Dear OP,
First of all, any time and effort spent learning anything worthwhile is time [B]well spent[/B]. Anyone who thinks or tries to tell you differently is someone you should disregard as ignorant.
Secondly, I’ll go over my experiences with Forex to give you an idea of how quickly it can be learned, albeit my case is a unique one, but it can give you a rough estimate of the length of time you’ll need to really learn forex for what it is - a simple form of investing. Analyzing a chart may seem complicated, trying to determine sentiment may rack your brain, but what you’ll learn once you get just a little bit of experience is that it can all be dumbed down fairly well, and for the most part patterns exist in the market which are easily picked up upon, the technical analysis isn’t hard at all unless you fight with yourself and start shoving your own bias in between your trade and your chartology (which should never be done).
I have a Bachelor’s of Business Admin. with a specialization in Finance & Quantitative Analysis. I can tell you right now, as an educated and experienced Finance professional, that any technical analysis or math you perform in Forex is remedial at best and you should not be intimidated. In fact, all of the information is very basic in terms of the subject of Finance, coming from someone who has studied Finance and Quant extensively.
I graduated back in 2008 and only recently in the last two months have discovered and began my Forex career. I was lucky enough to have a spouse allow me to fully dedicate myself to becoming a private trader.
The first thing I did before anything is I downloaded a demo account. For a few days thereafter, I just piddled around the trading platform, familiarizing myself with the basics. I’d suggest this be your first step, as there is no better way to get a grasp on something than to [B]experience it first hand[/B].
The next thing I did was I looked for a solid educational resource, that which I found at BabyPips School of Pipsology. It is a very excellent FX education. Go through every lesson, and [B]after every lesson, open your demo account and practice what you learned.[/B] That’s what I did, and after I “graduated” the SoP I had a very firm knowledge and application of everything I learned. Majority of people are visual learners, and if you immediately practice what you learn after each and every lesson in your demo account, you will greatly [B]reinforce and retain critical information and build a solid foundation for success[/B]. This process for me lasted about three weeks.
For the next three weeks my focus was set on a few things:
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[B]Developing a trading plan[/B]. Outlining all the details to include risk and money management, etc etc. You will find this will be a process in the making and requires a bit of experimenting on the demo. Always treat your demo account as you would a live account in terms of trading decisions, leverage, stop loss, etc.
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[B]Finding a strategy that worked for me[/B]. The only trading methods I use are that of Ichimoku Kinko Hyo. You will learn about it vaguely in baby pips (you’ll have to do outside research to really learn it) but in my personal opinion it is vastly superior to any technique you will ever find out there. I went through quite a few different trading strategies before sticking with this one. I personally love Ichimoku because it is a very quantitative system of trading that requires deliberate patience, and evokes a zen like feeling as a trader. Ichimoku is about price action and equilibrium, and is leaps and bounds more reliable than any other system of trading I’ve found. It’s fairly easy to learn yet is much more advanced and comprehensive than anything else you’ll find out there. You will probably find yourself a much more confident and mature trader after a shorter period of time than peers of your same level. Right off the bat it teaches you and almost forces you to become what every trader aspires to be - disciplined, patient, and taking advantage of the “meat” of trends on any time frame. While it is very intricate and comprehensive, it can also be applied to any market. You will find this very useful later in life when you’ve become successful at FX and begin branching out to other investment mediums such as commodities, futures, stocks, etc. The world is your oyster with Ichimoku Kinko Hyo.
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[B]Going live - nothing beats real world practice.[/B] As soon as you feel ready you should hit the live market. Not with 1,000, 10,000 or 50,000 dollars, but with a very, very small amount of capital. Even the most educated and technically sound individuals will fail at FX if they haven’t developed themselves emotionally and psychologically as a trader. There is only one way to do this, and that is using a live mini account with real capital. Majority of brokers will offer mini accounts and you will be able to trade nano lots at 0.01 per pip on majors. This requires somewhere in the ballpark of < $10.00 margin. If you started a mini account with $100 dollars, you could trade one or two 0.01 trades at a time and not be anywhere close to getting a margin call. This will also allow you to practice any form of trading you wish, at 1% max risk per trade (This should be your max risk until you have a very solid track record, in which time you should then bump yourself to 2% when your profit/loss statistics give proof that you’re ready. Never exceed 2%) you’ll be at most losing $1. The great part is you’ll be able to practice any form of trading you wish. You’ll be able to hold stop losses of up to 100 pips, which will allow you to practice a wide range of trading methods to include holding longer term trades and catching the larger inter-week swings of the markets (aka high profit/low risk). Again let me reiterate, you will not be able to develop you most crucial part of being a trader which is the emotional and psychological portion unless you are able to actually trade live. This is a very important step to learning and luckily you’re able to trade with extremely low capital using extremely low volumes. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS. You’ll get all of the emotions and psychological effects of the live market and be able to teach yourself the traders mindset without any of the risk (assuming that $100 should have fed your family instead). Using anything more than $100 with nano lots won’t do anything but a) break your bank b) scare the molasses out of you so much that you never could get control in the first place.
So, those were the steps I took and I currently make between 3%-5% per week after recovering losses etc. I’m [B]slowly increasing capital and scaling position sizing as long as I’m consistently profitable.[/B]
I now realize I’ve gotten a wee bit sidetracked, so I’ll get back to your original question if 30 minutes per day will be sufficient. Lets break it down shall we?
I am a consistently profitable intra-day/intra-week trader in two months time. I’ve had a string losses so far, but utilizing great risk management I’ve easily been able to recover those losses with wins, and the wins I get are huge. I devote, on average, 10 hours per day (it’s my full-time job) to trading whether it be analyzing price action, further educating myself, or actual trading.
My case:
At 10 hours per day X 7 days per week (my wife actually forced me to learn and study on weekends, she loves the prospect of the work I do 
) = 70 hours per week.
70 hours per week X 8 Weeks (2mo) = 560 hours to learn FX solidly and start trading live with a tiny amount of capital and see consistent profitability.
First Month: Education with Demo practice after each lesson.
Second month: Only demo for the first week, go live from there on out.
Your case:
560 hours X 2 (30 min blocks per hour) = 1,120 30 minute sessions.
Your time table:
30 mins per day (1,120 days/365) = 3.06 years to become relatively consistent
1 hour per day (560 days/365) = 1.5 years
2 hours per day (280 days/365) =7.6 months
The rest of the math is yours, but that should give you a fairly good idea of what it takes. Hope I helped, good luck, and if you ever have any questions about Ichimoku Kinko Hyo please feel free to ask!
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