How Long Should It Realistically Take to Get Consistently Profitable As A Trader?

Hi, Brian McAvoy here with Inside Out Trading. In this video, you're going to learn how long it should take for you to become a successful trader. I get this question a lot in the 11 and a half years been helping people. I found that this is a really good natural curiosity and you're going to find out the surprising answer. It's actually shorter than you think. Okay, so let's get started. I mean, serious. I have a lot of people though, they'll ask me especially people have been trading for 4, 5, 8, 10, 12 years and they're still struggling with it. They're like, Brian, how long should this take? I mean, I know that, that it's, you know, not get, get rich quick, but man, how long should this take? Because it just, it seems like it's taking forever. And granted, trading, there is a significant body of knowledge with this industry, in this occupation, this profession. It is a true profession, but here's the thing. It is a real profession, but it's a skill based occupation. It's, this is not an art. This is a matter where it's business. Everything can be quantified, formulated and broken down to a very basic, businesslike, very predictable manner, which means that you can learn it and you can learn it in a reasonable period of time. Now, the way some traders trade, yes, it's almost an art form. And they'll tell their, you know, their pupils, you know, you just have to, you know, you get, you have to spend this, you know, the screen time until you can see this in the charts or until you can see it. And it's, you know, it's just a matter of putting in those hundreds, maybe thousands of screen hours which, which as far as I'm concerned, while that may work and the guys are, you know, they're sincere in their efforts to, you know, teach people to be traders. That's not the best way for somebody who's new and they don't want to spend 4 to 10 to 12, 20 years getting profitable as a trader. If your goal really is to get into this business and get it up into the point of sustained profitability as soon as possible, well, there are better ways to go about it. You don't have to be an artist. You don't have to be all sophisticated and esoteric about it. You can approach this from a very simple and straightforward manner. And that's cool. I mean, that's one of the best things about it. Okay, so back to the question, how long should it take? Well, again, understanding that it's a skill Based business. And if you have proper tutelage and you're being brought along a proper path for you, realistically it should only be a matter of months. I mean, if you think about it, of course there are certain variables in here. Everybody's going to be a little different as far as their aptitude, their ability to learn, how well you're matched up with who's teaching you and the materials that you have to work with, your time that you have to devote to learning this occupation. And I'm not talking about just goofing around playing in the demo account and busy trading, I'm talking about time devoted to learning. If you can devote say even just five hours a week, which if you're serious about this, if you want to get a degree or something like that, five hours a week is a drop in the bucket. So with this, if you're willing to, and you can devote five hours a week to just learning the skills and the business of trading and being a trader, seriously, months, I mean if you think about it over a six month span, that's 26 weeks. Okay, five hours a week, that's 130 hours. That's 130 hours of learning time. So yeah, I mean, yes, there is a reasonable body of knowledge that goes with this and yes, it is skill based business. So it takes a little bit of time, but 130 focused hours, hours just spent on learning. Even if you're only spending say two hours a week, well, six months, that's 26 weeks, that's still 52 hours of just time learning what you need to learn to get good at this and to be competent at it. Okay. I'm sure that's well within your abilities. Something really cool that I just learned about from a friend of mine. I never heard of it before, but she was telling me that she just signed up for a career accelerator program which come to find out it's kind of like trade school. It's where you're going to go in and learn a specific skill set for a specific occupation and in a very condensed period of time. Not, you know, the 4, 8 or 12 year degree, like getting college? No, this is where you're going in and you're getting real concentrated. She was saying some of them run like boot camps where it's like three months and they're setting you up to be prepared to go do a job competently. Others when I got on and looked at it, they go anywhere from three months to a year and a half, but that's it. And that's cool because if you think about it, trading is not a whole lot different. Like I said, if you're getting concentrated, proper education follows a curriculum that covers all the bases. Yeah. It shouldn't take 4, 5, 10 years for you to get good at this. I mean that's the whole thing. This is a skill based business. You get good at it, you're going to be good at it. You'll know how to make money, you'll know how to manage yourself and run the business and be profitable and scale it and grow it in the whole nine yards. That's the whole bit. So this is really cool. So as far as how long does it take, you know, really to make it as a trader? Even if you're brand new to this industry, you've never started a business before. You've never, you know, worked as a trader even in the financial field before. Six months, maybe a year. Because there are