In medicine if you make a mistake the normal punishment, if you're caught, is to face the Morbidity and Mortality committee and get your wrist slapped. Only the most egregious errors lead to serious consequences. Trading mistakes however, almost always lead to loss of money.

If this were something more complex such as science or medicine, I would agree with you. But trading is not among the most difficult things to do. How difficult is it to capture one to three points during the day in the Crude market, and then add leverage. The reality is that most people don't put 10,000 hours in anything that requires effort and give up at the first obstacle.

... The reality is that it is not easy: due to the structure of markets (zero-sum game among motivated and capable participants) it cannot be easy.... I'm not sure why more people do not get this.

plethora 

You could teach a child to identify a high probability setup on any timeframe with any bar and any indicator or none at all. The challenge is patiently waiting for that setup to emerge.

... it is again living in the land of theoretical and hypothesis if you really think you can teach a child (I'm thinking young child like 8 to 10 who has not yet developed firm cognitive reasoning) to trade. You can teach them to identify a pattern on a chart and see a line cross another, but that's again the fallacy of thinking how "simple" trading is--"it's so easy you can teach a child to do it, now all you need is mental discipline."

Patience is absolutely part of the game, but it's a part that must be accompanied by an understanding of how markets work and how to profit from them. The "find a setup and wait for it" approach sounds good in theory but is usually purveyed by the lazy and by those selling something to the lazy.

If you disagree with me, I understand. Prove me wrong. Find a kid and show me they can make money. Hell, just make money yourself using this approach. It will quickly become clear that there is too much context lacking and not understood for a "plug and play" approach to trading.

I'm starting the thread to encourage participation on this subject. Many people say you need "10,000 hours" of hands-on trading experience before you can become adept enough on the subject to be in a position to be any good at it.

Most people who work 40 hour work weeks in a "day job" work approximately 2,000 hours a year. This equates to roughly 5 years of experience to equal the 10,000 hour mark, if you put in 40 hours a week with 2 weeks off per year.

Thoughts?

Mike

Prop shops give traders 12 weeks of training & then let them work SIM till they get good enough to be let loose on 1 or 2 lots. Some people are there on week 12 and some never get there.

3 months, not 5 years.

There wouldn't be ANY professional traders anywhere if it took 5 years of full time commitment to get profitable.

Think about it people, how would a firm be able to survive if if they had to pay people for 5 years before they got a return? How would prop traders on a stipend of $750 a month survive for 5 years on that pittance before they made enough money to buy a few new shirts, or eat.

What is it that occurs at hour 10,000 that is so special? Why not 5403 or 1726 or 8983?

It's just a myth perpetuated on teh interweb in my opinion.

I think so.

Trading must be quite unique. Retail traders learn by trial and error. It's more like a research project than learning a skill because we don't have access to the expertise. What other careers are like that?

I spent a lot of money on training. This was after a couple of years of spinning the wheels. I started out with John Carters book and I programmed every strategy and every strategy in the book was totally useless when applied mechanically (which is how it was described in the book too). After that book, I still focused on mechanical stuff because that is where my head was at and where my non-trading expertise was at. I tested a lot of stuff that people said worked to find that it was no better than random.

I had to get ripped off a few times before I learnt the pattern of a BS Artiste. Even then I still spent money on worthless stuff. For me, I didn't want a research project, I wanted to find out what traders actually did.

In the end, it was only when I stopped trying to use my non-trading skills in trading. I made a promise with myself to focus on discretionary trading - no programming, no sitting in my comfort zone, no automation. Once done, it really narrowed the field down of who I could learn off. Most people were offering magic bullets.

It took 5 different people to drum the message in, one of whom charged me $6k to teach me that "this guy is worse than me". So I guess you could say it's 4 people.

In the end, I found out some stuff that I was able to apply but I paid for the info. Perhaps if I'd had the info up front, I would have spent less time. That's the gut feel but no-way to test it.

In terms of hours I put in - I have absolutely no idea. I tend to stop when my wife starts growling.