how long does it takes to become a successful trader?

It really difficult to answer with surely. It depends on traders and his learning and practice activates. If he studies with great patience and practice in a proper way , within 2-3 year he can be a successful trader.

Some people study and practice for longer than that and they still don't succeed. It's very subjective, unfortunately.

Just wanted to add my two cents, since I need to make a helpful post for this new FF account.

I've seen thousands of newbie traders interact at a time. Ask questions etc. I've seen their reactions, progression, etc.

What I have noticed is that every single person has their own learning curve. For some people the markets just come natural. For others, they struggle for a long time. Put it this way. My best friend started trading, and within 3 months was able to grasp enough to make himself 30k net with a lot of losses in between. He has definitely improved since then, and gotten even better over time. I also have a friend who struggled with Forex for 7 years, spending 65k until he was finally profitable.

You see the thing about the markets, is that everybody who trades them has a subjective value/assessment. You have a cesspool of subjective assessments, and or values and those who are able to make the best educated speculations come out on top. But the things that make a better educated speculator good or bad are SOOOOO variable, and VERY dynamic.

So pretty much, it's going to happen at your pace. All you can do is arm yourself with the right knowledge, and practice until your profitable. Consistency seems to make things work out smoother from what I have seen.

But this is all just my opinion!

It can be .
but I have not seen this type in my trading career.
If anyone studies Forex market with practice, hopefully he will get maximal result by trading.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I follow. You haven't seen what type of trading in your trading career?

Do not have the idea, how much time it takes to be successful here. Because every person has different growth with the market.

Learn all the basics and start playing as much demo accounts you can just like its real money. Follow the news and the flow and remember that the market is never guilty about anything. Accept the market the way it is and spend as much time as you can playing the demos. Its just another game so the more you play by its rules the better you get. Different people takes different amount of time , but the more dedicated you are the faster you get there. Just my 2 cents.

I agree. One should focus on learning, regardless of how long it takes, because people are different. Don't try to compare yourself to others and go at your own pace.

I thought I would throw my own 2 cents into this discussion. I think there is no easy answer to the question "how long does it take to be a successful trader" There are just too many variables. I like to think of learning like a relationship. It's similar to getting to know someone. If you talk to them once a month for 10 years, you will likely know them less than someone who talks to them everyday for 1 year. Thus, I can't give you specific length of time, but I will name a few of variables you may want to consider.

1. As with the example above, time is one of the obvious ones, since that is what the entire question is about. When I say time, I mean disposable time. How much time does the trader have to dedicate to studying the market in total during a given period? Does he or she have a full time job, a family, a large amount of bills and debt? Is he or she going through any traumatic life experiences at the time? All these sort of things will lengthen the time that it takes to become a successful trader.

2. The next factor is the discipline and dedication of the trader. Is he or she studying the market and testing his or her strategy nearly every waking moment or is he or she studying for an hour a week? Like any successful business, you get out of it what you put into it.

3. Another factor is mental state. Does he or she have the mental capacity to be a trader at all? I believe most people can if they find a style that suits them, but there are many still that cannot deal with the degree of risk that comes with trading and refuse to accept a loss. On the other end of the spectrum are people that are far too risky and will blow up account after account into perpetuity because they are unable to discipline themselves enough to apply proper risk management to their trading aka gambler's mentality. If you have this mindset, you will likely not ever become consistently profitable, unless you can change that mindset.

4. The next factor is persistence. This is huge. This may sound like #2 at first, but there is a difference. You can be totally dedicated for 2 weeks and then quit. Most traders fail because they simply give in to frustration after blowing their accounts and hoping from strategy to strategy in search of the holy grail to no avail and thus the biggest cause for failure is their own lack of persistence. You have to have a passion for anything that you do. If you have a passion for markets, then you will continue to pursue it even when things get rough. That's what separates traders from wannabe's that think it is a get rich quick scheme. If you don't have true passion for the business, then you should pursue something else. There are plenty of other ways to make a lot of money.

5. Access to a mentor. This is another huge factor. There are obviously self taught successful traders out there, but there also many traders who have been mentored by another successful trader. This is one thing that can reduce the learning curve by orders of magnitude. Someone that has already been there will be able to steer you past most of the obstacles mentioned above, which drastically reduce the length of time it takes to learn the business. Unfortunately, legit mentorship is difficult to find and often very expensive.

6. Lastly, natural ability. I put this last because it is not required to be a great trader. I believe that trading is something that can be learned, but there are those that just have an incredible knack for trading the market and can pick it up very quickly. These market savants may not have to go through as many failures or steps and can bypass a lot of the pain that some traders will initially face. This is maybe only 1% of people and has nothing to do with overall IQ or intelligence. There are many geniuses that cannot trade themselves out of a cardboard box to save their lives.

