FAQ How Long Does it Take to Make a Stable Income from Trading?

[aliasentric]

t2w34035 - I think if you are struggling after 2 years, you may want to get some help from experienced traders. Maybe that's why you are here on this board. However, there is varied levels of experience here and hard to know which advice is good. And some advice may be good for some but not good for others. Have you considered getting some one on one mentoring from an experienced and successful trader? No, I'm not recommending anyone, but there are available mentors out there that can taylor instruction to your trading style...

What I've found is that all the knowledge you need to trade successfully is available for free on the internet, but sometimes a person may need help to put it all together, and/or filter out what doesn't work for them...

 

[t2w34035]

Thanks neil and aliasentric for your interest.

Enrolled in classroom Online Trading Academy's courses - Professional Trader; Futures; and Currency. Traded live and simulated. Read lots of books. All of it shows me a truth - more money is made giving trading/investing advice than receiving it.

Bottom line - I continue to work on becoming a Master Trader. My current status is reading Jesse Livermore's book and doing much more simulation trading.

 

[trading100]

t2w34035 - I think if you are struggling after 2 years, you may want to get some help from experienced traders. Maybe that's why you are here on this board. However, there is varied levels of experience here and hard to know which advice is good. And some advice may be good for some but not good for others. Have you considered getting some one on one mentoring from an experienced and successful trader? No, I'm not recommending anyone, but there are available mentors out there that can taylor instruction to your trading style...

What I've found is that all the knowledge you need to trade successfully is available for free on the internet, but sometimes a person may need help to put it all together, and/or filter out what doesn't work for them...

The traders who do know what to do are not going to tell you, they would rather trade a PAMM account.

 

[cablemonster]

I would pencil in 3+ years (5+ more likely) UNLESS you can scoop a position at a true prop firm OR convince a long term profitable trader to teach you in person. The latter 2 options are certainly no guarantee of success or any form of shortcut. Those looking for a free lunch will humbled quickly. Beware of imitations of true prop firms and long term profitable traders. Finding a long term profitable trader that might be willing to teach you is very difficult, they are very rare. Even if you do find one there is not much upside from them helping you, unless they just like you. good luck.

 

[aliasentric]

I agree 3-5+ years if one is learning part-time. If you devote more time to it though, you can learn much quicker.

For example, if you can quit your job first, and "go to school" full-time, you can spend as much time learning to trade in a few months as someone working full-time with their day job learning to trade for 5 years.

May be unrealistic for some people, but there are many who cut back on "work" to go to school. I did it to go to school years ago, and I did it again to learn to trade. It's the best option in my opinion, since you can learn much quicker, learn from your mistakes, and get results quicker...

 

[aliasentric]

I find trading rather boring. My only goal is to make a living.

You'll know you are near to achieving consistent profitability when you enter most trades and just set your stop loss and take profit, then walk away. You can sit there and watch it if you want to, but what good does that do? You can't control it. Just wait for the profit, or SL to hit. Then wait for the next opportunity...

If you strive for winning 30% of your trades, and gain 4 times as much as when you lose, then you'll be profitable. It's not as complicated as many try to make it sound...

Biggest mistake is overtrading. Wait for the trades that you are confident enough with, that you can walk away from it and just wait. Again, when trading becomes boring, and you are not spending as much time with it, you are reaching success. If you never feel like you can spend less then 8-12 hours a day trading, more than likely you'll never become profitable consistently...

I'm sure others will continue to present their counter views. To each his own. Whatever makes you successful and you don't have to completely redevelop your "system" every other month, then more power to you...

 

[aliasentric]

But if your only goal is to enjoy the "journey" of learning to trade, then that's okay.

Actually, I did enjoy that journey. But when the journey became more painful than I cared to endure, I was ready for that "journey" to end, and move on to the next journey of becoming profitable...

Having said all that, I continue to learn from my mistakes, as I still make them, just not as often. So, my "journey" of learning is still ongoing. Just not as painful

 

[aliasentric]

If you believe it when everyone says it will take you 5+ years to become profitable, then it sure will take you that long. Or longer.

If I believed everyone who says it will take me many years to become profitable, I would have never started trading to begin with. I determined how long it was going to take ME to become profitable. What you believe is possible, you will achieve. What you do not believe is possible, you will not achieve. I think this has been said before, but I haven't heard it applied to trading.

Many knowledgeable traders share their knowledge. It's all over the internet. I appreciate it, since I have learned from what other successful traders have shared FOR FREE. The trick is to learn what will work consistently. AND what will work consistently for YOU.

I have found in my experience, majority of voices in the trading world did not point me in the right direction to become successful. But they did give me enough information for me to point myself in the right direction.

Do you want to make a stable income from trading? Identify what is preventing you from achieving this goal. Pinpoint each problem that recurs. Then research ways to fix each problem. Keep making adjustments until you eliminate the problem, or at least until it's not killing you any more.

If you cannot solve the problems with your trading style, then perhaps you need to change your trading style?

I could go on and on about all of the "assumptions" most traders make, that will make you think it will take way longer than it needs to. For example, some successful traders are celebrating that they can double their account in a year. Not saying this is not successful. But unless you have a whole lot of money to start with, it's not going to give you a stable income any time soon. You determine how much you NEED to increase your account in order to live on the gains, and how long it will take you to do it, AND what you will need to do to reach that goal every week/month. You've got to be goal oriented.

So, how long will it take to make a stable income from trading? How long YOU think it will take you is the most likely answer to this question.

 

[t2w34035]

aliasentric,

Thank you for more of your insights.

"What you believe is possible, you will achieve. What you do not believe is possible, you will not achieve."

