should have set a timer when you started, that way you could answer these important questions more accurately
Easily counted. Simply multiplied roughly how many hours I spent on average every day on how many years approximately it took (assuming one year is 220 working days).
========== Good points RIP But just because some traders made a lot of money in HFT[2012,WSJ graph/chart]; that does not mean all have to do HFT. Rich Dennis named them turtles for a good reason; thay actually enjoyed moving slow sometimes. Thats how they made thier money, slow trades/slow investments; low comissions[as a % of profits anyway.LOL] ..... Wisdom is profitable to direct. May take some 7 years; i still measure years much more than hours, or half/hours.
While the process of trading is a left-brained activity. The decision points for trading is a right-brained activity. Your ability to perceive is much more important than any amount of grinding out models that bang away at a database. In my first trading oportunity I traded OEX (S&P 100) Index options. No training on the product, just a book on the basics on options and a screen with implied volitility for strike prices. I bought my own data from Ed Sekoyta's old company (Technical Tools), wrote programs, and looked for relationships. None of that made me any money. What worked was a old Rich sceen being left on that had been used by a futures trader and had the SP (S&P 500) futures market on it. I watched my equity product move after the futures contract time and again. After a few days I had enough nerve to place some long or short only trades in options by frontrunning using the SP contract. This made me money consistently. Total time investment once I gained the insight was only 20-30 hours. If you're not open to ideas, insights, and don't question beliefs, then you won't grow. No number of hours doing the wrong thing will make you profitable. If you have an idea for making money, question the underlying reason and "prove" it works before writing models and spending endless hours watching charts.
To have the aspiration of taking ã1000 out of the market each day, when trading with ã10,000 or under is, I think, a quick route to the poor house.