How long will it take to learn to trade

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How many markets did you trade before you started being consistantly profitable?

500
16
19%
1000
7
8%
2000
2
2%
3000
5
6%
4500
2
2%
6000
4
5%
7500
6
7%
9000
3
3%
10000+
41
48%
 
Total votes: 86
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

...Not a question from me but this was raised in a different thread.
Dallas wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 3:09 pm
The question new users should be asking is how long will it take to learn and understand the markets enough to be able to get a consistent profit from them
It's obviously an answer that has a dozen ifs buts and maybes and could be anything from 1 to never, but I thought it would make an interesting 'finger in the air' poll for a quiet winter's day. I've given the choices in #markets rather than time for obvious reasons. The idea is to give some of the new guys a realistic timeframe of what it takes to join the 5-10% who eventually stop losing. Clearly 'stopping losing' and 'paying the bills' are very different.

If you have a timeframe in mind, I thing a reasonable full-time target would be about 20 a day, 120 a week, 500 a month. You could trade more per day but it's probably best not to encourage people to trade every race. Maybe 500 is a bit high especially at this time of year....but it's only meant to be a very rough guide.

I've thrown my hat in the ring at a min of 9 months, which I've estimated at about 4500+. I've also allowed 2 votes per person so you can represent a range.
Last edited by ShaunWhite on Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ruthlessimon
Posts: 2094
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:54 pm

Only a dozen ;) I think it's a great question, but my immediate thought is the results of this will be wildly inconsistent.

Like the phrase, "people who play musical instruments, get better grades - therefore a school invests 90% of their budget in the music department" :lol: . That head is getting the sack, extraneous variables are at play.

Same with this. I think time & volume are the wrong metrics. If Miss Webb was going to take part this she'd heavily distort it, as would Jeff. Although that said, I can't think of another way to ask the question which would reveal more useful data ;)
Iron
Posts: 6793
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:51 pm

ruthlessimon wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:45 pm
Same with this. I think time & volume are the wrong metrics. If Miss Webb was going to take part this she'd heavily distort it, as would Jeff.
No earthly clue what you mean by this? Are you drunk? 😂

Jeff
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

ruthlessimon wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:45 pm
I think time & volume are the wrong metrics. If Miss Webb was going to take part this she'd heavily distort it, as would Jeff. Although that said, I can't think of another way to ask the question which would reveal more useful data ;)
The idea was to point the type of new poeple at this who say things like, "I watch almost an hour of videos, read a bit of a book, traded all day, and starting to show a profit. How do I make a grand a week"
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ruthlessimon
Posts: 2094
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:54 pm

ShaunWhite wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:54 pm
The idea was to point the type of new poeple at this who say things like, "I watch almost an hour of videos, read a bit of a book, traded all day, and starting to show a profit. How do I make a grand a week"
It's funny you say that. There's a guy I know who this actually applies to. This guy learnt to "trade" in what I would consider a very fast time horizon, I think it was around 2 months. A super objective breakout strategy, however, he can't go fulltime because it's an edge that's so slim - & he can't survive on it - hence he left the game. Would that trader's opinion be valid to this poll?
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northbound
Posts: 737
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:22 pm

Started trading full time 7 months ago, also done Peter's masterclass 4 months ago.

During my journey so far, I've traded or observed around 4000 UK/Ireland horse race pre-play. Only now I'm STARTING to see consistent profits. But the journey is still long.

I also spend plenty of time every day experimenting with other markets (e.g. greyhounds), watching trading videos, reading this forum, reading books about the psychology of learning/failure, etc.

Enjoying every minute!
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

northbound wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:03 pm
I also spend plenty of time every day experimenting with other markets (e.g. greyhounds).
I think it's also important to allow yourself to lose, to have a bit of an experiment without worrying you'll spoil all of your £13.29 profit. Like a seperate R&D bank.
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megarain
Posts: 2041
Joined: Thu May 16, 2013 1:26 pm
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It’s a good question, but it needs a time relevance.

