Screen time and deliberate practice

Last week I was very busy trading almost all sessions possible so I didn’t have any energy left for posting. This week I am little bit more relaxed and I have few things I would like to discuss.

When I started trading forex, the world was flooded with bazillions of indicators and most of the amateurs like me were using them. In my early days I have created so many “profitable systems” that I thought I wouldn’t have to work for the rest of my life :). Seriously, every week I came up with an idea how to improve my already old system. How to tweak it little bit here and there. I was a huge fan of backtesting as well so every system I created I had to test. I spent countless amount of time creating->backtesting and NOT trading that much. Many times I thought I reinvented a “wheel” and many times I thought what genius I am. Weell, I soon discovered that there was no genius in my inventions and that all my systems were not profitable because of one thing: ME! They all were nicely colourful showing “sell here”, “buy here” in a elegant manner confirming one another {of course they were confirming one another since they were all some kind of moving averages}. After many hard lessons I have found the best system I could: my brain. The problem was that since I didn’t have any colorful signals anymore I didn’t know when to enter and when to exit a position. The only way how I could bend my brain to work like the indicators was practice. Practice, practice, practice. Forget the constant backtesting and the process of neve-ending creation of the SYSTEM {i hate that word} and focus on the most important thing: practice. Now I would value screen time as one of the most important quantifiable parameters. For those who are thinking about trading here are some hard facts:

1. Prepare to give 1000hours of screen time under demo{100hours},micro {400hours} & mini {500}conditions before you start thinking about real trading:1000h!!!
2. Preferably find a good mentor, giving community of traders or any other place filled with REAL traders who are willing to share {easiest way to start on Twitter by following some respected names} 
3. Focus on things that are tested and work: S/R levels, some technical patterns and on the ability to read the price around important S/R levels
4. Outside that 1000hours prepare to work your ass out day in, day out: keeping detail journal, mental preparation, discipline training, etc,etc …

So no need to look for holy grail since the way towards it is through deliberate practice! Good luck and have a safe journey.