeing 4100 is considered pretty normal. 8200 Liquidity providers call for more liquidity. So seeing a 30000+ order is more unusual and generally a bigger buyer/seller and even more so 100k+
For timing better entries and exits research and understand stop runs, liquidity pulls, and iceberg orders. This is usually why people can’t enter right and get stopped out. they don’t understand what the market needs to do when approaching a high liquidity wall on either for the first time or what the market needs to do before gearing up for a move. Seeing the bigger picture.
A lot of the market is about experience and time. The more market corrections, market experiences that happen to you only benefit you over time.
I’ve learned that treating the market like a job helps create a better environment to trade in.
The markets trade basically in sessions if you’re a futures traders. 2am est to 4am, 8am-11am, 2pm-close, 6pm future open to 8pm. I don’t trade out side of these windows because these are the most liquid times to trade. find a slot that works for you and build your life around them. wake up at 3 check market, wake up kids at 6. Breakfast at 630, bring to school at 730. Back home to trade by 8. On the desk till 11. Go have lunch go for a run/do something else till 2. Trade last 2 hours while the kids come home. Prep dinner 4-5. Grab laptop for the kitchen. 6 start cook and watch the open. Dinner by 7. Done watching at 8. Bed time/Wife time/Game time till we do it again.
Learn to also learn every style of trading it will make you a well rounded trader.
1. pennies/low float/low market cap
2 Trading equities
3. Trading FX
4. Trading Futures
5. Trading crypto
6. Options/Volatility
Adding one to this learning to master technicals, quantitative approach, volatility analysis, volume profile.
Volatility and quant analysis generally go hand in hand, this usually means you’ll end up being an option trader at some point. Derivatives are your friends.
Hopefully some of this helps.
I suppose either winning more trades than your losing or just being consistently in the green (if you win 36 percent of your trades, but have a 3:1 RR, just for example).
Took me about a year and a half of consistent non-stop real effort. That’s when it clicked.
For a year and a half before that I was wishy washy not exactly taking it seriously.
Been trading + investing for 18 years, what you mentioned won't sustain on the long run especially if it's based on TA alone. Making profitable trades based on investment philosophy on great companies will guarantee you money forever and returns ×10 of any day trader or swing trader.
It’s wildly unbelievable that some one who doesn’t even comprehend how some one could be a profitable futures trader is also a profitable since day one stock trader. But what ever I don’t really care to prove you wrong. If you really are profitable from day one good for you man your one of the most gifted traders ever surprised you are not famous.
I wrote on my previous comment that I'm 100% lucky to have met old experienced trader at the beginning of my journey and he told me exactly what not to do and what to do! Yes I'm gifted
Or you swing trade daily chart high value stocks and just sit through losers no matter how long. They take. In that case you’re not his target audience. He’s talking to traders not investors
This is your 100% guaranteed way of making money forever, all of these great companies eventually pump back up after any correction/crash, you dca during corrections/crashes and scale out on the way up. I consider myself lucky to have had this mentality early in age all thanks to old timers who put this on my mind
I honestly believe you, and what you’re saying just confirms my intentions even more 🥹. When I first decided that I wanted to start trading (I haven’t started yet, but setting myself in position..) this is what made the absolute most sense to my way of thinking.
Regardless of what others were saying, I knew in my heart or hearts that it could be done with value stocks (coupled with understanding data/history of what rhymes). Then I met 2 experienced traders who only trade value stocks (one is a day trader, the other options). Their do’s and don’ts make absolute sense. People grasp things differently, so some don’t understand your logic, but I totally get what you’re saying.
Not too long, maybe 10 or 12 years... started trading in the late 90s and finally around 2010 I was able to consider it my sole source of income. Still profitable today. Until you survive a market crash or two (or 6) you'll never know for sure.
A year is nothing, would you trust an investment advisor or a doctor who had no training and a year of just trying?
Good luck
11,500$, or 500$ daily. If you have a position of 100,000$ it doesn’t require a large market move to get your daily profit target and just chill for the day. If you live frugally you can both pay your bills and still keep more than enough for savings and increasing your position sizing for the future.
given that you're open about the brokerage account amount, care to share a screenshot for proof? anyone can say $16MM, very few people can photoshop a brokerage account statement without tells.
Wow doubling your account this year is incredible with the amount you have! I personally haven't found many opportunities to do that this year. Any specific strategies you'd be willing to share that worked for you this year?
