Some traders would say "I have been trading for 4 years and more"

[SOKO-DEKE]

So, some of these social media self acclaimed successful traders are saying that they were persistently trading for more than 2 years and were unprofitable but later on, maybe on the 4th or 5th year, they now started being profitable till date. What is your opinion about such speech from those traders, do you believe is true or they are just lying? 

The point is that some people can say anything to convince others not to quit trading, and that is why they may come up with those encouraging statements. It is possible that some people start experiencing profits from their trading after 2, 3, 5, or more years, as some people are claiming.However, the truth is that not everyone will become a successful trader. There are some traders who spend years learning and eventually start making profits, but later lose everything and become unsuccessful traders again. Trading is not easy, and it is not something that people can easily predict by saying that a certain outcome will happen after some years.

In fact, some traders become profitable from the early stages of their trading journey and continue to be profitable for life. So, sometimes I feel that luck also plays a role in trading.Another thing is that there are some traders who claim they are making money from trading, but the truth is that the money we see them spending may not come from trading at all. They may have other sources of income while claiming that all their money comes from trading.Therefore, we should not believe everything we see on social media. Some people are telling the truth, while others are not. So, some of what people are saying is true, and some of it is lies.

[Big Dirams]

I believe that the profitability of traders is not measured by the length or duration of time in the trading industry of the crypto space. Our profitability here still really depends on sufficient knowledge and understanding of crypto trading.

Because what we learn is different from just reading but not getting the point of what we learn about crypto trading. It really depends on our understanding and once we really understand it, we can develop the right strategy that we can get from what we are learning.

How profitable in trading doesn’t really has anything to do with our life spam in trading or maybe how long enough we have been in the system. We can be in the system for long and still not be profitable because we didn’t set the path for ourselves to make it out successfully so our duration in trading has no impact on our profitability.

A trader can be said to be profitable when the traders trading history is in good shape. For instance let say a trader profitable trades is higher than the losses such trader faces than we can say the trader is likely a profitable but not just a months trading cycle but over some months or probably year too.

[SquallLeonhart]

I don't necessarily think they are lying. It does take some time in order to learn trading or at least minimise loss. 2 years can be a long time to learn but we can't judge anyone based on their ability to learn. For some, it takes just a few hours but for others, it might take days or weeks to learn the same thing. It is not always that easy to learn new things. Trading is quite complicated and anyone can spend years in trading but still end up in loss. No matter how hard you learn, there will always be something left out.

Spending 4 to 5 years in trading alone with no profit expectations can be a huge burden. I don't even know if this is feasible. I would personally not keep wasting anymore years if I am not able to make profits within a few initial years.

[uchegod-21]

So, some of these social media self acclaimed successful traders are saying that they were persistently trading for more than 2 years and were unprofitable but later on, maybe on the 4th or 5th year, they now started being profitable till date. What is your opinion about such speech from those traders, do you believe is true or they are just lying?  

So why do you think they are not being honest? They may be telling the truth. It is not every trader that becomes profitable shortly after beginning their trading journey. The majority of the traders I know did not have a smooth start. They faced lots of losses before getting to the point where they started making some money from trading.

When we talk about patience and risk management in trading, it is because of cases like these, where traders face consistent losses for a long period. Newbie traders are usually advised to quit if they are not emotionally strong enough to handle the losses that may arise. Those who come prepared, both financially and mentally, stay patient until they start getting results.

There is no uniform level of progress for all traders. Some traders reach their breakthrough much earlier, while others take a long time of constant learning to achieve that.

[Emitdama]

How can someone be profitable in the 3-4th year while not being profitable in 1-2year, I think they are just bluffing and try to relate to the bad days that traders initially have, making them think that they will be profitable in the future - because the person who is saying this does not have any interest in the well being of the trader but wants to make money off their affiliate commission. They want the person to spend more and more and not just stop trading all of a sudden - because affiliate attrition is one of the first deterrents to affiliate earnings.

In a general sense, trading is not for everyone. If you are losing money consistently on spot trading, you are doing it wrong and you need to stop.

I would guess that when you are first starting out, you are not going to be making too much profit, and that is what they are talking about, if you are starting out then profits are not that common and you do not make much. After a while, you learn and get better and gain experience and you start to make more profit.

I mean not really that common, it is not like you automatically become good, if you do not study and learn then you will stay as not that good at trading. But if you do insist on doing better then you could learn, specially about analysis and reading charts, and with more experience gained from doing that, you could do better, you will learn from your mistakes and get better at it as well.

