NICE!! Quote from HATEtheRisk: Trading is hardcore...... It will test you with every new trade, every second you are in the trade...... If you want to succeed, you must do everything on your own. [...] start to think for yourself and analyze the markets. 1. You must becom a scientist, to research the price behaviour. 2. you must create trading plans. 3. you must backtest your plans, with over hundreds of examles. 4. you must trade them in real time. 5. you must always learn your own rules and try to understand them. 6. you must start to trade with your own real money. 7. you must face the greed and fear, what comes, when you trade with your real money. 8. you must master the discipline quest. 9. you must train yourself everyday. pschological and strategies backtesting. 10. you must feel good about it.
4 years is worth something, I wouldn't throw it away, but I would throw away all the books you've been reading. Ask every trader what book they read that completely changed their life and turned them from loser to winner and read it.
Seems to me you already had your answer. You found something new, it's interesting and its working. In addition, it's a lot of work. Therefore, why did you start this thread if you should continue with trading if you found something that's working while you have another job unless you meant to say its not working.
One of the basic rules of trading is to cut your losses. Even though what you are advising has correct intentions, but your advice goes against this basic tenet. In 4 yrs, a guy can complete college taking 40 subjects, and gaining enough knowledge to earn somewhere between 40 to 100k USD a year, depending on his specialization. OP, I repeat, and having read other comments I recognize that I am being most straightforward and blunt.......but you have to cut your loss now. Since you say that you work somewhere, you must be seeing the difference in working for an organization where you have set duties VS working alone on your trading, where you can do whatever you may want to - without any control. Successful trading requires 'edge', and strong self discipline - traits not easy to develop. And you have already spent 4 yrs. Think about the opportunity cost - what else you could have done in these 4 years - Seriously, take a minute and think about the other possibilities. Good Luck, this will be my last post on this thread, if you are smart you will take the right decision, otherwise you will feed your money to professional traders.
I don't think I have EVER read anything in a book or seen anything in a video that was of ANY HELP AT ALL in making money trading (yet I still have a hard time resisting having a look at a book or video). As a matter of fact, if I were going to advise someone just starting in trading I would STRONGLY advise them to avoid all books, and instead just look at charts and THINK about how they might go about making money (and if they were lucky they would learn EARLY just how difficult a challenge that is--i.e., actually SEEING what's on the charts vs. seeing what you WANT to see). IMO there is so much CRAP in books, and everything is SO FULL of indicators and other useless stuff, that potential traders are nearly permanently RUINED from learning how to trade because of it.
The darkest hour is just before dawn. ----------------------------------------- Don't give up. You're on the right road. You've only run up against Barrier #1. Persistence is the only medicine you need, not advice or more books. The LAW OF THE UNIVERSE is on your side He who would have, must first BE, then Do, then the HAVE come automatically. So, BE a trader. Period. Then DO. The 3rd component will come. Its gotta.
Application of the DO part taken in a parallel field ...... A fellow closer, newly trained by yours truly, started in the field and had a string of 24 demos that met rejection, i.e. he could not close the deal. His spirit was sapped, he talked only of defeat, of not being able to pay his bills. But then, in a coffee-shop meeting, I said to him, "you cannot fail even if you want to" He was shocked to hear this. His eyes lit up, he sat up in the chair, said, "do you have confidence that I will come thru'? .... Without hesitation I said, Yes. Why, he asked? Because the Universe never turns down the doer who power-does - the Universe got no answer in the face of such a doer except to give in and open the floodgates. Fast forward 6 months - he was averaging $20k/month in commissions.
Further qualification of the DO component The DO is so intense, so dedicated, so hard-working, so constantly breathing and digesting the wherewithal of the game, it never quits, there ceases to be any such thing as free time for the PASSION consumes the DOER. Relentless, intransigent persistence. The Physical Universe got no answer except to give in to such a MAN or WOMAN or CHILD.