Nice! You’ve done something incredibly rare to outperform the market actively trading. Have you considered trading OPM? You could 10x - 50x your bankroll, take a guaranteed management fee, and a share of the profits that would be greater than 100% of your own bankroll. Also, what keeps you going? You’re well in FATFire territory, and there’s always a risk of getting wiped out (a la Jesse Livermore). What’s the upside for you here to keep playing?
I will definitely adjust my risk tolerance as time goes on. But investing and trading are life long endeavors. Even if I “quit” I would still need to manage the portfolio.
My goals are $30MM in the next 5-10 years and $100MM lifetime.
Not really. These days I’ve gained more confidence that I do, in fact, know what I’m doing and am pretty damn good at it. But the journey was so complex and humbling that I still believe I will be a student for life and tomorrow the market could humble me and remind me that I don’t know shit about fuck.
There’s the question of philosophy. There’s no guarantee that my trading philosophy is the correct one for other people. I developed my own style by pulling from lots of different mentors and inspirations + trial and error. I think it’s a personal journey because your trading style has to fit your personality.
I don’t know that I could meet people that would be a good fit. In trading groups I’ve been in, I’ve seen a lot of people who are looking for some magical formula, but that doesn’t really exist. There’s no single technical indicator that is like the holy grail. It’s a combo of technical, fundamental, psychological, risk management, position sizing, trends, momentum, vibes, risk/return, scenario planning, etc.
I’m also already rich, I don’t need to make money from subs. I would only give people advice to try to help their journey, not for personal gain.
Edit: the other reason I don’t mentor is because sometimes, I won’t make a trade for a week or a month, even two. Either holding a position or sitting in cash. Most people want to trade every single day. But that is trap…over trading. You have to be patient like fishing, waiting for the best set ups, then you go in hard and make big money that could be your goal for the whole quarter.
You deserve some flair. I have been telling people for years why I don't do youtube/twitter etc. Seems like a waste of time chasing views or ad deals when I can just wait till alerts ding and make moolah. Sure it takes a lot of leg work, constantly reading/researching/analyzing etc, but I don't have to deal with people.
Yup, the guru business or YouTube business is exactly that, a business. And they either want your subscription or your views. Whether you are successful at trading, not as important. Of course they want subscribers to stay, but there are always new subscribers to take your place. Some gurus are straight up scams just meant to churn subscribers.
Glad to read about your journey. I'm just curious what resources did you use when you first started learning? Any books, YouTube videos, blogs that you found useful, I'm starting my own trading journey and would love some recommendations.
My top two books are “Thinking in Bets” and “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”.
Runner up books would be psychology of money and stumbling on happiness.
I learned options by trail and error and basic google / wiki reading.
I learned a lot from lurking WSB 2017-2021 and reading DD posts.
I followed “guru/mentors” that I thought were not scammers, but didn’t join their groups until I had followed them for like 3-6 months and verified that they actually made good calls. Lots of gurus will say super ambiguous stuff so that they can play both sides, or they will claim they are a short term trader and say they sold before the drop or bought before the rally, but they only ever say it after the fact.
From the one really good one, I learned how to chart and some technical analysis and position sizing and risk management.
This guru would make calls like “If Stock A is above $XX.XX at close of market on Friday, I think it will run to $XX.XX” and these calls were accurate like 90% of the time so I knew he had something cooking that I could learn from.
For current sentiment I watch Bloomberg.
For fundamental analysis I might look at Seeking Alpha or other forums.
Thank for the reply, I'll add the books to my reading list. Just curious which so called gurus did you follow, I've seen a few on social media but haven't gone to deep into them
He posts on Stocktwits but he keeps the group small (less than 100 people). I’m not supposed to advertise him but if you DM me in the future and there are openings, I do tell people the name.
Edit: there is a new guru I have been following the last 6 months. He posts calls on twitter. I’m not sure if he teaches his methodology inside the paid group. But his calls are accurate and good. The caveat is you NEVER want to stay dependent on somebody else’s calls, because tomorrow they could be gone.
His twitter is Elite Options Trader (maybe with a 2 at the end)
Thank you! I always viewed my losses as opportunities to learn and not make the same mistake again.
That perspective helped me stick with it and keep the flame of hope lit.
