hi i only get up to an hour a day to learn and trade as my job at the moment requires a lot of hours,i just wanted to know if its still possible to learn and trade a little with no more than half an hour thanks for replies
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It all depends on the quality of the material you choose to study.
Pick the right stuff, and yes itās possible.
Listen to the āgurusā that say they can make you an overnight billionaire, and youāll spend a lifetime of twenty minute days and not ever reach your goal.
Personally, Iād say no, 20 mins a day wonāt get you anywhere.
Realistically, you have no chance.
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It might take you about 50 years to get there!
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20 minute a day is not sufficient to learn and trade forex. It needs at least 1 hours if you have good forex learning material.
I wouldnāt think so but everybodyās really different. At the least youād be limited to swing/position trading.
Personally from my own experience, I spent, and still do spend, about 4 hours per day going over trading strats and historical data to analyse the likelihood of a trading system remaining profitable into the future.
I would say if you only have 20 mins a day then use that 20 mins a day effectively by educating yourself with the right material. The Babypips school might then be a great place to start as well as the forums. I tell you once you get into FOREX, understanding it and start to trade, be it demo, you will then automatically make more time to invest yourself in the FOREX world!
you can learn some basics if your learning are really effective. however, if you love something, why you only spend such a little time in it? itās not an easy job or a game.
Are you kidding? 20 minutes a day is not enough to even grasp whatās taking place and then, you have to make profits as the pips moveā¦try more like 5 hrs, you may have a chanceā¦
To the Author of the Thread,
I am trading for approximately 5 years now.
The first two odd years I lost massive amounts of capital.
The next odd years, I survived without killing my account.
Only the last 1 and a half or two years I been profitable.
So all in all we are looking at about 5 years.
In that five years, I can assure you that I have looked at the markets, tried to study what they are doing, studied what this or that indicator did for trading, studies many systems and we are talking about atleast a minimum of 3 hours of screen time a day, a max of 12 to 18 hours one weekdays.
I kid you not with my screen time. The weekends were also spend reading about the markets and running simulation accounts for atleast the first two years.
There is a quote that goes on here in Babypips that someone heard that someone else read someplace that in order for a person to be good at something, they have to spend atleast 10000 hours doing or practicing it. I dont know how valid is that, but I can assure you that it sounds as if might be true.
In my case, It took me nearly two and a half years to stop topping up my account, ( and that too I had to top up twice in between because of some very fundamental mistakes on my part ) and another one odd year just to start seeing it growing steadily.
I took my trading to a better level after that and when I thought I had it nearly figured and I was consistently making profit weekly, I decided to share my ideas in a thread in Babypips.
And surprise surprise, when I shared my ideas, other members gave me their input and pointed out some obvious mistakes and what could be done better. That was what finally took my trading to another level.
On hindsight, when looking at the entire process I went through, I can safely conclude that had I found someone who could trade who was willing to help me along, my learning time period would have been a year at most. Why I say a year? Because the market really is a simple thing. It works in a simple manner, the money management is really logic and a little statisticsā¦ The risk management is also a simple logic. But all this simplicity will only come to you with clarity when you yourself finally separate the noise from the real stuff, or someone helps you out.
When I say someone help you out, it does not include the very popular trend now where " experienced, established professional traders" who charge you 3 or more thousand USD for a system out there.
I personally have only attended one, which was a courtesy of a local bank that I hold a credit card with. And I sat there smiling to myself as this Lady and her high powered bunch of students who supposedly have made it went on about profiting from the market. The course was RM 15 thousand. which is about 5 thou USD. When the intro was finished 5 hours later, I thanked her profusely and made my exit.
I have met many newbies who were on the verge of giving up after spending so much time, effort and money on this and still not make a profit. Especially those who go for courses and all.
Even teaching yourself via the web is not that easy as there are tonnes of the material that contradicts each other and everyone swears that they have the best way to go about it.
Stick around babypips. read up, demo your trades, and ask the right questions.
This is the best way to cut down on your learning period.
what a fantastic answerā¦it has helped me a lot
That would be a complete waist of time. Unless you are super amazing at learning. If you are you will probably be the first person ever to become profitable from learning 20 minutes a day.
It takes 10,000 hours to become the elite at anything. This is on average. And i wouldnāt be surprised if thatās how long took me to really get the hang of things.
