Great answers. Acuity captured my sentiments exactly.
Without the safety of a paid job youāll be relying on the strength of your strategy. This should be definable, coherent, applicable (manually or automatically), repeatable, resilient (able to deal with all market conditions either by adapting or simply standing aside), a good fit to your personality, your balance and appetite for risk and it must be your own so you have thorough knowledge of it and can improve and/or tweak it and also know when to trade it or sit on your hands.
There is no average time it takes to achieve consistency (a trader with a yearās experience can reveal the key to trading wealth to someone doing it for 10 years) and there is no short cut that doesnāt involve gambling and grave risk.
It is far easier to make 45000 a year with a balance of 450000 (10%) than it is with a balance of 4500 (1000%). It is far safer to win 100 with 1 std lot and 10 pips than 1 mini lot and 100 pips once you have a good strategy. It is far safer to risk mini lots than std lots while your devising your strategy. And watch drawdown. If you find yourself using a strategy that goes negative 10% - 20% of your balance before it turns and you take profits - fix it as it will let the market rape you eventually.
Bare in mind that if you start will a small amount you will inherently try to take more risk - fine but run your numbers and know how many bad trades you are from a blow out if you repeat the same exposure.
The most important barrier you will face above all else is learning to take losses. What you save on one position can be reallocated to new positions. If a trade is wrong, letting it run to -100 pips when you could have gotten out at -40 when you saw a trend change and take some of the additional 60 pips south will have anyone reaching for that CV/resume in short course.
Discipline wise, if you can - try to trade during max liquidity (euro open to usa close) this will give your trades extra momentum and reduce your exposure to ranges and low liquidity spread hikes.
You dont have to be in the markets all the time. Some days you simply cannot outsmart the market - log off and watch a DVD or something. You can often recoup yesterdayās losses the next day or two if you were smart enough to minimise them by reading the markets and yourself.
Also hehe donāt fall for the allure of news. Itās less than 1% of your trading time and a place where many take a hit trying to trade the reaction. If you ignore this one then thatās a good sign as you call your own risks as your own man when you smell money - so then practice handling news and gauging how to read new or continuing trends and false climaxes (get out or stand aside) coming after a news release. But really, itās better to see what the markets are doing, prime your strategy to the play and if itās a green light react.
You will live and die by your strategy absent any gut feeling or emotion. Use what ever automation you can to employ it e.g candlestick pattern recognition, indicators, trend line, support resistance functions, pen and paper, excel - whatever - consistency is key.
Best of luck
