Everything is statistics. So technically, you don't need look at a chart if you are using a money management system and some other principals. Theoretically, reversion to the mean, semi-martingale, cointegration, correlations, baskets, etc...all of it can be used. It is just a matter of statistics. And you can do all of that by looking at PnL (once you have set what your principals are). All I'm saying is there are a million ways to make money from the markets. And $5K to $50K is not really impossible feat, it just takes a very high risk factor to achieve it. Taking $50K to $500K is much harder, in my opinion, because your natural fear of that kind of size when you are not used to it, and the scaling issue. So every time you make a jump in $$$, scale is always a big factor. Naturally, the higher the risk factor, the higher the potential for margin call. But if you accept this possibility, then it can be done, especially with the power of compounding. I would say at $5K, you should be taking bigger risk anyways. So you should be trying to maximize leverage to gain this goal.