Hello to everyone, I just wanted to thank you all for actually taking the time to reply, it means a lot. And I do admit, a year is definitely "overly ambitious", but I really do believe that I can do it. And when I said I was passionate about trading, I didn’t mean passionate about the idea of money. I am aware that money is not real and I'm not trying to learn how to trade because of money. It’s something that I see a career in. Nonetheless, the tips so far have been so helpful and I wanted to thank you all again.
Do some self introspection with a shrink about attitudes to money. Questions like: "On a scale of 1-10 is money evil?" and "Why do you deserve to be wealthy?"
Only advice I have is this: keep it simple. Market is going up? Buy the dip. Market is going down? Sell the pop. Market is ranging? Do both. Eventually you will be wrong, you will lose some money and it will be obvious that the market has changed. Then switch your approach to match. Perhaps the pros can tell me how far off I am. And remember: it can take hours to wipe out years of gains. So size appropriately. This is why I like options. My stop loss is the entire trade.
I had a sneaking suspicion this was true. When the market was ranging recently I kept trading the range thinking exactly "OK eventually I will be wrong" but the craziest part was the market signaled to me when it was changing so I didn't even lose anything when it popped. I had a short at SPY $320 at that point because I was trading the range. Although I guess if you're trading $SPY just buy the dip all the time.