The question is How much hours to consistent profitability? I would say that's impossible to answer. Consistent for 2 days, 2 months, 2 years, 20 years...... There is no guarantee, or else we would all be whomever we wanted: LeBron James, Tiger, etc......since we would just put the time in. Forget consistently profitable, because that could be $1 a day.....to some. and $5000 a week to others. the metric is messed up. you can run 100 hours and hurt your leg...then you are actually worse off. in trading, i don't think there is an A + B = C. If so, would 10,000 hours looking at charts help you predict 911? no, you can't get rid of systemic risk and 1000 hours to you might be way better than me sleeping at my desk, "looking" at charts for the same amount of time. what is someone is simply smarter? lol
I read a study once that tested the effects of injuries to certain parts of the brain and trading. Apparently, some types of brain injuries to the parts of the brain which control emotion, can actually be beneficial to trading. Mild forms of autism also can be helpful, for the same reason. So, get yourself one of those kinds of brain injuries or a mild form of autism and you can be profitable in minutes. I would say that I put in about the amount of time Gladwell talks about. But, the first 9,999 hours were just repeating the same mistakes. In the 10,000th hour, I completely changed every single thing and it's been working since. I should have started with that 10,000th hour, since absolutely nothing from the first 9,999 is part of what I do now. The irony is that the information I needed to pull together was all right in front of me the entire time. My experience was literally an epiphany, it was not a gradual build-up to a working strategy.
lol, When ever I need to go on a diet, I've often thought how great it would be to come down with a case of anorexia, but just for a few months. Very good post! Yes, repeating the same mistakes. Variations of the same mistakes, and then BOOM! Hello, epiphany!
it is not just hours but different markets. fx was different beast in late '90 than is today. and agian changed. how you adapt to new conditions if you never traded them even with 100k hours?!?! i say 10k hours over 20 years. that is when probably all repeats and you get good enough instincts to predict spirit of markets even if entirely new beast.
Ali Akbar Kahn (who is now bald) had a long ponytail when he was young. He tied a rope from a beam on the ceiling to his pony tail, so when he fell asleep, it would jerk his neck to wake him up and he could keep practicing. edit: whoops, just did a google search to see what he was up to. Guess he died in 2009.