Define successful? Even the best sometimes blow up. Just this week Gotham announced they blew. They had almost a half billion at one time. For me at least, I bottomed out after 4 mos, was to break even after six month, and have doubled my money about every six months since then. It's not a number of trades though. Some trades are hugely profitable, most are scratches. Some are real pain in the asses. I think it's better to ask how long it took most traders to at least double their money once they started. That is the mark of having made it I would think. Do a search, about every month someone redoes this thread. There must be 50 of them by now.
It was just a question. The question was not "How many trades did you make until you felt yourself a successful trader so that I can make that many trades and then be a successful trader too?" But thanks anyway. Really.
I think you must go through a period of pain before you can reassess yourself enough to gain and start to become profitable. Consistency just comes with time. I know I blew out once and this event triggered a full reassessment plan that took 6-8 months. The good thing is that I could afford to lose what I lost and start again, which in some cases is not always true. Good luck though, the number of trades is irrelevant to profitability.
You must have misunderstood me. I have been trading for a while. I was saying I had that confidence even before I started and I would not have started otherwise. I have lost on some trades, more than I would have liked, but it's by far more than made up for by what I made on others. I don't see how your criticism applies. I bilieve trading is not smth you learn by doing. There is a portion of it that is iffy until you try, but most can be accounted for and incorporated into the strategy before you do anything, and I believe it's dumb to just start doing it to see what happens without having a good strategy that shows profits even under very restricting conditions.
I'm trading other people's money and can't really answer that one. But it was very green and very close to what the model predicted.
Then I misunderstood you indeed. I admire you for taking a purely theoretical approach and succeeding. I have never had much success doing that. But in the process of executing the trades my (barely profitable) system indicated, I learned how to trade extremely short term (what most people would probably call scalping). You can't learn that without doing it. Other than that, meaning for every strategy that is still profitable if it always hits the bid or takes the offer (and as long as you don't move significant amounts of money), you are absolutely right.
That was 34k monthly in commissions right? That is only @350K shares a day. I will jump on the band wagon for another 2 cents. The number of trades are completely irrelevant. You set a goal to do a certain number of trades and you'll find yourself with this much in your trading account---0---. Trade when opportunity knocks and be patient and you will succeed, overtrade and you wont be trading at all. D