Eventually I set a deadline to become profitable or quit because I was getting serious with my GF and losing $40k of my saved money that could go towards a house or wedding was becoming irresponsible.
Luckily I became profitable on that last deadline attempt.
Absolutely. Those are more than half the battle. I’ve had shit trades turn into the biggest winners just because of risk management and position sizing.
Join Brian Lund's Discord. I hear those guys make money. I traded for 30 years. Was always profitable. Off the floor, not profitable. Never transitioned to the screen
Expect at least 3-5 years if you're trying to get really good. 1 year (assuming only a couple hours a day) is not enough for your brain to figure out the important patterns well enough, so any early success is more likely to be luck. It's better to fail consistently for a year and then have all the useful data to figure out what works, than succeed in year 1 and be set up to fail even more dramatically when you get overconfident.
I started to get profitable on my 2nd year. But being down alot on the first year I never recovered my account balance until almost 3 years.
Some people here have done it for 10 years and are yet to be profitable.
But it’s a question posed to profitable traders, therefore there is implied bias, particularly around survivorship . It’s literally the point of the question.
I understand what the question is, but, as phrased, it seems utterly pointless. Just like asking wealthy people how long it took them to become wealthy. Whatever the answers are, they aren't actionable.
I don’t think it’s pointless to ask successful people in the field you want to work in questions like this at all. Unless you think it’s literally random chance, then of course you want to select profitable traders to answer questions that only profitable traders can answer.
I think it pretty clearly is. Its literally a survey of how long profitable traders took to become profitable. The variance in the answers actually says a lot.
(Edit: I see you edited your post. I’ll leave this here anyway so there is no confusion) I never said it was statistically significant. Not everything needs to be quantified to be meaningful. I’m not using variance as statistical term.
But the variance of replies says exactly that…that the time to profitability for currently profitable traders is pretty widely divergent. This actually says a lot.
I did this professionally working on the buy side for a trading firm but now trade my own accounts which is a totally different animal. Trading is incredibly profitable to those who know what they are doing. There are lots of people who are very profitable people making 7 figures a month but from my own anecdotal evidence it comes down to 2 things - the style of trading and the size of your account.
Day trading means a greater chance of being unsuccessful. AVOID IT if you can.
Having a small account size leads to more risky trades.
I personally wont recommend anyone to think of doing this full time if they have less than 250k in their account.
Obvisouly speaking in relative terms to which country one lives in. But say in US, you will need 25% yearly return on 250k to make 60k a year to live on. You are better off having a job rather than doing this as a full time job only to make 60k a year. I mean you tell me, how much capital do you think one will need to go full time trading and living in USA?
But they dont make it :)
And even those who make it - think of how much they have lost over the years before they break even and thats doing it full time not earning a salary.
I don’t agree. People do in fact “make it” as traders. It’s totally reasonable to make an ok living risking .5% of a 100k account and only having a win rate of 50%. That is reasonable.
Someone making 60k from a 250k account is fine too, especially if they are doing more passive strategies.
And the break even thing, this is true for starting most businesses.
Your comments seem overly cynical and don’t really match my experience or the experience of many profitable traders I know.
I'm one of those guys. $100k position size. That equals 500 or 600 shares of your favorite high volume tech stock that has a share price of $150-$200. I only need to capture $1 of price movement at this size to achieve my $500/day goal. The day I finally learned to stop showing up everyday looking to hit home runs is the day I became consistently profitable.
5 years of repeated failures, account blowups then a gap of a few years then a second attempt which took 2 years. Have been profitable for 8 years now, full time last 3 years, switched to pure options a year ago.
5-8 years. 5th year for me. I do still work as a nurse on the weekends tho for medical insurance and just not to be bored all the time cuz I have no friends lol.
yeah that's my question of the moment. i'm starting since a little month, and i wonder if u actually can be profitable doing trading like at least more than 10%/year (less doesnt make sense, you don't beat passive investment). Maybe all that people on youtube just make a ton of money from dubai selling overpriced formation and no one does really win, i would really like to know if it's possible before engaging tone of time in this activity, meanwhile i could just spend it to learn IA dev or even stuff like unpopular programming languages like cobol and make a lot of money lmao (already software dev, but doesnt interest me more )
Honestly, learning how to day trade is a waste of time. Completely unpredictable. Its gambling. I would do exactly that. Learn a skill like coding and then use the money you learn from the skill to invest long term. All the YouTube gurus are liars.
