it is said that to become a professional at anything you need 10,000 hours of practice. I have been trading full time since august of 09 and from that point in the next year i logged 3200 hours. My trading went from night to day. since august i have logged 1090 hours. i currently have an excellent mentor which i trade with everyday and have had a total of 4 mentors since i started. i am still not making the kind of money i envisioned but i am no longer taking the losses i used to and am starting to listen to what the market is telling me. my attitude is never give up and learn from every mistake you make. last week i was 32-36 trades and i am now working on my mental state as that is my last hurdle. I realized early on in my trading career that you cant rely on anyone and must take every step up "the mountain" on your own.
I remember the road to expert performamce is: 1. 10 years 2. delibrate practice 3. constant feedback 4. focus on a very narrow domain
Gabfly1. Where I'm coming from. I have limited math skills and am visually oriented. I believe all (make that most) trading is trend or counter trend oriented. You pick a direction and hope it happens.You have no control over the future. You can only follow along and never lead the market. Kinda like dancing. We males like to dominate, but the market will only allow you to follow if you expect to get anything from it. I use candlestick charts for visibility. I never use any candle signals. I only watch the ebb and flow of the daily market since I'm a simple person doing simple swing trades. You might say that if a 5'th grader with a ruler can't do it neither can I. All that said,since I am a trend follower and following the trend no longer worked.The first thing I would do would be to look for a reversal before complicating my life. I like. KISS , Einstein , Parado and believe that" If there is any doubt. There is no doubt." Keep it simple.... Keep It Damn Simple. That is my basic rule. Fight the natural human tendency humans have to complicate things. Complication seldom clarifies. Any one with a lick of common sense can look at a chart and identify a profitable method for that stock. Why does he automatically throw that out when he looks at the hard right edge? I'M done. Got carried away. Time on my hands I guess.
Now, you need to shake the concept that being 32/36 has anything to do with effective trading. It only shows undisciplined money management. Besides the notion of "cut your losses short and let your winners run", Profit Factor or having a good positive Expectancy is far far more important (AFTER all expenses)
It depends on what you mean by 10,000 hours. I have not spent that much time actually trading--maybe only a fraction of that, and I am making enough to live on. However, if you count all the hours I have spent studying the state of the world, economics, politics, and everything else that affects stuff I trade, then it would be way over 10,000 hours. Gladwell really confused me, and turned me off, with all that skin color stuff, which seemed really disconnected from the rest of the book. What was that about???? This is America: everyone here is from somewhere else, or their parents or grandparents were, or they have been here so long that they are ethnic-and-color-mutts anyway. No one with any intelligence cares about your skin--it's who you are and what you can do that counts. What is the expression: those who care don't matter; those who matter don't care. As a famous author, shouldn't Gladwell be setting an example? As long as people like him keep jawing about skin color like it counts for anything, these stupid attitudes are not going to die.
I remember when DeNiro said that in Heat. I wrote it down. Another useful nugget came from Sean Connery in The Untouchables: "Take it easy. Take it easy! lt'll all happen in time. This is the job. Don't wait for it to happen, don't even want it to happen. Just watch what does happen." I wrote that one down, too.
Right or wrong it's only an "average" or "statistics" if it's really done properly. It doesn't necessarily mean you must pass 10000 hour before you can trade profitably or vice versa. Everyone's mileage may vary so do you. Don't be so concentrated on the number. The point is trading is not an easy business. You should spend enough time to learn before you can be profitable.