That is not successful, can be mediocre.Depends on the person making the statement. It was successful (or even unachievable) the first years when I started to trade. But as I make now more than enough money every year to pay 10 times all the bills I consider your statement only as mediocre. Meaning of words can change over the years depending on your own experience. My first car was fabulous... till I bought my second one. My first wife was fabulous... till I... I agree with @learner2007, and @sle, I still found significant new things after more than a decade of trading. I still study every day. Not because I have to but because I like to. Trading is for me the ultimate occupation. It is even not a job to me.
Yes, of course. Everything important could be stated on a 3x5 card. To explain it all would take more cards.
You become a successful trader when you have hit your long term objective. If that objective is to make a living - then it's the day you retire with financial security.
Have you ever wondered there can be more layers to success? It is like Zuckerberg saying that the Winkllewii are not sucessful with their bitcoin billion, just because Zuck has more. In short, your argument is BS.
I got 13 Likes for the above! A new record for me. Not all of the points above and below are based on personal experience. A number of them are points I've seen repeatedly mentioned on ET or observed in other traders during the 23 years I spent in brokers' boardrooms. When you have a situation that deviates slightly/somewhat from your plan, but you are able to do an on the spot analysis as to whether the trade can safely be taken or not and your analysis most often proves to be correct. When you ask the market and listen to what it's tellin' ya, but you don't hear what it ain't sayin'. When you have a situation that, looks like it will..., should..., shouldn't..., think it most likely will..., think it might..., feel it will..., and you don't take the trade. When the trade you just exited continues advancing and you don't consider that a loss, realizing that you can't lose what you never had. When the trade you just exited continues advancing and you don't regret exiting, just as you didn't regret having not entered earlier. When you know that the only type of bottom picking you should do is that which gives you a stinky finger. When you no longer feel that the chart is bigger than you. When you no longer look for or feel that you need to find a trading setup to fit every price movement under the sun. When the setups in your plan have been reduced from 10,000 to 10. When you no longer try to apply TA to all or any given charts, and instead find charts with TA factors that jump out at you like something coming out of a 3D movie. When you realize that the farther the TA pattern etc. is out on the limb from the textbook version, the less likely it is that it will workout. When you realize that there is a good way to trade, a bad way to trade, and there's YOUR way to trade. When you realize that the big banks and brokers, with all the information in the world at their fingertips, an analyst for everything, a room full of guys with a PhD and a BB, AI, algos galore etc., are not the Gods of trading. (They should fire the analysts, cancel the BB, delete the algos, and just hire all the great traders here on ET!!) (to be continued)
However.... what your really need to know for proper trading hasn't changed. All the rest is just distraction. K.I.S.S., as always
Because apparently it's not enough On a serious note, it all depends. For me, details matter a lot. I run over 30 strategies at the moment, deploying a lot of capital. They vary across multiple time frames (from intraday to medium-frequency, and I am working on adding higher frequency stuff) and multiple asset class (equities and volatility globally, various futures etc). Some are longitudinal and some are cross-sectional. Each has a garden variety of knobs that can be adjusted to make them work slightly differently. On the other hand, there might be people that have been doing a simple thing for the last 30 years. Some strategies, like merger arbitrage, have not significantly changed over time and require the same thought process. This said, the tools have changed over time too, so if you are trying to stay productive, you need to learn the tools. I guess it's hard for me to imagine what type of trading remains the same for 10+ years.
While am a devote of K.I.S.S. (and what you do isn't that), you sound serious. So... good luck. However, the K.I.S.S. key/solution to the markets has remained the same for 10+ years and applies to ALL markets and all time frames.... whether you're trading crude, indices or mop squeezers... it's all trades the same.