I have been learning and studying technical analysis since 1994 but i still cannot turn a money profit. I do not make a loss in demo/sim.
In most hobbies, you are simply challenging yourself. Want to learn to play guitar? You have a set goal and you work towards it. Other people learning to play guitar independently of you have no impact on your ability to progress. Want to run a marathon? Another person doing this, doing it faster, etc, doesn't make it any more difficult for you to do it or make you any worse. This is in contrast to say competing at a world level in a particular sport. In this case, other people's abilities do in fact have a direct impact on your ability to compete at that sport at that level. The more people involved, the higher the chance there is that someone is better than you. When you add a strong incentive (fame, money, etc), this draws even more competition. So true in the financial markets. As far as your typical jobs. Lets say someone is good at job X. Chances are it is quite difficult to measure their direct impact to a company. In fact, in many cases, your ability to perform at a particular career is in part influenced by your coworkers, the support provided by the organization, and so forth. What I'm getting at is, a lot of people don't necessarily have to be particular great at their job for their companies to survive because the success of the company is contingent upon many people performing different roles. When you have many people performing different roles, it's all kind of vague as to what contribution any individual truly has. Sure some contribute more or less, but the same kind of distribution happens at the competitors of that company. When it comes to an individual trader, it's all on you. Your ability to compete is directly measurable. Your contribution to the success of your work is directly measured and there's no one who can pick up the slack. It's all you. Granted there's always a bit of luck involved with anything. Some people are able to get access to capital to start trading at different times. Some people have different abilities in terms of time (for example, maybe someone would be a very good day trader, but due to other commitments is not available to trade during market hours, so they try swing trading and they just aren't good at it, but they'll never know that they would be a great day trader because the opportunity isn't available to them). You specifically mentioned that you've been attempting technical analysis since 1994, but perhaps you would have been an amazing fundamental analyst or quant and instead you didn't pursue what is optimal for you. On the other hand, maybe 1 more year and it will just all come together for you. Best wishes in finding your path.
You need to work on psychological issues. Try trading with real money but with very small size. Try a more sophisticated method such as ZYX Change Method.
This is odd. Do you trade in real account like you trade in demo? Some people think it's just a demo account and trade wrecklessly. Buying a 100 lots or averaging down until it goes back up. Things they will never do in real life because their accounts aren't that big or it would be psychologically too scary to do. I've been using deliberate practice on sim. It has improved my trading and identification of market patterns. I treat sim account the same as real account. I feel the same heat. I take losses. I wait for the right entries and exits. I don't say oh it's only sim so i'll do whatever. Because if you don't lose in sim but you lose in trading that's of suspect in the way you train yourself in sim. At least in my personal experience...
Technical Analysis is more art than science. If it was pure science, then programmers would simply code algorithms to perform the analysis and make tons of money. And, as with all art, some people get it almost immediately, and some never will. If you having been trying the same failed strategy for 24 years, it is time to try something new.