So if you do 20 minutes a day its going to take you a long time.
From what i have seen a lot of people think they are going to be making a tonne of money really quickly. This is why trading is so appealing. Then you learn that its nothing like you thought. Then you have to unlearn what you have learned. Then you realize that trading has brought out every single flaw you have in your brain, then you realize that changing these things such as discipline, and patience is going to take a long time, then you start to change those things, then you realize you are also changing yourself on so many other levels. Then you changed your life, then you are a trader.
Most good traders i know posses the same qualities as an elite athlete or entrepreneur.
You just have to want it as bad as you want to breathe.
And when times get tough, just realize there are no short cuts to any place worth going!
I have a small tip. Go on youtube and make a playlist. And add every single motivational video you like. Because your going to need it.
Iām going to be a rare vote of support. I reckon f you can skew the 20-30 mins a day so you have 1 hour every two days it is doable. You need persistence and luck and would have to code though - since the only way to magnify your ācabin hoursā would be through robots so you can back and forward test many more trades than 20mins allows.
Just contradicting myself the one manual strategy that you may be able to learn in 2-3 hours a week is Pure Price Action a la Nikitafxās post here or Nial Fuller (google for his Australian pure price action trading website). Reason those are doable is that the strategies really are fantastically clever for their simplicity. The issue is that you are unlikely to see manual trade set ups following their methods very often and on your hours would have to trade daily charts.
Hereās my training program for you:-
- Work through BabyPips School.
- Open an mT4 account with a broker early on in demo so that you can look at indicators, charts and check what the bP school tells you. Donāt trade yet since you will only be satisfying the risk taking part of the brain
- Learn to code, eg by reading the MQL4 book on the Metaquotes website. You can download their test scripts so that building an Ea is as easy as editing their code
- Code up some simple strategies and away you go - mA cross or Bollinger bounce or whatever
- Test test test. Donāt curve fit. Donāt over complicate the eaās. Make them pure price action eg pinbar continuations
Obviously my plan here will only work if you can learn to code. And it may take a while to learn all this. But it is the path I took and after 3 months of losses August-November 2011 Iāve now had only gains since November. Total accounts now in profit ~10% having lost my way down to a 30% loss position (so ~70% profit generated since I ditched my losing habits and developed some effective techniques). Iām not going to deny you need some luck, and R&D wonāt necessarily yield results quickly. All in saying is that if you want to learn this trade in a compressed amount of time it is possible. Without BabyPips I would have got nowhere.
I agree with all the answers above really itsl ike saying I want to be a pilot or a master carpenter or a chef by only studying 20 minutes a day. Very very unrealistic. I spend a serious amount 8+ hours a day dealing with the markets, studying, journaling, backtesting, analyzing, doing home work, researching. On the weekends an additional 12 hours minimum reviewing my trades and journaling for the week. I spent about ~1500 hours in the last 6 months total.
thank you very very helpful!
Thanks for the question louis123 - - the answers provided here - have given me a little more hope - - I am on my 4th year of part time studies ā and still no profits - - part time = Iād guess 2hrs a day on average - - so the answers by these good folks - tell me not to give up yet ā I am on about my 14th trading plan with very clear understandable trading method(s)- -so weāll see if this one is the one that works - -I have my doubts as I am at about 3,000 hrs of education - eeeeeeekkk - I donāt want to be only 1/3 of the way there. . ā¦
Well - I must be on pretty good track - - as I havenāt blown an account for about 8 months - -sitting anywhere from 46 to 66 for the last 8 months - so I am a break even trader 
next step - profits. I hope.
Thanks you guys for the 10,000 hour education time frame - -I always new it was a multi year process and I always knew Iād be slow - (well I didnāt always know, but it only took a few months to figure it out)
i dont think its that hardā¦i think these guys are overanalysing itā¦
read this book ā¦jesse livermore reminiscences of a stock operatorā¦you can get it here in pdf for free.
Forex Books about Forex Market in General, Download E-Books
that will give you a feel of things.
Let me put it this way with an analogy: You know nothing about mathematics and want to calculate a partial derivative, 20 minutes day studying by yourself will be enough?
Forex is not difficult, but being consistently profitable is.
Are you a good learner? I guess the only way to know is that you try.