several learning curves that you have to go through. You have to learn about the industry of trading, the basics of how things work in this industry and being a trader. Being a trader and starting up and running your own business again, because it is a business, you have a handful of learning curves that you have to go through in order to acquire the skills and the knowledge, the understandings to be a fully independent and self sufficient trader. But it shouldn't take years and years of doing this. Now if you find that yes, it is taking you years, maybe you've been at this for five years and you're still not anywhere close to where you want to be. Don't feel bad, nobody told you this. Nobody's incentivized to tell you this when you first get started. Most people who are incentivized to be talking to you when you're early as a trader, they're incentivized to get you busy. That's what they're going to do. Nobody really is incentivized to say, hey, slow down, learn to do this properly. Nobody has a personal stake in that. As far as your interest, I take that interest because that's what I do. I mean, I got into it to help people and I know there's a lot of sharks out there, a lot of charlatans and scammers and not nearly as much good help as there should be. There is good health, but not nearly as much as there should be. It's a bad balance. So anyway, okay, with that said, here's the thing, think about it. Say you've been trading for five years. What have you been focusing Your time on for the last year or two, you learn enough. You learned all the. You learned 80%, 90% of what you now know you learned in your first few months of trading. So what have you been spending your most recent months on? When you're spending your time on trading, what are you spending your time on? Are you still attending more webinars on new methods for trading or new strategies? If you are, I totally get it. I have clients tell me all the time, it's like Brian, yeah, I'm getting bombarded and keep watching these other webinars because, you know, I feel like I'm missing out or I might be missing out if I don't, you know, if I don't attend it. That's a perfectly natural feeling. Understand? Yes, there are dozens and dozens of general methods for trading. Many. Most of which work when done properly and. But you don't need all of them. You just need what works for you. So even if what you've got, even if it's not the absolute best, best, best ever thing on the planet, if what's working for you is working for you, then that's, that's really what you want. Right? Okay, so back to, back to the training and how long this should take. If your time is focused on the right training, you're getting proper instruction on what you do need to know. Yes. Months. If most of your time is spent trying to figure out what you don't know, you know that you're missing something, but you don't even know what it is. And so a lot of your time is spent trying to figure out what you don't know. And then you know it's not there to be explained to you. So now you know, you're just spending a lot of time kind of chasing a ghost that you don't even know what you're chasing. Okay, that's not a lot of waste of time. Yes, it is going to take years at that rate. But. So this is why it's really good news. If again, you know, you get the right training, it's focused on what you need to do, the skill set for being a self directed independent trader and the full set of skills, not just a method for trading. This is where so many traders get messed up is they just focus on, you know, new systems, new methods for trading. That's not what you're missing. You already have available to you and you've probably had in your hands workable methods. That's not what you're missing. You're missing the other stuff. That aside, if you have proper training and you can devote the time to it, even just a few hours a week, months, not years. Again, if you've been doing this for a long time and you're still not where you want to be, then it's a matter of changing your focus of what you're doing and instead of just continuing to do what you've been doing or jumping from one system to another thinking that you know all you need to know. No, recognize your training did miss some things that you need to know to be in this profession. And that's okay. Time to seek out what it is you need to fill in those gaps because this is not that tough of a profession. It is certainly within your capabilities. Now, there are other I mean, of course one of the challenges of being in this business is the number of variables that are there. And one that I get a lot from traders is Brian, should I be a discretionary trader or a mechanical trader? And questions like these. In the next video I'm going to answer that specific question, should you be a mechanical trader or a discretionary trader? And the pros and cons with each. So you understand maybe where you're at, maybe you're pursuing it in a way that doesn't serve you well right now and it would be worthwhile to change direction, at least temporarily. So anyway, we'll touch on that in the next video. I look forward to seeing you. If you have any questions, definitely contact me. Swing my inside out Trading. I got free training for you there. Love to help you out. Talk to you soon. Cheers. Now, I hope you found this video helpful. If you did, give me a thumbs up down below. Of course, do share this with your friends. Also, what are your thoughts on the matter? How long do you think it should take? Feel free to leave a comment down below. Share your thoughts and of course, feel free to swing by InsideOutTrading.com talk to you soon. Cheers.