[EarnOnVictor]

So, some of these social media self acclaimed successful traders are saying that they were persistently trading for more than 2 years and were unprofitable but later on, maybe on the 4th or 5th year, they now started being profitable till date. What is your opinion about such speech from those traders, do you believe is true or they are just lying?  

If It's Too Loud, Don't Believe It!

Ordinarily, I would still give it a thought if the trader doesn't appear like an influencer, otherwise, I don't believe them. Fine, they know the theoretical part of trading, which is what they use to cajole people and creating their numerous academics and courses/books selling. They use their popularity to get money from brokers and other sponsors to divert unsuspecting next victims to them. I challenge those guys to start their copy trading service if they are as good as they claim.

As a trader, what is your take on this question,  how long is it supposed to take for someone to become profitable and successful in trading? People should know about this, so that after they have tried for such period of time and are not successful, they can quit.

There's no yardstick here. It could take some a fewer years, and it could take some way more. But note, most will never be successful in trading. That's a fact!

If you are a successful trader here, how long did it took you to become successful and what are the things you did differently now that made you profitable?

I think I'm qualified to respond here, and if I'm correct, it took me about 17 years to start seeing the bright light in trading. Now, I see it easy and profitable.

[henmark]

I believe that the profitability of traders is not measured by the length or duration of time in the trading industry of the crypto space. Our profitability here still really depends on sufficient knowledge and understanding of crypto trading.

Because what we learn is different from just reading but not getting the point of what we learn about crypto trading. It really depends on our understanding and once we really understand it, we can develop the right strategy that we can get from what we are learning.

I think it should be measured by the length or duration because at the end of the day, how much time we spend is what matters the most. Time is money and we should not waste time in something which might give no returns.

In trading, I think spending a couple of months in trying out our luck and skills is doable. Spending more than a year in figuring out what trading actually is might be foolishness. Knowledge is what matters the most when it comes to trading and we can only enhance that knowledge if we spend a good amount of time in educating ourselves.

Learning from our mistakes is what will save some time here. Making mistakes is fine and acceptable but repeating those mistakes is unacceptable. We have to spend some time in learning from those mistakes and I think the time spent there is much valuable for our future insights.

[el kaka22]

If you start trading now, by year 5 you will be decent, some are great, some are just good, but you will be decent. The way to get there is spend the first year not trading at all, zero trading, and just learn everything about trading there is, technical analysis, chart reading, indicators, candles, everything. After you spent a full year learning every thing there is to learn, then use your second year to start trading but with a very low capital, as little as possible, even if you have millions, trade with 100 bucks.

This means you get to trade in real markets, but whatever you lose, you do not worry about. This allows you to see in your second year, if you learned good enough on your first year. If your second year went well, then third year increased it a bit more, and fourth year a bit more and by fifth year you are good. If anytime along the way you get bad results, go back and check what went wrong and use your first year education to realize your mistakes and recover.

[LastKiss]

If you start trading now, by year 5 you will be decent, some are great, some are just good, but you will be decent. The way to get there is spend the first year not trading at all, zero trading, and just learn everything about trading there is, technical analysis, chart reading, indicators, candles, everything. After you spent a full year learning every thing there is to learn, then use your second year to start trading but with a very low capital, as little as possible, even if you have millions, trade with 100 bucks.

This means you get to trade in real markets, but whatever you lose, you do not worry about. This allows you to see in your second year, if you learned good enough on your first year. If your second year went well, then third year increased it a bit more, and fourth year a bit more and by fifth year you are good. If anytime along the way you get bad results, go back and check what went wrong and use your first year education to realize your mistakes and recover.

One year full learning without experience the real thing is a bit too long in my opinion, since there is already a lot of trading knowledge available online that we can learn for free. We can learn some trading setup and indicator before we start trading, after that as you said, it's better to use a small amount of capital even if we have good capital to start but use small money is wise and then we can trade while learning technical analysis (TA) at the same time. What takes time is determining whether a strategy is consistently profitable or not because many traders tend to change their strategy whenever it isn't working.

[Decimetre]

In some previous threads, good questions have been raised such as "why are people still trading when they are not making money? " Then some members here would say, "quite trading if you are not profitable"
It has always been a thought I kept in my heard for some time now but I chose to create this thread after I came across videos by soms.self acclaimed successful and profitable traders who would say "they have been trading for more than 4 years and that they finally became successful after 2-3 years of failing and bursting of account."

