How long were you trading before you became profitable?

After the fun and games of Bush against Kerry, I’ll try to keep politics out of the new poll.

Beginners are always asking how long it will take them to become profitable traders, so it might be useful to get an idea how much time others spent before everything ‘clicked.’

Obviously, everyones' circumstances are different. Some of the factors that have an effect have been discussed on previous threads, but as far as I can tell we've never had a poll:

How long does it take before turning profitable?

How long does it take to be a successfull consistent day trader?

To be honest, I became profitable at least a year before anything "clicked" at all, simply by more-or-less blindly following a technique I was taught on a one-day course that worked for me. Looking back, I had very little idea what I was doing and was extremely lucky. Not very representative, I know, but there it is.

"i dont think you can say you are profitable unless u have a track record of at least a year of consistency"...LOL....that is just about long enough for someone to successfully convince themselves they are Jesse Livermore reincarnated at which point you might expect to see them on the latest filing for bankruptcy list thereafter.... if after 10 years your equity curve is still rising...you have also not blown up on a 50% drawdown known as divorce...you have accomodated for the 40% potential of IHT..then you have 'made it'...set your bars high... any idiot can fluke it when they are low !

3 years

Any of you profitable folks feel like mentoring a young one?

I am actually a newbie myself and would love to learn more. I have been reading a lot of books, articles, studying, and I feel like I still still have a lot to learn. Investing your money and time is not easy for most people, and that includes me. I have to protect my investment and make sure that I have all the knowledge that I need to get into this business.

I think the time factor is a bit misleading for determining how long it really takes to become profitable. It is probably better to measure it in terms of number of trades taken, but this is harder to calculate as a day trader may have taken hundreds of trades in a month! The thing is, if you're a position trader, you won't really know whether your trading system really works for years as you may only take 3 trades, 2 of which are profitable and 1 which is a failure - does this mean he's a profitable trader or just lucky? Winding that back to swing trading - holding for a couple of days to a couple of weeks, you might only get one signal a fortnight... so you won't know for sure whether you're a profitable trader or not for a few months as you can't really tell if your system is that great. A scalper on the other hand can see within days if what he's doing is actually profitable or not.

My personal journey was slow because I was only doing one trade a week to a fortnight (swing trading) which meant I took ages to refine what I was doing and how I was doing it. The mistakes we made over a longer time frame. Then I started day trading, and quickly made mistakes so could refine my techniques based on more regular trades. So to develop a swing trading system that works for me, I took about 18 months. To develop a day trading system that works for me, maybe 4 months.

I hope this makes sense. It does to me.

This is another 'misconception'/ wrong knowledge floating around. It is equivalent to asking to a Doctor-

How many times you had failed surgeries and patients deaths before successful surgery?

Trust me, there is so much wrong knowledge floating around regarding trading that trading has become a mystical process.

One should not attempt a live trade before finding out a trading system- system based or discretionary, getting expertise in his system, feel the markets and atleast 6 months- 1 year of demo trade.

Only after profitable demo trade, first trade should be put Live. Success will follow. Money will follow.

Around a year and a half for me.

chump said:

"i dont think you can say you are profitable unless u have a track record of at least a year of consistency"...LOL....that is just about long enough for someone to successfully convince themselves they are Jesse Livermore reincarnated. if after 10 years your equity curve is still rising...you have also not blown up on a 50% drawdown known as divorce...you have accomodated for the 40% potential of IHT..then you have 'made it'

Click to expand...

10 years?!
So most people would be expected to maybe learn for 2-3 years and then be profitable for 10 years before they could assume that they might be able to make consistent money from the market? 13 years? ouch!

I'd imagine that if one traded shorter timeframes and maybe took say 5 trades per day, then you'd feel confident in your ability if you were profitable after maybe 8 months or so, no? I mean, you'd have experienced all kinds of moves and environments and news days etc etc and have made hundreds and hundreds of trades to make the numbers statistically relevant and not 'luck'. Is my thinking wrong? Cheers

(ps, OP, been trading years and years here and still not consistently profitable)

about a year and a half with some breaks.

It takes me for about almost 2 years for me to trade like a professional. Professional know when to enter the market, exit the market or stay sideway.

Is it true that only 20% of people in the stock market can earn money, most of people (80%) will lose money in the end?

Well for me honestly speaking around 2 years.

You have to be patient and use money you can afford to lose. You must treat it like a real job. Every time you buy or you short you must feel like you are selling a product and your objective is to make money. If you lose, think about that you did wrong and analyze each and every case for hours.

If you follow the above rules it will take you about 2 years and then you will become independently wealthy.

MainCycleV said:

Is it true that only 20% of people in the stock market can earn money, most of people (80%) will lose money in the end?

Click to expand...

Working as a stock broker, I would say even less then 20%. Investors are making profit as long as market goes up. As soon as the market changes the direction, all profits disappear within short period of time.