for me it was 1) Enjoying the journey (this means studying thousands of hours of charts) to get to profitability and determined to succeed 2) Having a full time career already with no immediate time demand to achieve consistancy.
'making it in trading' is a myth. if you want to do it for real - joint a firm and work your ass off for a few years and perhaps make enough to set for life. retail trading is simply bs... not something worth the effort... so 'sticking to it' is foolish. think going forward - in the short time frame robots already dominate. machine learning is just around the corner to completely dominate.... what chance does retail have? none. computer speed doubles every 18 months.. we are on the verge of quantum computing that is even going to break this barrier. all the advancements to come... buy QQQ and hold forever. everybody can make it big in stocks... not by trading.
Ah yes, live off the goodwill of your spouse. Nothing has ever come bad of that. Neither has bad come from watching the market 24/7. I'm sure this story will end well.
Took me 5 years and four account blow ups to become consistently profitable. The way I see it, those who achieve their goals, however lofty they may be, often have to push past the wall of "logic & reason." This probably won't sit well with a job that is so numbers focused, but life has taught me every single moment is completely unique and holds unlimited possibility (funny enough this idea has also helped me with managing risk, you can never know everything so stick to your trading plan and cut losses). Logic and reason tricks you into thinking it isn't so, that you can't handle another failure, so you quit. 10 failures aren't 10 failures if on the 11th go around, you succeed. Instead those 10 failures become an inextricable part of the process that got you to that success.
The Lure of easy money, when finally beaten ( if ever ) then in theory pretty much unlimited wealth from a relatively small outlay. 12years maybe but lazy and don't get much spare trading time business, kids, womanising, mountainbiking, womanising ( twice cause I like this ), some years not a single trade.
what is 'making it' ......? if you do not know where you want to go......... then you will not ever know whether you have 'made it' to your destination
if retail cannot make it why should machine learning make it? it takes Humans to program computers. computers have only advantage in speed of calculations.THEY HAVE NONE IN JUDGEMENT. computers only have an edge in HFT
For those who have secondary thoughts, - is it possible, or any glimpse of giving up, on the way of figuring it out : R.Dalio Got into the fist fight with his own boss, while drunk. Got into the fight once more, then - was fired. Made a wrong prediction in the front of US Congress. Started Bridge Waters in a.... Kitchen. Borrowed $5 000 from his dad, because he couldn't support his family. Sylvester Stallone, at one moment in his life, was so broke, that he sold out his wife's marriage ring. Later on, he sold his dog, at the bar, for $25. You would think, - ,, man, what a mess that guy is'', but there was something, that he refused to sell 3 times. Last offer was $500 000. A script, with a name on it - Rocky. To answer your question, in order for me, to achieve my full creative potential, which would benefit society & in the process, would make my life, fulfilling, i need resources. Lot's of zeros. I witnessed the benefit of it, on tiny scale both on others and myself. Trading & investing, will allow to scale it up. It becomes almost limitless, the possibilities. It's also ironic, because i have seen & know in person, many creative people, doing something that they kinda like, only to get the resources. Commission works. The quality of work suffers. The creativity cannot reach it's full scale, because of the lack of interest from the maker. I figured out, that it's wrong direction. First the resources, with the help of trading/investing, escaping 9 to 5 - then the creative freedom. Last gem for the end. Wish every person in this world, would hear those words at least, once day in the morning, right after waking up, for a week. What kind of effect it would have, on curing the depression. PTSD. Feeling of loneliness, weakness (?) ( the words only, video footage is non-correlating )
When you lose everything in life you can only do one thing: Shooting yourself or getting ahead. I decided to get ahead.