You are such a storyteller, what makes you special is your tone, you do it half serious half joke. Keep it up.
you know you are getting old, when more than 50% of your thoughts are about the past. that is why I like forex everything is new to me and there is so much to learn I don't sit around, thinking about what happened years ago But when I get crazy ideas, I do remember what happens to you when you get crazy ideas the funny thing is, Pimco got a little premature on selling their bonds (didn't we all?) and they just put all their cash in Swiss Francs in retrospect (20/20 hindsight) that looks like it was a pretty good trade I wasn't even trading forex back then but I know "Those were the days" short the dollar short the eur that's what I have on now but it's not easy like it was back then
It seems to me from what I have heard and read so far, almost 100% of the traders who are successful and are constantly profitable, blow up their account at some point and go to square one. I don't mean that they don't make any money in the market anymore and stay flat. I mean they lose everything. That is scary.
Marcel Link in his book "High Probability Trading" says it takes 3 to 7 years but I would also watch the youtube video "Why Traders Fail" by Alexander Bender, the two combined will give you a realistic idea. This doesn't mean there aren't exceptions i.e. traders becoming profitable in year one... Best of luck!
My earliest trades were profitable. About 40 days into position trading stocks I could do it on my own. No. I have a paradigm and the complete appications. All take the full offer of the market. I use criteria, filters, formulae, rules and strategies. I keep my maths in libraries specifically segregated for the Paradigm, and position trading stocks, intermediate term sectors and intraday trading indices. Four types of operators are used to interconnect the parts. A C++ basic language was used to create the sets of processors so they are used in a RDBMS type construction that is user freindly based upon instruction panes and using any previously built named construct. Therefore you can "read" the coded language even if you cannot program the older languages. The most complex system completed for intraday trading indices has 56 elements divided into three subsets: price (10), volume (11) and End effects (35). The end effects are divided into 10 subsets. My research shows that I have taken a unique unduplicated path. There is no way to bridge from another approach to the one I have described.
It can take years just to acquire the knowledge and to get a point where you have filtered all the garbage out there. Funny how people think they can just start trading and be succefully after reading a book or a few forum threads, when a surgeon for example won't be allowed to touch a patient until many years of learning. Why should trading be any different?
I was last year (39%) Perhaps my 4th yr. Not really doing much intraday, only 15 trades last year. I am no longer willing to swing for the fences so oldtimes methods seem crazy!!!
It took me about 6 months. The key is to study, study, study! Start trading 100 shares and see if you can cover commissions. If you are successful slowly increase your share size.
You'll be profitable once you can spot clearly defined inefficiencies along with practical means to exploit them. Took me a couple of years to reach this stage.