That can be the impression. But perhaps that's more often so among people who "aren't reading the right books" (a circular argument, in a sense, since I'm arguably defining "right" as being "not the ones to which that applies", though more generally, books purporting to present "systems that can profitably be copied" are much less likely to turn out to be "the right ones" than those teaching general principles about market behaviour learned from their authors' experiences, etc., and of course there are reasons for that). In my mis-spent youth, I bought backtesting software and a decade's price data, and backtested, as far as I was able to - among a lot of other things - almost every system covered in a well-known book by Kathy Lien & Boris Schlossberg (none was profitable, and one in particular was so dreadful that I even seriously wondered whether 'fading' every entry might be worthwhile), almost every system covered in an equally well-known book by Linda Bradford Raschke & Larry Connors (these were collectively not quite so bad, and one system appeared to be just about profitable without any terrifying drawdowns, and it was worthwhile and beneficial for me to study it in detail to see why it was just about profitable and what the underlying principle was behind the indicator combination that apparently made it so), and almost every system listed among the Babypips "Best Forex Trading Systems Hall of Fame Past Winners" (none was profitable, and some were frankly laughable even to someone with as little experience as I then had) ... it seemed to me, then, in a sense, that trading is a strange activity in which studying wasn't very helpful, but (fortunately for me) not long after that I learned what "studying" really means and came to understand why I'd been more or less wasting my time with all that nonsense. Now you're talking ...
Nice! Actually, I found the same - the more I tried to analyse and revise out my losing trades, the less money I made. I am now determined to use my brain as little as possible. (you know what I mean....)
It probably doesn’t help the OP and I’m not sure what I’m advising exactly. But several of the biggest traders I’ve worked with were if anything a bit stupid. They couldn’t even tell you what a bond was. They didn’t have a clue what was going on in the news or the potential risk they were taking on. But a couple of them made hundreds of thousands a year for 10-15 years and still probably are for all I know. To them it was no different to a PlayStation game. But their ‘points’ were money. Countless times I wouldn’t take a trade because I knew a news release was coming out or we were at year lows and some big stops could be set off. They didn’t even know that. I would pass on the trade. They would make a quick 5 grand and go home
Curious, the trading books became more useful for me just when I started to search for flaws in the systems or in the way the content is presented. A thing that particularly makes me laugh is when some pundit talks about his infallible system and you read just to find that the infallible system is some variation of a well-know trend follower Recently, I was watching a webinar from the guy that suposedly introduced the Ichimoku Clouds in Brazil (I'm from Brazil) and he was tallking about all the japanese wisdom and the mistic behind the Ichimoku and then he shows a setup (in a chart from one day that a stock went up from the open to the close, without large pullbacks). Naturally, the setup worked very fine in that chart, but if someone have payed a bit attention woud have noted that the mistical setup was in fact a moving average crossover and any trend follower system would haver worked as well. The same works for systems that uses the "mean reversion strategy". The problem with me the time I read many books and watched many webinars is that I renewed my hopes that with that new knowledge I would be able to predict the market future. And hopes is a thing that the market is used to punish.
As other members mention here. The best things right now it to stop everything for a while. I know it is hard but the more we try at this point the more we dig our hole. This is a kind of addiction that is closely related to gambling addiction. I know it doesn't sound sexy at the moment but most trader present those sign. Life is wonderful, don't let greed suck your life. Try for 7 days to do one special actions for someone else like buy a special gift to someone you know, help someone in the street, give food to someone who is starving, any actions that is not related to yourself interest. It will help to recover quickly and learning the right way what you need to learn. Best of luck my friend.
I wonder if it typically takes so long to become profitable is that we are hoping for a short cut and look to the "mentor" sites, which I have done as well, in stead of believing in oneself from start to finish. I have finally given up on that type of mentoring scam after a couple years and am doing a reset where I build on what I know, see, and can test / prove. I am encouraged by how things are going besides knowing these scamsters are not going to get any more of my money.. I wish there was a way to get the word out about how the only money being made is by the slimy "mentors" to people who are starting out.
I didn't post a lot, because I was waiting for an opportunity to sell my new revolutionary trading system or to offer my coaching services. And you must realize this thread is an excellent oportunity for me to doing that.
Historically I can usually only take so much of this site before going away. It seems like sarcasm and / or trolling is strong with this one. It just happens to be one of those times I came back and seen a thread that I had something to say. As soon as the sarcasm level approaches critical mass (if the site and or its frequent posters hasn't changed) I will go away for a few years before checking back. If there is good content and the replies are worth something I will stick around.