I know you may have been looking for a number, but hopefully now it is a bit more clear why it is difficult to arrive at even an average number.

Good luck, you only need time and some loses to be stronger and stronger.

I thinking about losses like the fuel which we need to drive to work. It's like cost of our profit.

That's certainly an interesting approach. I am not sure whether I agree with it, but if it works for you, who am I to question it.

I mean it's like a part of business.

i dont know brooo
i hear forex about 2 years ago
open demo 6 month with no luck because lack of trading method
open live micro acc in 2 month result no luck because of loss emotion controll
and i found this site on march 2017
open demo again and i found the problem that make me loss
now i open live standart acc and hope start making some money

Not being profitable is just a lack of knowledge. But its more than just this. Because it sounds like something you could learn, like learning programming for example. But its not. Its more like an accepting progress.

So, being profitable is easy just put your money on the bank and earn 1.5 % p.a.
Most people think of -making a living-, when they say - profitable.

You need money to make money. If you want to make a living, simply multiply the amount of money you need per month with 200. Thats your trading capital. For example 3000$ per Month x 200 = 600.000$

The problem is that you want to be a profitable trader on the long run and you want to make as much money as possible at the same time. You know you have learned a lot, you have developed a strategy that works for you, but you are still frustrated when the market goes nuts, you cant sit on your hands, you change position sizing, you trade different setups on one account, you widen SL when it goes against your position, you do revanche trading, you have no fixed rules, you have no fixed money management, you fear a good trade will turn, you hope a bad trade will turn, you act out of emotion, and so on... That is only because of fear and greed! Why are you profitable trading demo accounts? Because there is nothing to win or lose. Emotional free trading.

If you open an account with 10k, an average of 50$ per month is a realistic goal. If you have 10-15 trades per month your risk is 0.1 % per trade = 10$. Nearly nothing to win or to lose.

If you figured that out, you are free of fear and greed. You are bored of trading. And you can be profitable for a long time.



That is just my opinion. I dont want to destroy your dreams here! There are always different ways of doing something. Best of luck to all of you!

When thinking about trading for a living an important factor that people don't often think about is what standard of living we are talking about. If you have low living overhead as in no car payments, no mortgage, no family to support, you can wing it and trade for a living with less capital a lot easier than someone who has all of these high overhead costs. That way you can still spend less than you earn, and live and grow your account simultaneously. On the other hand, most expect replace their day job or make 10's of thousands of dollars a month off the bat. It doesn't work that way. You will need to focus on being frugal and survive first before trying to think of luxury.

I like your post, especially the last sentence. Lets focus on being frugal. If you live in a small flat and survive eating frozen pizza, you would still need something about 500 $ per month. Maybe even more. If you have no other income it hast to be a 50k, better 100k account to achieve that. If you have a 10k account, that would be more than 7 % profit/month ( 700$ minus taxes ~ 500$). Yearly profit would be ~85%. I dont think that is realistic in the long run

It all depends. It's highly depend two things. 1. How low your cost of living can be 2. What kind of skill/style you have as a trader. For example, let's use your $500 per month example with a 10k account example and I will use a swing trader in my first example. Let's say swing trader A makes a 10% average monthly return, which is realistic because that's what I use to make as a part time swing trader while holding down a full time job. That's about $1000/month. That is enough to cover his monthly bills of $500/month, pay his taxes and also reinvest capital back into his trading account to grow it over time. For simplicity, let's say he reinvests $200 per month back into his trading account to compound his account and we will pretend he pays another $300 in taxes (though he would likely pay almost nothing since he would be only making $12k/year). Even while ignoring the magic of compounding, he would have a $12,400 account at the end of the year and have enough to live and pay all his taxes. This is just swing trading. A good FX day trader could easily make as much as 1% a day on average. That's around $2000/month. Using the same example with the daytrader, I think you get the idea. So, point being, it is more than doable, you just have to consider your lifestyle and trading style.

I think it depends on how easily you acquire the necessary skills required to earn money by trading, for this demo account is quite a healthy practice to become good at trading.

Okay, I would never say that this is impossible, but to make an average of 10%/month without having lots of losing months is indeed an ambitious approach. I think it is hard to achieve that performance consistantly.

I like Casinos. They can lose a lot - but they will always be profitable over time.

I like that a possible drawdown of 100 losing trades in a row would only be a loss of 10%

I always remember myself, that it was hard work to save money for trading. Protect it!

(I have a small gambling account to feed the demons)