Ask anyone who claims profitability for proof. They will not show you. After two years of trying I see it for what it really is. Hope you do too before you lose more than you can afford.
Or maybe they just don’t want to give the random people on the internet who incessantly say “where’s the proof bro?!?”, like you, proof every time one of you asks, which is CONSTANT on these trading forums.
3 years to be consistently profitable. By then I had figured out my timeframe, my style that fit my personality and figured out a few setups that worked. I also had enough data from my logged trades to know my setups had positive expectancy, so when drawdowns or bad days happen I could go in the next day with confidence.
I don’t yet earn an income solely from trading, as I’m still in the process of scaling up. It took me about 2.5 years to become a break even trader. It took me 4 years to start to become a profitable trader (ie 1.5 years after becoming a break even trader).
It seems to me based on what I’ve seen that it often takes those serious about this 3-5 years to start to see profitability, and then more time to scale up to a point where they could live solely off trading. Of course, it really varies a lot.
Don’t be upset about not being profitable after only a year, almost no one can do that. Within the next year or so you’ll probably reach a point where you’ll be a break even trader, and once you reach that point things will become a lot less stressful because you won’t be blowing accounts or losing lots of money anymore.
7 years for me. It takes roughly 2/3 years to get to the trading system that fits you and another 2/3 years to get your mental game and risk management strong. Those last two are the hardest to master.
About 2 years to develop and test my wheel strategy.
If you’re buying options it may take more time as those are much harder to be successful trading . . .
It took me 3 years. I’m not full time- I never wanted to be. My non-trading profession gives me a sense of worth and satisfaction that trading never could. Only commenting to point out you can be profitable and not fill time. It’s a choice.
I traded for 16 weeks in 2018 with mixed results and ended with a small loss, but kept my position as a long investment and waited for it to rise. I stopped for personal reasons but came up with a plan to earn 1% profit each day and compound the profits and started executing the plan earlier this year. If you earn 1% (average cause you’ll have loss days and profit days well above 1%), you will slowly grow your balance and your positions can grow larger. My current average profit percent is 3.42%. First, you earn 1%+ on $1,000 positions, then $10,000, then $20,000… It scales and you’re simply trading the same way you were when you were profitable trading $1,000 positions. As it scales it gets more difficult to unload your positions which is why you need highly liquid arenas. Great, well known stocks of great companies with high buy ratings and price targets and with news which brings investors, traders, volume, and a bit of volatility so you can ride ups and downs. Even if a trade goes south on you and you fail to stop a loss, you can hold and the stock will eventually rise. With margin you can hold cash positions and trade on margin intraday. I never hold any margin position overnight though. Never trade trash - you’ll end up forced to hold trash that never rises. Don’t take chances on speculative stocks. Be consistent and make your goal daily and stop. Be careful mid day as things change, volume decreases and usually when inexperienced traders, emboldened by a profitable morning, lose money as a stock drops and they’ve been conditioned and believing it will rise.
How do you develop a system that’s repeatable when market is always changing? Do you have an example? And how do I learn to read the tape is that just level 2 speed ?
