I'm going on 1.5 years of full time back testing and trading after blowing up last year and losing 2k. definitely spend more than 40 hours a week for sure. I turned my paper account of 10000 into 1.1m through TOS. Just in the last few months it's all really been coming together though, I finally feel like I have a definite edge and that I'm going to make money. Super excited, accounts funded w/ IB. going to be playing small size until i'm up a few hundred then size in. Conviction to me is super important, I want to know for sure I have something easy to follow and makes good points.
After 3mins,if in profit he moves SL to +1 so small profit, if he's in a loss then he sets the TP to +1, he's very much a scalper, if the trade doesnt work quick like then +1 better than a loss.
It took me 16 months to get consistently profitable. From there I have definitely had some 0 months but I rarely have a losing month and overall have been able to support myself from trading. But barely. I'm single and get by on very little. This is my 5th year, which is almost hard to believe. I thought Step 1) get consistently profitable would be a bigger hurdle than Step 2) size up and make more I have been stuck at Step 2 for years. Sometimes I honestly think the job is getting harder at just about the same rate that I'm getting better. One of my favorite authors has a saying, "It is a privilege to trade." I try to keep this in mind when struggling. If you're able to have one of the biggest struggles in life be with the financial markets, you're already pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things.
Minimum 2 years, to become skilled in any industry, but I encourage you to have your wife, girl friend, or mum by you when you do trading. Because I've realised that they don't really like taking too much risk , and when you have them by you when you trade, you start to trade better (I don't mean that you will become a more profitable trader in the short run, but definitely, you will lose less, and over the long run, you will likely to improve your skill as well). But to do that, your personality has to be not very aggressive, and you have to listen to what others say and your motivation of trading is to feed/care your family better. This is just one way to improve your profitability.
I think the question cannot be answered correctly if you don't mention your returns. If you make 1% a year after 3 months or 250% a year after 10 years, which one is then better and representative as answer? The higher the return the bigger the difficulty to achieve it. Difficulty grows exponential with return.