So, some of these social media self acclaimed successful traders are saying that they were persistently trading for more than 2 years and were unprofitable but later on, maybe on the 4th or 5th year, they now started being profitable till date. What is your opinion about such speech from those traders, do you believe is true or they are just lying? 

As a trader, what is your take on this question,  how long is it supposed to take for someone to become profitable and successful in trading? People should know about this, so that after they have tried for such period of time and are not successful, they can quit.

If you are a successful trader here, how long did it took you to become successful and what are the things you did differently now that made you profitable?

There are many traders who even spend more years before success and there are many traders too who would never get successful by trading. Success in trading should be an out put of good timing or calculated risk taking. However, to think of the fact that you may spend that long period of time waiting for your lucky day/year up to 4 years makes the whole trading Idea unpromising. But if a folk is good at what he does, he can keep it up.

I haven't been a trader or better still, I haven't started trading yet, but good timing is very important to achieve success and also knowing when to stop is very important to minimise losses and resume later.

[michellee]

They can lie or telling the truth but we don't know the real unless they are our friends who lived close to us so we can check directly in their trading history. I don't just believes for those people claiming they are profit in trading after 2 years suffer because I don't know much about them.

But we can think positive that they can telling the truth if they don't give up learning trading after their losses. The problems would happen if they don't wants to learn and give up. We can't say people will success in trading after 2 or 4 years, that depend on how they learning trading and understand the lesson.

I am not yet a successful trader as I am not yet make a big profit yet from trading, learning and patience keeps me profitable because I don't trade daily and will search the time to enter the market.

[taufik123]

-snip-
The biggest influence in trading is your strategy and luck in carrying out trading activities. Many masters trade but they still cannot avoid financial losses.

If they do some general things like Learn Technical and Fundamental Analysis, Control Emotions, Apply Risk Management and several other things I think they can at least minimize losses, crypto trading requires several factors to be successful.

Whoever they are, they will definitely experience losses, it is certain because even a professional has experienced many losses
But what distinguishes ordinary people from those who are already professionals is how to respond to these losses and turn the situation around so that these losses can be minimized and return to a profit.

There are several strategies that are carried out so that they already understand and do not panic about the losses that have occurred.
Not doing revenge trading will only add more losses due to the wrong strategy.

Some of the factors you mentioned such as good basic knowledge and how to control emotions, it will be an important factor for all traders to be able to minimize losses,
without which it is not easy to know how the market will move.

[Ndabagi01]

So, some of these social media self acclaimed successful traders are saying that they were persistently trading for more than 2 years and were unprofitable but later on, maybe on the 4th or 5th year, they now started being profitable till date. What is your opinion about such speech from those traders, do you believe is true or they are just lying? 

How hard trading is and becoming profitable at it is, you would know that trading for 4-5 years or more before becoming profitable is actually true. This is not something you can achieve in other skills because of what trading entails in its entirety. Once you’ve gotten it right, you’re set for life and the money keeps coming when you’ve already mastered the skills. So traders saying that been the time it took them to become profitable is convincibleto be true.

As a trader, what is your take on this question,  how long is it supposed to take for someone to become profitable and successful in trading? People should know about this, so that after they have tried for such period of time and are not successful, they can quit.

This depends on you as a person, for some people it takes shorter time while for some people it takes longer time than anticipated. Trading also has effect on how fast you can assimilate and understand it, that gives you the much confidence on how you can reach profitability sooner or faster than other traders.

[Royal Cap]

Well becoming successful in trading overnight is only possible in movies, in reality there is no specific time frame to become successful in trading. Some learn in a year, while others  make the same mistakes even after five years, I think the real issue is not how many years you have been trading but what you have learned during that time. However social media traders can tell the truth and some can even exaggerate their stories to make them more interesting.  If the same mistakes are repeated even after a few years then I would say that there is no reason to think that success will come just by giving it time. Because not everyone in the world can do everything, if they could, everyone would be a doctor and engineer.

[Rruchi man]

Well becoming successful in trading overnight is only possible in movies, in reality there is no specific time frame to become successful in trading. Some learn in a year, while others  make the same mistakes even after five years,

Many people, even after investing so much time in trading, will still not be able to learn it. This is why we must not just take anyone by their word who claims to have been in trading for a very long time because the period of time you spent in trading does not automatically translate into valuable experience;

Don't choose trading mentors simply based on the number of years they have been trading, someone can be in trading for a very long time and still know nothing.