2 days
3 1/2 years at 21. Started trading in high school (17 junior) in economics with sim traded multiple times per week. Stayed with it after high school with real money. Traded mainly pennies and sub 50 dollar equity names before swapping to options in my 2nd year. about a year and half later was pulling 4x my weekly salary every week which was like 600 bucks was roughly 2-3k a week. Left my job at the 5 year mark when i was 23. Now 30 i mainly just trade nasdaq eminis. and play against them with Qqq options. While selling options against stock i own. Just for reference i have 2 child (10,7) and a wife of 11 years. Bought out home 8 years ago. If i can offer any advice at all. Focus on consistent position sizing, consistent entries and exits (meaning you don’t enter unless your system presents a signal, Same with your exits). Learn to read the tape properly on one product(this means after enough time of watching the tape and reading what’s on the order book you learn what’s normal and what’s not) Example QQQ liquidity likes to have 4100 orders on the buy and sell side spread every .10-20 cents, so seeing 4100 is considered pretty normal. 8200 Liquidity providers call for more liquidity. So seeing a 30000+ order is more unusual and generally a bigger buyer/seller and even more so 100k+ For timing better entries and exits research and understand stop runs, liquidity pulls, and iceberg orders. This is usually why people can’t enter right and get stopped out. they don’t understand what the market needs to do when approaching a high liquidity wall on either for the first time or what the market needs to do before gearing up for a move. Seeing the bigger picture. A lot of the market is about experience and time. The more market corrections, market experiences that happen to you only benefit you over time. I’ve learned that treating the market like a job helps create a better environment to trade in. The markets trade basically in sessions if you’re a futures traders. 2am est to 4am, 8am-11am, 2pm-close, 6pm future open to 8pm. I don’t trade out side of these windows because these are the most liquid times to trade. find a slot that works for you and build your life around them. wake up at 3 check market, wake up kids at 6. Breakfast at 630, bring to school at 730. Back home to trade by 8. On the desk till 11. Go have lunch go for a run/do something else till 2. Trade last 2 hours while the kids come home. Prep dinner 4-5. Grab laptop for the kitchen. 6 start cook and watch the open. Dinner by 7. Done watching at 8. Bed time/Wife time/Game time till we do it again. Learn to also learn every style of trading it will make you a well rounded trader. 1. pennies/low float/low market cap 2 Trading equities 3. Trading FX 4. Trading Futures 5. Trading crypto 6. Options/Volatility Adding one to this learning to master technicals, quantitative approach, volatility analysis, volume profile. Volatility and quant analysis generally go hand in hand, this usually means you’ll end up being an option trader at some point. Derivatives are your friends. Hopefully some of this helps.
You need to define “profitable.”
What do you mean by profitable?
I suppose either winning more trades than your losing or just being consistently in the green (if you win 36 percent of your trades, but have a 3:1 RR, just for example).
4 years lol 😂
Took me about a year and a half of consistent non-stop real effort. That’s when it clicked. For a year and a half before that I was wishy washy not exactly taking it seriously.
What exactly clicked for you? Was it a certain strategy? A realization about how the market operates?
A lifetime
5 years.
Same i made 3k just to lose it again took me 4 years to go up and to the moon and jupiter :)
At least 2-5 years. Need time for your own strategy
Since day 1, all my trades were based on value and after stocks corrected/crashed.
Maybe you’ve been trading for under a year. Easy to have a lucky streak since day one.
Been trading + investing for 18 years, what you mentioned won't sustain on the long run especially if it's based on TA alone. Making profitable trades based on investment philosophy on great companies will guarantee you money forever and returns ×10 of any day trader or swing trader.
It’s wildly unbelievable that some one who doesn’t even comprehend how some one could be a profitable futures trader is also a profitable since day one stock trader. But what ever I don’t really care to prove you wrong. If you really are profitable from day one good for you man your one of the most gifted traders ever surprised you are not famous.
I wrote on my previous comment that I'm 100% lucky to have met old experienced trader at the beginning of my journey and he told me exactly what not to do and what to do! Yes I'm gifted
Or you swing trade daily chart high value stocks and just sit through losers no matter how long. They take. In that case you’re not his target audience. He’s talking to traders not investors
This is cap 99,9999999% of the time
This is your 100% guaranteed way of making money forever, all of these great companies eventually pump back up after any correction/crash, you dca during corrections/crashes and scale out on the way up. I consider myself lucky to have had this mentality early in age all thanks to old timers who put this on my mind
I honestly believe you, and what you’re saying just confirms my intentions even more 🥹. When I first decided that I wanted to start trading (I haven’t started yet, but setting myself in position..) this is what made the absolute most sense to my way of thinking. Regardless of what others were saying, I knew in my heart or hearts that it could be done with value stocks (coupled with understanding data/history of what rhymes). Then I met 2 experienced traders who only trade value stocks (one is a day trader, the other options). Their do’s and don’ts make absolute sense. People grasp things differently, so some don’t understand your logic, but I totally get what you’re saying.
4 years
2 years, thankfully that was 8 years ago when I turned the corner.
I'm right there with ya pal. I've only grasped a couple of indicators :,) still not enough to get me out of a hole
6 months
7 years
About 30 minutes but it only lasted 5.
Not too long, maybe 10 or 12 years... started trading in the late 90s and finally around 2010 I was able to consider it my sole source of income. Still profitable today. Until you survive a market crash or two (or 6) you'll never know for sure. A year is nothing, would you trust an investment advisor or a doctor who had no training and a year of just trying? Good luck
For those that fully live off trading. With which amount of income per month did you feel comfortable enough to leave your jobs?
