Can you give more specifics regarding your preferred style of trading. Short term , long term. Any particular chart TF's that seem to have some order to your way of looking at the market? If you have been at this for 4 years you should have some ideas.
you're putting 'profitable' on a pedestal, just frikin trade. what are you doing drawing support and resistance on charts, you think soros was drawing charts on candlesticks when he broke the banks on black wednesday? you need to be more of a savage so stop doubting yourself and take a position, don't panic if you're wrong right away, don't be scared to average into a losing trade. grind it out, i know people who are probably half as educated as you and trade 'profitably'. give a monkey an entry and exit button, sit him in front of some prices and chances are he'll be making money. maybe not, but i don't even know, they beat analysts all the time. it would be interesting.
Anyone who really knows how to trade is not going to share that knowledge with anyone else and even less so with some stranger. Your helplessness suggests strongly that you should abandon any further involvement with markets and direct you energies elsewhere. If this guidance is unwelcome to you, there is an upside. You will be spared any more anguish and frustration from repeatedly going nowhere in the forlorn hope of trading successfully in the markets.
If your brain is able to understand patterns..... the simplest way is to have charts that interplay with each other. Spy, qqqq, vxx, uup, fxe, uso, xlf those all pretty much work in tandem/inverse to each other, one will effect the other. Watch them, study there movement, after a while you can spot price miss balances or movement setups with the overall market... You can parlay that into individual stock and options or just play the overall market...
The light at the end of the tunnel is the realization that the real profit is in selling books and seminars, not in purchasing them. What do you think Charles Kirk makes more money at? Selling his Kirk Report or trading?
1. selling kirk reports and some shit is a an everyday business with credit cards, customer support, Advertising, and the whole shebang , might make 100-200k in a year. 2. real trading with ***real*** skills can make you $200k in 3 days. and repeat that once every few weeks, without doing any customer support.
i love how people blow up these numbers... "if you know how to trade ... you can compound at x% until you have ever dollar in the world." crazy
1, Go through the list of forbes 500 Theres at least 50-100 money managers on the list who all started out trading their own money. 2. this isn't some pipe dream, when you know how to trade, its levegerable, money is pulled in by the truckload. 3. There are 0 newsletter sellers on the forbes 500, maybe other then ken fisher who also runs a big fund.
Yes there are some profitable traders, but every day brings more automation. Less than 1% of people who try to be profitable traders (make a living at it) succeed. If you have a job, keep at it, if you are trying to be a daytrader, then I would say four years is enough.