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1) Beginner - Just started
2) Novice - Loses money after a year.
3) Intermediate - Can breakeven after a year. Able to put together a few strings of positive months.
4) Advanced - Is profitable after a year but less profitable than the S&P500.
5) Pro - Can beat the market multiple years in a row.
I entered Novice. I have not put together a profitable year yet, but I have had profitable months and I have a chance to make this my first profitable year if I can stay consistent from now through December and not engage in any of the behaviors that get me into trouble.
I think it takes some time to identify what holds each of us back and there was a definite turning point somewhere over the past 12 months where I realized there are only a few behaviors that really keep me from being more successful.
For me, I need to eliminate:
1) scaling-in too deeply into a losing position and taking a very large loss.
2) taking a normal loss but then getting reckless while trying to make up for it and piling a bunch of normal losses into a very large losing day. (aka revenge-trading)
3) coming into the market unprepared and not following a daily routine.
All three of these items are mental or careless in nature.
Scaling-in has been an effective technique for me in bracketed markets as long as I don't let the maximum potential loss get larger than a certain amount of points, so I don't want to eliminate scaling-in entirely, just make sure I have defined the maximum risk and I adhere to it.
Getting past those three behaviors will get me to "intermediate" as defined above. To get beyond that level I think I need to:
1) Take full advantage of trending markets, scale out of winning trades at appropriate targets, let winners run to further targets, add to winning positions when market conditions are right.
2) Get much better on range-bound days, there are lots of great opportunities and often even fairly clear targets, even in choppy markets.
