Many gurus said that trading was very hard work, even the hardest work in the world. It sounds very convincing, it makes you feel guilty if you don't study the charts 12 hours a day. But on the other hand, it seems more important to find a setup that matches your personality and works for you. For me, trading the first 10~30 minutes works best for me, if I keep trading, I usually give back my profit, or even turn a winning day into a losing one. So, trading 30 minutes gives me the best result, and it's not hard work. I believe, if you do it right, trading should be happy, relaxed and easy experience. To me, at this point, it's unproductive and misleading to believe trading is hard work.
Like all things in life, there's usually a hard way to do something and a less hard way to do something. But if it was easy, no one would be cleaning up sewers for a living.
My trading day is usually about 3 hours. No prep necessary. "One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor."
The crowd prefer to achieve goals the 'easy way' and a typical example would be the TA Brigade, "will easily scoop up money by reading charts". For some this will work for a while, as getting on a bandwagon does work but party's do end with a hangover. Regarding trading, my preference has always been to do that which most aren' doing. Markets do next what is least expected. If the majority are wrong then it goes by default most will lose money, most approach trading the wrong way, most will be crowd followers, most look for easy answers, most will wish to avoid hard work, discipline and pain which comes with seeking an original approach.
The weird thing is when i try hard it's hard when I don't it's easy. To do well I mean. Very strange.
Cooking at home for yourself for 30 min each day is not hard work. Being a full-time chef is. Investing or trading for 30 min a day for yourself (With a full-time job to support you) is not hard work. Depending on trading as a business for 100% of your income with an expectation of making >$100K a year, each year, every year to support a family, not knowing ever if you will hit your goals each month is an entrepreneurial endeavor that is always on your mind and is very hard work.
For me that's not entirely correct. You should be the first in the crowd to do things. Smart money. You should get in first. Let the crowd follow you to make the market move in your direction, and when you get out you need the crowd again to follow you and push the market in your direction again. You should not go against the crowd, you should frontrun the crowd. The crowd will move the market, not you. You should just time the reversal right.