I'm there with you, man. I've been at trading for about 1 1/2 years now, on and off. I know why I'm not profitable: lack of focus, lack of patience, and lack of discipline to identify and confront my mistakes. I realize this and I'm working on it. It may take me another 1 1/2 years to be profitable, or maybe even 10 1/2. There have been traders who have taken even longer than that (it took Gary Smith 19 years). I don't care, I'm not going to quit unless I have to, because only losers quit. I guess as with anything in life, you give up when the cost of obtaining what you want is greater than its value to you. Value equals the benefits divided by the costs. Most important, value is individual to each person, because it is based on our own inner wants (which in turn come from our needs). To me, trading has the potential to satisfy several needs, but entertainment is certainly not one of them. I always allow that I may suddenly discover something else that I like even more than trading which will satisfy the same needs as trading would (selling trading education wouldn't be it though, lol). I'm not one of those types that 'burns the boats'. However, I think that even if I do find that special something, I would likely continue my trading odyssey until I began turning a regular profit - if anything as a personal challenge (the same reason people run marathons), and to justify the time I have invested in it. But at that point, I wouldn't let it take over my life. In the end you are given a certain amount of time in your life, and it up to you how to invest it. Nobody can tell you when to give up, that is all up to you and your idea of what is the best use of your time and talents.
first of all, the post above is typical from someone who hasn't been in it long enough to understand that descipline and patience has nothing to do with profibability to the OP, there is no such question as to give up or not. Trading for profit is such a high-difficulty task, that if you don't truely love it, you will eventually give up, no matter how hard you try. on the other hand if you truely love it, not for the money, but for the challenge it provides, then you will never give up. There is only 1 edge in trading - your understanding of human psychology and price movements.... take the correct approach, and it's just a matter of time before you make it.... that is, if you love it enough to last that long
I have made money in the market with indiscipline and impatience, but then I gave it all back with interest. When I started increasing discipline and patience, my burn rate slowed down tremendously. I must be doing something right...
"I think you are looking for answers in the wrong area. You are seeking answers in logic and reasons area of your intellect for creating a strategie that will give you profits. " I ready to accept that trading for living is an ART. e.g. nobody can teach you to draw or paint a picture like made by artists. You can learn the basic, but you wont get through to the success. You need to have special sensitivity too. Maybe the tradnig also needs some special sensitivity, but I have 4 very serious points agains this theory: 1. Markets are traded by computer strategies more than 60-70% of volume today!!!! humans only watching the performance of this strategies and replace it to a new one. Which is constructed by peoples, somehow for profit. 2. Why not succesful the zulu trader investing? That platform you can hire professionals by their track record, and you can makes portfolio from them to smooth the equity (manage risk). 3. Why not examined by the psyhology the trader behavior as an art, but sometimes classified as some kind of illnes/gambling. 4. If its needs special sensitivity, that case, hmm, pracice is useless. You can pracice all over the entire life, but you never trade succesfuly. you never be a Mozart or Picasso if you ply piano or painting all your entire life. I really disappointed i now, I just thinking about to witdraw my remained savings from my broker. I have lost confidence.
Fact: there are people who are pulling money out of the market every day. Fact: some of these people are not working for hedge funds or investment banks, but are trading alone at home on a discretionary basis. Some of them have done very well and continue to do so. Fact: it takes time to get good in anything you do, in any business, and there are a lot of people who fail for different reasons. No need to be discouraged, unless you clearly think the effort required (which admittedly I thought wasn't as much as it turned out to be) is not worth the potential reward. That should be the ONLY criteria for your judgment, not what someone says to you on this forum.
If I could make one suggestion it would be to narrow your focus to one insturment and start all over. Pick one stock, ETF, or futures contract ... whatever, and watch nothing but that one thing day in and day out for a couple months or so. You learn the ins and outs of that one instrument like it was your pet dog ... you know when it's hungry, you know when it has to pee, you know when it wants to be petted or left alone. Analyze each day's action by annotating right on the chart at the end of the day, and put down everything you can think of about why price did this or did that. Figure out patterns and relationships that you see and start to come up with strategies that you can test manually on your saved charts. It's alot of work, and I'm sure you've done alot already, but I think the main thing you will find helpful is to narrow your focus to just one thing for the time being and dissect it to the Nth degree. You are up against professionals, and jumping around between different instruments is kind of like trying to bat against a major league pitcher one day, ride in the Tour de France the next, and then go one-on-one against Kobe the next. It's not gonna work, or at least you have a much better shot if you pick just one game to master.
please don't take this the wrong way, but your transition from 'burning fast' to 'burning slow', is exactly what happens when an edge-less trader does it with discipline and patience. An edge-less trader, when he trades according to his 'plan', dies slowly from a thousand cuts from commission and slippage, instead of one big blow up due to 'lack of discipline' This is also what's happening to the OP.... In the early stages, this happens almost to everyone, taking the wrong approach, going down the path of random noise trading. That's why I said if the OP loves it enough, hopefully he will figure out the true edge is in the understanding of psychology and price action. let me say this, if you love it enough, to stare at SPY for 10000 hours, you WILL BE profitable.