I have now traded over 100k mkts, mostly manually.

In the golden yrs, u could watch trading for a week, and then
Start out.

Now, unless u have done some data mining etc, the learning curve might be a factor of 20x greater.

Even now, I second and third guess myself. U just don’t know, what-if ...
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northbound
Posts: 737
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:22 pm

ShaunWhite wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:08 pm
I think it's also important to allow yourself to lose, to have a bit of an experiment without worrying you'll spoil all of your £13.29 profit. Like a seperate R&D bank.
Agree, that's why I'm still trading with small stakes (£4-8) regardless.

There are 1-2 types of situations that I'm starting to read consistently well and the temptation to raise stakes is big.

But I refrain from it and instead focus on getting good at reading a greater number of situations.

Organic growth...
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jimibt
Posts: 3641
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:42 pm
Location: Narnia

having given up the will to live when manually trading the pre race markets, i attempted last year to apply some maths in order to crack the nut. using WAP, closed systems (i call it pistons) and volume vs book % i just about managed to see a picture emerging. however, as simon mentioned in a previous post, the edge that can be obtained from any unorthodox setup leaves you at the mercy of chance and thus slim opportunity.

the real grail is to dive deeper into the more mundane markets and try to develop market templates that can be overlaid, based on well observed data points...

the search continues and maybe i'll walk the (WAP) line again one day in search of the lost chord. :D
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Euler
Posts: 24701
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

I'm not sure there is a 'right' answer.

I jumped when the market was immature so I didn't realise until about 18 months in that this was actually a huge opportunity. I feel like you need to experience all the ups and downs before you can really say you know what you are doing.

The middle of winter feels nothing like the middle of summer! So I'd say not a number of markets but an amount of time.
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northbound
Posts: 737
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:22 pm

Euler wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:49 pm
I feel like you need to experience all the ups and downs before you can really say you know what you are doing.
+1

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”
convoysur-2
Posts: 1110
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 10:00 am

cant count just markets ,because theres so much other stuff involved as well,,
but no less than 10.000 hours.
Wolf1877
Posts: 367
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2017 10:59 am

I'm not at consistent profitability yet and I suppose it depends on what you define as trading as say horse racing trading is very different to football and manual trading is very different to automated trading.

On football I think I have finally had my light bulb moment this week and I'm pretty confident that consistent profit starts right now. Disappointed it took me so long to figure it out! Still lots of work to do to fully develop and deploy comprehensive strategies for football.

On racing, wow where to start. Having started dabbling only in September I've not been through a summer flat season yet and I tend to be busy most weekends so largely my experience has been on low grade races which can be extremely volatile and frequently highly manipulated by other traders or syndicates. With manual trading I can generally make a profit before the markets really kick into life in the last few minutes, then it is more of a game of chance with the dice seemingly loaded against me. My relatively untrained eye finds it very difficult to detect when a market is being pushed one way late on with the intention of profiting from a reversal and when a market is being pushed one way and then being pushed further still in the same direction. Intermodal in yesterdays 20:15 at Newcastle was a good example of odds being pushed to both new lows and new highs in the last 4 minutes before the scheduled start. For me success or failure in horse racing will rest on my ability to analyse data and develop automated processes.
iambic_pentameter
Posts: 443
Joined: Wed May 18, 2016 1:24 pm

Whilst profitability is ultimately the end goal, it's important to remember that profitability can only come through discipline, mindset, risk management, market cycles etc.

I'd also suggest that like any other field, the people at the top never stop learning or improving.

The other curve ball that we have to deal with, is our ego - I'm sure we can all recall a time where we've pulled off a great trade and declared ourselves to be (insert your own example here)

The reality, of course, is that we need to be emotionless and robotic in our trading.

Success is a journey and not a destination etc.

Iambic
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