[Pandorak]

I’m sure no one knows for sure. I don’t even put much stock in people’s social media posts claiming they’ve managed to consistently turn a profit through trading.

trading is one of the hardest things in the world, it requires extensive experience, familiarity with various types of tradable assets, and strategies that have been thoroughly tested or backtested over a long period to determine their win rate.

Moreover, i’ve been trading for over 5 years, but i can’t yet call myself a successful trader. The reason is simply that achieving consistent profits is incredibly difficult.

[I_Anime]

I’m sure no one knows for sure. I don’t even put much stock in people’s social media posts claiming they’ve managed to consistently turn a profit through trading.

trading is one of the hardest things in the world, it requires extensive experience, familiarity with various types of tradable assets, and strategies that have been thoroughly tested or backtested over a long period to determine their win rate.

Moreover, i’ve been trading for over 5 years, but i can’t yet call myself a successful trader. The reason is simply that achieving consistent profits is incredibly difficult.

Is a reason why they call it the hardest way to make easy money . But tbh trading is not as hard as how many paint it to be , many just make it to see complex because they don’t want to take their time to learn properly . One of the common place many are still battling when come to the trading is the psychology aspect what many need to do to become profitable is to work on their psychology and stuff .

[Ziskinberg]

I don't necessarily think they are lying. It does take some time in order to learn trading or at least minimise loss. 2 years can be a long time to learn but we can't judge anyone based on their ability to learn. For some, it takes just a few hours but for others, it might take days or weeks to learn the same thing. It is not always that easy to learn new things. Trading is quite complicated and anyone can spend years in trading but still end up in loss. No matter how hard you learn, there will always be something left out.

Spending 4 to 5 years in trading alone with no profit expectations can be a huge burden. I don't even know if this is feasible. I would personally not keep wasting anymore years if I am not able to make profits within a few initial years.

It's okay to lose consistently within months, but losing a year or more, you have to think wise then if you will still proceed trading or shift into another side hustle. Yes, others maybe smarter and wiser and make more profits but few wins, but majority are still losing from trading, but a 2-3 years of losses, that's already another story to tell.

I would say you are not trading anymore, maybe you are actually gambling in real life, like you are into trading but applying those gambling rules you think will work in trading. Some are actually losing because they mistakenly compare trading like gambling.

[Natalim]

They can lie or telling the truth but we don't know the real unless they are our friends who lived close to us so we can check directly in their trading history. I don't just believes for those people claiming they are profit in trading after 2 years suffer because I don't know much about them.

But we can think positive that they can telling the truth if they don't give up learning trading after their losses. The problems would happen if they don't wants to learn and give up. We can't say people will success in trading after 2 or 4 years, that depend on how they learning trading and understand the lesson.

I am not yet a successful trader as I am not yet make a big profit yet from trading, learning and patience keeps me profitable because I don't trade daily and will search the time to enter the market.

Traders will eventually learn from their mistakes and losses as long as they won't stop trading. Because no trader would want to stay at loss, every trader aims to minimize his losses while he is working on maximizing his gains. But if he will decide not to trade anymore and stop for good, then the chances to learn will no longer be possible.

Learning happens when a trader chose to stay positive and patient despite of his losses, regardless of the length of months or years. After all, everything in trading can be learn, but traders do learn in different timeframe.

[FanEagle]

They can lie or telling the truth but we don't know the real unless they are our friends who lived close to us so we can check directly in their trading history. I don't just believes for those people claiming they are profit in trading after 2 years suffer because I don't know much about them.

But we can think positive that they can telling the truth if they don't give up learning trading after their losses. The problems would happen if they don't wants to learn and give up. We can't say people will success in trading after 2 or 4 years, that depend on how they learning trading and understand the lesson.

I am not yet a successful trader as I am not yet make a big profit yet from trading, learning and patience keeps me profitable because I don't trade daily and will search the time to enter the market.

Most people lie about their profits but only a few lie about their losses. I personally never trust anyone's profits shown via screenshots as they can easily be manipulated. I have no interest in knowing if others are able to make profits. I choose to focus on myself rather than spending time in studying other people's trades. 4 years is actually a really long time for someone to still not learn trading. It took around a year for me to become an associate level trader but I still tend to make mistakes. No once can be perfect when it comes to trading.

You will someday become a successful trader if you maintain consistency. Do not give up even if you land up in losses. Just take a step back and think what might have went wrong. You will have to learn from your mistakes and only then, you can become a successful trader.