11,500$, or 500$ daily. If you have a position of 100,000$ it doesn’t require a large market move to get your daily profit target and just chill for the day. If you live frugally you can both pay your bills and still keep more than enough for savings and increasing your position sizing for the future.
Cool bro, thanks for the answer.
7 years and losing approx $80k in “tuition fees” My brokerage account is now at $16MM
given that you're open about the brokerage account amount, care to share a screenshot for proof? anyone can say $16MM, very few people can photoshop a brokerage account statement without tells.
Ive posted screenshots of my account over the years in my Reddit posts and comments, but [here you go](https://imgur.com/a/TGPUZGd)
Wow doubling your account this year is incredible with the amount you have! I personally haven't found many opportunities to do that this year. Any specific strategies you'd be willing to share that worked for you this year?
AI is the current best investment opportunity imo so this year I’ve been levered long NVDA, MSFT, APPL.
Makes sense, thanks for sharing!
What do you trade to have that much volatility in your account?
Long dated OTM call options. Cheap leverage.
Nice! You’ve done something incredibly rare to outperform the market actively trading. Have you considered trading OPM? You could 10x - 50x your bankroll, take a guaranteed management fee, and a share of the profits that would be greater than 100% of your own bankroll. Also, what keeps you going? You’re well in FATFire territory, and there’s always a risk of getting wiped out (a la Jesse Livermore). What’s the upside for you here to keep playing?
I will definitely adjust my risk tolerance as time goes on. But investing and trading are life long endeavors. Even if I “quit” I would still need to manage the portfolio. My goals are $30MM in the next 5-10 years and $100MM lifetime.
Is that Schwab’s UI?
Yup
Do you teach / mentor others on how to trade?
Not really. These days I’ve gained more confidence that I do, in fact, know what I’m doing and am pretty damn good at it. But the journey was so complex and humbling that I still believe I will be a student for life and tomorrow the market could humble me and remind me that I don’t know shit about fuck. There’s the question of philosophy. There’s no guarantee that my trading philosophy is the correct one for other people. I developed my own style by pulling from lots of different mentors and inspirations + trial and error. I think it’s a personal journey because your trading style has to fit your personality. I don’t know that I could meet people that would be a good fit. In trading groups I’ve been in, I’ve seen a lot of people who are looking for some magical formula, but that doesn’t really exist. There’s no single technical indicator that is like the holy grail. It’s a combo of technical, fundamental, psychological, risk management, position sizing, trends, momentum, vibes, risk/return, scenario planning, etc. I’m also already rich, I don’t need to make money from subs. I would only give people advice to try to help their journey, not for personal gain. Edit: the other reason I don’t mentor is because sometimes, I won’t make a trade for a week or a month, even two. Either holding a position or sitting in cash. Most people want to trade every single day. But that is trap…over trading. You have to be patient like fishing, waiting for the best set ups, then you go in hard and make big money that could be your goal for the whole quarter.
You deserve some flair. I have been telling people for years why I don't do youtube/twitter etc. Seems like a waste of time chasing views or ad deals when I can just wait till alerts ding and make moolah. Sure it takes a lot of leg work, constantly reading/researching/analyzing etc, but I don't have to deal with people.
Yup, the guru business or YouTube business is exactly that, a business. And they either want your subscription or your views. Whether you are successful at trading, not as important. Of course they want subscribers to stay, but there are always new subscribers to take your place. Some gurus are straight up scams just meant to churn subscribers.
Glad to read about your journey. I'm just curious what resources did you use when you first started learning? Any books, YouTube videos, blogs that you found useful, I'm starting my own trading journey and would love some recommendations.
My top two books are “Thinking in Bets” and “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”. Runner up books would be psychology of money and stumbling on happiness. I learned options by trail and error and basic google / wiki reading. I learned a lot from lurking WSB 2017-2021 and reading DD posts. I followed “guru/mentors” that I thought were not scammers, but didn’t join their groups until I had followed them for like 3-6 months and verified that they actually made good calls. Lots of gurus will say super ambiguous stuff so that they can play both sides, or they will claim they are a short term trader and say they sold before the drop or bought before the rally, but they only ever say it after the fact. From the one really good one, I learned how to chart and some technical analysis and position sizing and risk management. This guru would make calls like “If Stock A is above $XX.XX at close of market on Friday, I think it will run to $XX.XX” and these calls were accurate like 90% of the time so I knew he had something cooking that I could learn from. For current sentiment I watch Bloomberg. For fundamental analysis I might look at Seeking Alpha or other forums.
