Post #15229

My trading journey, summarized. (by TraderNick) 2015/2016 – Rough start. I had no clue what I was doing and quickly realized trading was much harder than I expected. 2017 – Slightly better, but still ended the year in the red. Learned a lot through trial and error. (1000+ hours of backtesting) 2018 – First slightly profitable year. Finally started seeing some progress from all the time and effort. I still spent thousands of hours backtesting and researching macro/fundamentals further. 2019 – A modest, profitable year. My strategy started clicking, and all of the backtesting began to pay off. 2020 – My first "lucrative" year. Continued refining my approach, countless hours of studying macro/fundamentals. 2021 – Very profitable. The first year I could hypothetically live off of my trading profits solely. 2022 – My first losing year since becoming profitable. A humbling reminder that no strategy works flawlessly. The market moved lower & had several false breakouts that sent my strategy into a losing streak. Painful. 2023 – Same strategy, but market conditions improved. Very profitable again. 2024 – Very profitable. 2025 - My best year yet in both P&L and relative performance to the S&P500. I have easily invested years of my life into this. It is a LONG road, but for those fascinated by markets and embracing the slow & steady - it can be very rewarding. Keep going.