Actually, nobody did. It seems highly likely that its a misconstruction of Anders Ericsson’s research findings that expert-level performance of the violin required 10,000 hours of practice: he also studied top level athletes and chess grand-masters and gave them the same 10,000 hours to expert level performance.
The 10,000 hours rule was then snatched up and mis-applied to all sorts of new projects that an individual might take up, and trading is just one of these. Ericsson never studied trading.
Have a look at these for a bit more detail -
Let’s face it, the rule has no evidence so its just another trader myth.
Not a rule. But has merit towards almost anything. Someone who has spent 10000hours (valuably) learning, testing, practicing, executing whatever their niche is will ‘generally’ have more professional success than someone who’s spent less time.
I think it’s relative. Not everyone has the same understanding. And for trading obviously it is not applicable. Trading doesn’t have any specific formula like Science. Emotions are there. And emotions do not follow any rule. Trading is not just follwing a good strategy.You have to know how to tune your emotions with your strategy.
I would still recommend reading Ericson’s book (and not Malcom Gladwell’s “Outliers” book). While he didn’t work with traders, there are insights that is still applicable if you’re a discretionary trader in helping you to build discipline in following your trading and introspection processes.
That said, there has been research that the 10,000 rule is domain dependent. If you aspire to be the next Magnus Carlsen, John Mayer, Kobe Bryant or Roger Federer, then the concept is still extremely relevant.
If you’re a discretionary trader, I highly recommend reading “Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader: Lessons from 21 Weeks of Real Trading”.