After considering those words above, this is what I'm thinking. What you believe is possible, greatly increases the probability you will achieve what you believe. What you do not believe is possible, greatly increases the probability of that, too. The effect of belief is addressed in a number of writings (e.g. books of the Bible such as Proverbs, and some secular writings -- "Think and Grow Rich"by Napolean Hill, "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer, "Unlimited Power" by Anthony Robbins, Psycho-Cybetics by Maxwell Maltzand, Wikipedia's "Cybernetics", et cetera.

My current challenge in trading is risk measurement. Trading the means and trading the extremes helped. Moving averges helped. Tradestation's Fibonacci retracement application has helped, also. I'm now working on RSI.

I'm enjoying your feedback.

 

[Marmany]

t2w34035 "My current challenge in trading is risk measurement. Trading the means and trading the extremes helped. Moving averges helped. Tradestation's Fibonacci retracement application has helped, also. I'm now working on RSI. "

Risk management is easy to control - NEVER trade without stops and NEVER move them away from your entry.

Regarding indicators they all can be made to work by gurus who have the benefit of hindsight but can only make money by selling their "system". But over a statistically valid sample size none of them have better than 52% probability of predicting the future. Their only significant use it to highlight what the market is doing at the current time. If that is in opposition to your current position then exit unless you have reliable (legal) information not in the public domain backing up your position.

These pearls of wisdom are condensed from my trading experiences over the last 22 years. Hope they help

 

[Babyblush]

The time taken to make stable income from the forex trading business would be purely dependent upon the traders effort to grasp the concept and develop a suitable strategy to produce consistent income.

 

[t2w34035]

You said right the time of success depends on our personal efforts, talent and market situation. All are different in their trading performance . At least 2 years experience is required to get stable income from forex trading. consistent income depends on your level of knowledge and determination.

Many factors are in play to achieve trading success. After 26 months, I've reached the tipping point. Having the right platform and becoming proficient with its software were main points of resistance to my efforts. Thanks to time available to me and a supportive, not obstructive, spouse, have been immensely helpful.:clap:

 

[Babyblush]

This is totally dependent upon the trader and his grasping skills, also the involvement of other factors such as emotion management and so on.

 

[kd1976]

It depends on life experiences and the person. How much ego is in your way and how long are you willing to hide truths about yourself. Once you can be completely honest with yourself then you are ready to develop. Unfortunately for most of us, it takes a lot of pain to get to this point. It is a whole process. It will definitely take years. But the answer to this question is only something you will have to go through to find out. My advice is to seek out someone who is truly a good person and went through all of the battles that a person will have to go through to become a successful trader and then do everything you can to learn from them. You will have to go through your own experiences of course but you may be able to survive long enough to see something good happen. I wish I had a better answer for those of you who are just starting out or have been in it and can kind of understand this but it is the truth. Good luck to all of those who wish to undertake this thing of ours.

 

[NVP]

no guarantees ...........no warrantees .........constant challenge .............constant pressure..................emotionally draining.............

its a wonder anyone plays
N

 

[NVP]

seriously ?

aside from building up all the standard core generic knowledge

the real challenge is then to build up years of specific specialised knowledge and experience but then be prepared to discard / drop everything to go in another direction...........

thats what it takes
N

 

[ethanbenjamin]

How Long?

Yes, I totally agree .
One of the reasons for not getting stability in small business could be the wrong start of . One must be well trained . They must have a proper guideline . Mr Charts mentioned the statement "To realise you are not the master of the markets, you are not “clever”, you are merely an individual who is going to carefully choose high probability situations to make consistent money from the markets." which is absolutely right. Right from the initial step be careful. And last but not the least it will all depend on your capability.

 

[lloydbee]

It is a whole process. It will definitely take years. But the answer to this question is only something you will have to go through to find out.

aside from building up all the standard core generic knowledge

the real challenge is then to build up years of specific specialised knowledge and experience but then be prepared to discard / drop everything to go in another direction...........

thats what it takes
N

BOTH very true points...
Also +E&D.... Effort and desire to succeed... and then more effort and desire... till your eyes are tired and you have had every mental and emotional meltdown possible

 

[bootsyjam]

My opinion on this is that it depends on your capitalisation (how much money you have to trade), and whether you can support yourself when you're learning.

There are many people (at least I think there are) who are profitable at intraday trading. My problem with that is the support/resistance levels are blown regularly, and picking the strong levels is very hard indeed. As such you will make some good trades, but the bad ones will chip away at your balance, and also cause pyschological issues as you may start to doubt your trading technique.

And here is where your capitalisation is important. The best/strongest levels are found on the monthly, weekly and daily charts (especially the monthly and weekly). But this obviously means that you're not trading a lot as it takes time to reach these levels. If you're only taking 2-5 trades per month (assuming you're monitoring a fair few currencies), then how much will you need to make from these very few trades? In other words, if your bank is only 1k and you stick to risking 1% of your bank then that's £10 per trade. You're not going to be able to support yourself on that.

I think this is why so many people fail. The best set ups are few and far between, and most people have neither the patience nor the financial backing to be able to sit and wait for these trades that have greater chances of success. Take a look at just the EURUSD monthly, weekly, daily, 4 hour, 2 hour (if you can), 1 hour and 15 or 30 min chart.

When you get to the shorter term time frames look at how many places/levels that are available for you to trade. I for one have stopped trying to figure that out and trade longer term only. Hope that helps.

 

[fayalac]

Support/ressistance levels are not a set value, those are interactive and change on the way....
I have to agree with bootsyjam, the most profitable trading plan, i have figured, works on a monthy or two months bassis, it depends on the market and the asset involved.
Most people fail because we are still dreaming to make a filthy profit each day just because we are trading...., everybody has to realize it doesnt work this way. Shorter TF involve a higher degree of uncertainty and risk...