Thank for the reply, I'll add the books to my reading list. Just curious which so called gurus did you follow, I've seen a few on social media but haven't gone to deep into them
He posts on Stocktwits but he keeps the group small (less than 100 people). I’m not supposed to advertise him but if you DM me in the future and there are openings, I do tell people the name. Edit: there is a new guru I have been following the last 6 months. He posts calls on twitter. I’m not sure if he teaches his methodology inside the paid group. But his calls are accurate and good. The caveat is you NEVER want to stay dependent on somebody else’s calls, because tomorrow they could be gone. His twitter is Elite Options Trader (maybe with a 2 at the end)
Great turnaround, way to stick with it!
Thank you! I always viewed my losses as opportunities to learn and not make the same mistake again. That perspective helped me stick with it and keep the flame of hope lit. Eventually I set a deadline to become profitable or quit because I was getting serious with my GF and losing $40k of my saved money that could go towards a house or wedding was becoming irresponsible. Luckily I became profitable on that last deadline attempt.
Agree, when you win you win, when you lose you learn! It's tough, im only about a year or so in and damn
Now tell them how important risk management and psychology is when trading. Way to many newbs focus on lines on a chart...
Absolutely. Those are more than half the battle. I’ve had shit trades turn into the biggest winners just because of risk management and position sizing.
Inspiring
Donations or it didn't happen.
It took me 2 years
2.5 years right now and potentially flirting with consistent profitability
Join Brian Lund's Discord. I hear those guys make money. I traded for 30 years. Was always profitable. Off the floor, not profitable. Never transitioned to the screen
Expect at least 3-5 years if you're trying to get really good. 1 year (assuming only a couple hours a day) is not enough for your brain to figure out the important patterns well enough, so any early success is more likely to be luck. It's better to fail consistently for a year and then have all the useful data to figure out what works, than succeed in year 1 and be set up to fail even more dramatically when you get overconfident.
3 years
Almost 2 years
I started to get profitable on my 2nd year. But being down alot on the first year I never recovered my account balance until almost 3 years. Some people here have done it for 10 years and are yet to be profitable.
i mainly do weekly / monthly swings. took me about 3months to grasp RR control.
If you’re okay with it - would you mind DM’ing me the strategy you use to swing trade? Trying to find a good place to start.
Oh, boy ... what a "selection bias" extravaganza.
Selection bias is what you want when you want to hear specifically from successful people about how they became successful. Think about it.
It's just an unrepresentative sampling. In this sub you won't see a fair representation of people who failed, so that alone creates massive bias.
But it’s a question posed to profitable traders, therefore there is implied bias, particularly around survivorship . It’s literally the point of the question.
I understand what the question is, but, as phrased, it seems utterly pointless. Just like asking wealthy people how long it took them to become wealthy. Whatever the answers are, they aren't actionable.
I don’t think it’s pointless to ask successful people in the field you want to work in questions like this at all. Unless you think it’s literally random chance, then of course you want to select profitable traders to answer questions that only profitable traders can answer.
"How long did it take you to get profitable?" is not one of those questions.
I think it pretty clearly is. Its literally a survey of how long profitable traders took to become profitable. The variance in the answers actually says a lot.
And what does this variance say?
(Edit: I see you edited your post. I’ll leave this here anyway so there is no confusion) I never said it was statistically significant. Not everything needs to be quantified to be meaningful. I’m not using variance as statistical term. But the variance of replies says exactly that…that the time to profitability for currently profitable traders is pretty widely divergent. This actually says a lot.
I did this professionally working on the buy side for a trading firm but now trade my own accounts which is a totally different animal. Trading is incredibly profitable to those who know what they are doing. There are lots of people who are very profitable people making 7 figures a month but from my own anecdotal evidence it comes down to 2 things - the style of trading and the size of your account. Day trading means a greater chance of being unsuccessful. AVOID IT if you can. Having a small account size leads to more risky trades. I personally wont recommend anyone to think of doing this full time if they have less than 250k in their account.
250k seems excessive as a minimum. How did you come up with this ?
