How many years does it take to become a profitable trader?

How many years does it take to become a profitable trader ?

Please Share your Experience

This is a dangerous question for newer traders to ask.
Yet, continues to be the topic of a new thread every few days or so on trading forums across the internet.

Too many inexperienced folks think that they’ll be able to master trading in no time, learn some secret way to invest that has gone unseen, quit their job, and live the life they’ve always wanted. They latch onto the most popular thread, get led around by “senior members” (which in most forums is nothing but a title associated with post quantity, not post quality) who themselves are blind, and just barely 1 month profitable, only to see their mentor disappear in a few months time.

Then, that rookie makes a few lucky trades, gets their post count up, and enlightens all others from their podium of trading mastery, only to blow their account, and the cycle thus repeats itself. The machine is feed, and the thread overlord banks on the publicity. This is very common unfortunately.

But, to the smarter folks out there, the ones asking…“Hey, it’s going to take as long as it takes- how about I learn all there is to know about mindset, leverage, journaling, dealing with emotions, trading plans, what moves price, how price moves, economics, etc etc”… Those are the ones that I’d put my money on to be consistent over the long run.

The ones who from the jump understand the massiveness of what they are attempting to do, and respect the process and journey to becoming an amateur trader. There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth getting in life. And a lot of people come to these forums looking for shortcuts, rather than rolling up their sleeves, putting their head down, and doing the leg work themselves. The path to becoming excellent in anything in life is one which the individual must travel on their own. Copy trading, seeking validation for positions on forums (what I call social trading disorder), joining live trading chat rooms, relying on others for signals…none of these can ever deliver what most every trader is looking for- independence.

Relying on anyone else for anything at all to aide in whether or not you should or shouldn’t make a trade is the single most biggest mistake one can make. Your confidence needs to come from within, not externally. Now. There’s nothing wrong talking about trades you’ve made and sharing your opinion on where you think a pair may be heading for discussion. But, I feel that the discussion should be educational and purely for entertainment. I think of interacting in these forums as a hobby. I enjoy it, and love sharing my opinion, but at the end of the day, absolutely everything I read has no bearing on my trading plan. I’m master of my domain.

That was a great read! I understand that dealing with the market is isn’t as easy as a beginner thinks “buying and selling” foreign currencies. It takes a lot of time and efforts, even money to become successful in this field.

Very useful thread. I fully agree with you.

Depends on what you consider profitable. $200 up at the end of the year is still a profit. Isn’t it? Being well funded and consistently profitable would be better placed question

Thanks

You can get a whole lot further in life if you focus on the process, not the results.
The profit will come, only after you nail down the process.

Nothing wrong with setting goals, but, its what happens in the present which matters most.

Well said!

In my opinion you need to think 10 years perspective before you can make a living of trading.

I’ll take the reservation, you have the ability to filter out the correct knowledge of the trash that you find over the internet.

Example fxstreet has about 160 speakers how many of them live from trading,

1 maybe, So that means you have 159 experts who will sell you partially worthless forex material.
ps 1 , he was one that was profitable started his own funds, he deleted his profile on fxstreet

First 1-3 year taste of fear and greed blow out 2-3 trading accounts.

3-5 year ,Breakeven you can trade without losing

5-10 year build up your trading account so you can live off it

This is a very good read.
Totally can understand what you all meant here.

It is never easy as I just started with Forex trading. It seem easy from the start until I began to understand more. Instead of gaining profits, I tend to get more losses.

This is the learning process - pyschology mind and not being greedy.

I think this is pretty accurate. The first few years will most likely be spent losing money and making mistakes. After awhile you learn what NOT to do, and become a breakeven trader. The harder part then becomes creating a profitable strategy or method that fits your personality and circumstances which will be continually changing.

But if you find that trading gives you an intellectual buzz, you’ll enjoy the process, kinda like solving a rubik’s cube.

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I think it depends on trader himself that how quickly he can learn Forex so then it will be easy for him to become a successful Forex trader.

My experience so far is: Feb,Mar:-95% Apr:+7.30%

Making profit in forex depends on how best you understand forex, patience is a must if you must make profit. It requires hard work and concentration on the market. You should also know that loses are part of forex, avoid greed when opening a position, this will help you to make real profit within a short period of time.

A monkey can put on a trade and be profitable the better question would be how long does it take to become a consistent winner and a ball park figure is about 3-4 years.

And from there, the length of time before one become a consistent trader, and eventually becomes successful still depends to the capacity and intelligence of a trader, but surely it would take no more less than years of trading.

Nice timeline! I guess it also depends on how often a trader trades and how well he/she uses experience to further his/her skills. One could trade for years and still blow accounts if they don’t learn from their mistakes. :slight_smile:

If you have no desire to understand how currency trading works then it might take a hundred years or more! :slight_smile:

If you invest in yourself, by spending your time learning everything you can by getting the right experience/training from day one, I can safely say that you will become very profitable within a very short time, maybe weeks instead of years.

Learn by your mistakes if you must, but it’s all down to you!

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[QUOTE=“torulf39;629847”] First 1-3 year taste of fear and greed blow out 2-3 trading accounts. 3-5 year ,Breakeven you can trade without losing 5-10 year build up your trading account so you can live off it[/QUOTE]

A bit generous there don’t you think?
1-10 years, keep losing money
10-20 years, break even/profitable

Actually it depends on you. I started forex 3 years ago. First I invested $200 in liteforex and I lost all of these. Then in exness I invested $500 and now the account balance is $700. Recently I invested $700 in Profiforex and I am making profit regularly. Though still now I make some mistake, now I have $2000 in profiforex account. Moreover I have withdrawn $500 from it recently.

Asking how long does it take to become a profitable trader is like asking how long will it take to become a professional tennis/football player. The truth is many will try but only a small percentage will actually make it.

only about 5% of forex traders actually make it [as in are profitable continuously] , but only about 1% of all forex traders are earning big money from forex, i don’t know the exact statistics but i would hazard a guess that the amount of people who try and actually become professional football/tennis players is similar to that 5% or 1%

I think that, those more likely to succeed in both forex and tennis/football are likely to be the ones who have spent the most effort training/learning …hence i can perfectly see why you and many others here advocate putting lots of effort into learning/practice/training …

however im sure most people on this forum, if their son liked football and asked them “how long does it take to be a professional football player dad?” would not tell them, just keep at it son, if you put in enough effort and learning you’ll eventually be playing for Man Utd or Everton some day

because at the end of the day for every david beckham of rafael nadal out there …there are probably atleast a 100 others who put in a comparable amount of effort and didn’t make it. Sports [like forex] is a very competitive field, and many people just do not posses or can not develop the raw talent needed to compete at that level …despite high levels of training/guidance,

based on what I see and observe I would say probably 1-3 years is needed to become profitable in forex. that’s if you’re one of the few who has that raw talent or can develop it.

if you are still unprofitable after 5 years then i honestly think you’re not going to make it. Forex isn’t for everyone, just like football and tennis isn’t.