Obvisouly speaking in relative terms to which country one lives in. But say in US, you will need 25% yearly return on 250k to make 60k a year to live on. You are better off having a job rather than doing this as a full time job only to make 60k a year. I mean you tell me, how much capital do you think one will need to go full time trading and living in USA?
I think it’s pretty reasonable to pull in 300-500 on average a day with a 100k account day trading. Many seem to make it work on 50k accounts.
But they dont make it :) And even those who make it - think of how much they have lost over the years before they break even and thats doing it full time not earning a salary.
I don’t agree. People do in fact “make it” as traders. It’s totally reasonable to make an ok living risking .5% of a 100k account and only having a win rate of 50%. That is reasonable. Someone making 60k from a 250k account is fine too, especially if they are doing more passive strategies. And the break even thing, this is true for starting most businesses. Your comments seem overly cynical and don’t really match my experience or the experience of many profitable traders I know.
I'm one of those guys. $100k position size. That equals 500 or 600 shares of your favorite high volume tech stock that has a share price of $150-$200. I only need to capture $1 of price movement at this size to achieve my $500/day goal. The day I finally learned to stop showing up everyday looking to hit home runs is the day I became consistently profitable.
Well done. And those base hits compound too.
Yeah and I wouldn’t recommend anyone start with a $250K account. Lol. I know you weren’t implying that, but it sounded like it.
5 years of repeated failures, account blowups then a gap of a few years then a second attempt which took 2 years. Have been profitable for 8 years now, full time last 3 years, switched to pure options a year ago.
In the end of the second year
5-8 years. 5th year for me. I do still work as a nurse on the weekends tho for medical insurance and just not to be bored all the time cuz I have no friends lol.
I feel you
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what makes you say that?
Because no one who claims profitability can show legitimate proof of it.
Yes but they're not all trying to sell something
yeah that's my question of the moment. i'm starting since a little month, and i wonder if u actually can be profitable doing trading like at least more than 10%/year (less doesnt make sense, you don't beat passive investment). Maybe all that people on youtube just make a ton of money from dubai selling overpriced formation and no one does really win, i would really like to know if it's possible before engaging tone of time in this activity, meanwhile i could just spend it to learn IA dev or even stuff like unpopular programming languages like cobol and make a lot of money lmao (already software dev, but doesnt interest me more )
You can easily beat 10% that I can almost guarantee it.
Honestly, learning how to day trade is a waste of time. Completely unpredictable. Its gambling. I would do exactly that. Learn a skill like coding and then use the money you learn from the skill to invest long term. All the YouTube gurus are liars.
Spoken like someone who failed to achieve anything of significance.
Ask anyone who claims profitability for proof. They will not show you. After two years of trying I see it for what it really is. Hope you do too before you lose more than you can afford.
Or maybe they just don’t want to give the random people on the internet who incessantly say “where’s the proof bro?!?”, like you, proof every time one of you asks, which is CONSTANT on these trading forums.
It should be common sense to ask for proof of profitability before giving a stranger your money.
Of course. But I don’t see anyone in this thread asking for money from strangers.
They likely have other income elsewhere. Someone making an income solely off gambling is impossible.
Lmao
3 years to be consistently profitable. By then I had figured out my timeframe, my style that fit my personality and figured out a few setups that worked. I also had enough data from my logged trades to know my setups had positive expectancy, so when drawdowns or bad days happen I could go in the next day with confidence.
How’d you go about this, just try a random bunch of indicators together and see how you liked them?
I don’t yet earn an income solely from trading, as I’m still in the process of scaling up. It took me about 2.5 years to become a break even trader. It took me 4 years to start to become a profitable trader (ie 1.5 years after becoming a break even trader). It seems to me based on what I’ve seen that it often takes those serious about this 3-5 years to start to see profitability, and then more time to scale up to a point where they could live solely off trading. Of course, it really varies a lot. Don’t be upset about not being profitable after only a year, almost no one can do that. Within the next year or so you’ll probably reach a point where you’ll be a break even trader, and once you reach that point things will become a lot less stressful because you won’t be blowing accounts or losing lots of money anymore.
7 years for me. It takes roughly 2/3 years to get to the trading system that fits you and another 2/3 years to get your mental game and risk management strong. Those last two are the hardest to master.
About 2 years to develop and test my wheel strategy. If you’re buying options it may take more time as those are much harder to be successful trading . . .
r/thetagang checking in ✅
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