# How Long Does It Take to Learn Trading? · DT Academy

> How long consistency takes, why most new traders lose money, realistic returns versus social media, process goals, and the road from demo to funded.

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Day 8Setting expectations for trading

Chapters done

# Setting expectations for trading

Day 08 of 26 · 9 min read · By DT Terminal

How long getting consistent really takes, measured in trades rather than dates, and why most new traders lose money, in the words of the risk warnings brokers are required to publish. This lesson puts realistic returns next to social media claims, explains process goals over profit goals, and walks the road from demo to small live to funded.

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Worked examples, the quiz and the interactive tools are in the app. Free account.

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Chapter 1 of 7

## How long getting consistent takes

You placed a demo trade in [Day 7](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/placing-your-first-trade). How long before it works? **Nobody can honestly give a date**; anyone selling one is guessing, or selling.

What can be measured is trades: a strategy needs a sample, usually **50 to 100 trades** taken the same way, before its results mean much ([Day 9](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/the-math-behind-trading) shows why).

| Setups taken a week | Weeks to 100 trades |
| --- | --- |
| 2 | 50 |
| 5 | 20 |
| 10 | 10 |
| 20 | 5 |

One strategy, one sample. Change the rules halfway and **the count starts again**.

Worked example

### Example 01: Three trades a week

The worked example, with every number walked through, is in the app.

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**Measure progress in trades reviewed, not days passed.** Getting consistent takes **months and years, not weeks**.

Build your first sample faster in the backtester

Replay months of one instrument in an afternoon and reach 100 trades before risking anything.

**Go deeper**

The backtester does not replace live experience, but it tells you whether the rules are worth taking live.

Add the weeks you will spend learning to follow the rules at all, and it is clear why getting consistent is measured in months and years. Ten weeks of trading with no records teaches less than **a hundred trades written up and read back**. The calendar only matters because it is where the trades happen.

Chapter 2 of 7

## Why most new traders lose money

You can check this yourself. Regulators in the UK and the European Union make brokers that offer CFDs to retail clients state the share of their own retail accounts that lose money. Look at a few broker footers: the figure varies, and it is **usually well over half**.

That does not prove trading cannot be learned. Most people lose to **the same few avoidable habits**, and this course takes each one on:

| Habit | What it looks like | Where it is covered |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Too much risk | Five or ten percent on one idea. **A normal losing run empties the account.** | [Day 4](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/how-to-choose-your-risk) |
| No stop loss | A losing trade is left open until it comes back. One day it does not. | [Day 3](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/types-of-orders) |
| No written plan | Every trade is a new decision, made in the moment. | Week 3, the strategy lessons |
| Ignoring costs | Spread and commission quietly turn a small edge into a small loss. | [Day 9](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/the-math-behind-trading) |
| Judging too soon | Dropping a sound approach after five losses, or sizing up after five wins. | [Day 9](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/the-math-behind-trading) |
| Chasing losses | The next trade is bigger, to win the last one back. | Week 4, the psychology lessons |

**Most losing accounts lose to the same handful of habits.** The first job is not a cleverer strategy. It is **avoiding that table**, with a record that shows you do.

**Go deeper**

The figure changes from broker to broker and from one quarter to the next. When the EU brought the warning in, in 2018, national regulators' studies put the share at **74% to 89%** of retail accounts.

Chapter 3 of 7

## What a screenshot leaves out

Social media is full of 10% days and accounts that went from $500 to $10,000 in a month. A screenshot shows one trade or one week, **never the whole account**. Nobody posts the account they emptied.

**A screenshot is a claim. A verified record is evidence.** When a figure looks too good, **ask for the whole account**, synced from the broker, every trade included.

**Go deeper**

A screenshot can come from a demo, it can be the one good week out of twenty, and it can be edited. A real result survives the question of the whole account.

Chapter 4 of 7

## Realistic returns

**Compounding is the best filter.** A small return held every month grows large over time. A large one stops making sense within a couple of years.

Worked example

### Example 02: Two percent a month against ten percent a week

The worked example, with every number walked through, is in the app.

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Interactive tool

### Compounding reality check

This interactive tool runs in the app, with your own numbers.

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None of this says what you will make. In your first year, a realistic aim is to **lose little while you learn**, so the account is still there when the skill arrives.

**Go deeper**

The S&P 500 has averaged somewhere around 10% a year over long periods, counting dividends and before inflation, with losing years along the way. That is why **2% a month is already strong**.

If the 10% a week claim were real and repeatable, its author would have no need to sell a course.

What you will make depends on your edge, your costs and your risk, and none of those exist yet. Use the widget to pick a monthly return and a length of time, and compare it with a steady 2% a month.

Chapter 5 of 7

## The stages of the learning curve

Progress is **not a straight line up**. Most traders who stick with it describe the same shape: an early high, a long low, and a slow climb. Knowing it makes the low easier to sit through.

Learning curve results over time, for most traders [Replay in the app](https://www.thedtterminal.com/login?signup=true&redirect=%2Fjournal%2Facademy%2Fsetting-expectations%3Fsection%3Dlearning-curve%23learning-curve)

An illustration, not data: the shape many traders describe. The dip after the first good run is **the stage most people quit in**.

| Stage | What it feels like | What to focus on |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Excitement | A few early wins. It feels easy. | Luck looks exactly like skill over a handful of trades. **Keep the size tiny.** |
| 2. Reality | The wins stop. Losses arrive in a run, and the account sits below where it started. | **Survive it**: small risk, a stop on every trade, and a record of what happened. |
| 3. Building a process | Long and flat. Rules get written, broken, rewritten. | One strategy, written down, followed and reviewed. **This is the stage that does the work.** |
| 4. Consistency | Months that look alike. Losing weeks still happen and stop feeling personal. | Keep following the plan. **Change one thing at a time**, and only with a sample behind it. |
| 5. Scaling | The process holds at a bigger size or with a prop firm. | **Size up slowly**, and step back down if the rules slip. |

Not everyone passes through every stage in order, and nobody gets a date for each. The order is the common part.

Even stage 4 is not smooth. On this real chart price climbs from 2303.63 to 2536.07, plainly up, yet falls 4.7% from its high and takes 40 days to close above it again.

DT Terminal Charts XAUUSD · D1 Sample data

Sample data. The trend is plainly up, and still, once the high was in, it took 40 of the chart's 80 days to close above it again.

Read it as a good trader's equity curve: up over time, with long stretches below its last high. **A drawdown inside an uptrend is normal.** One that comes from **breaking your rules** is the one to fix.

Chapter 6 of 7

## Process goals beat profit goals

A **process goal** is one you can meet on every trade, whatever the market does. A **profit goal**, like "Make $1,000 this month", is one the market can take away.

| Instead of this profit goal | Set this process goal |
| --- | --- |
| Make $1,000 this month | Risk no more than 1% on any trade this month |
| Win 60% of my trades | Take only setups that meet every rule in the plan |
| Pass a challenge this month | Zero rule breaks this month |
| Never have a losing week | Write up every trade on the day I take it |

Worked example

### Example 03: The 20th of the month

The worked example, with every number walked through, is in the app.

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**Control the inputs, and let the record judge the outputs.** **Track the process daily** and the profit over months.

**The working, and why profit goals mislead**

When a profit goal slips, it pushes you toward the habits from section 2. Profit is the result of a process repeated over a sample. Leave the profit goal for later.

"Make $1,000 this month" sounds like a good goal. The trouble is that **you do not control it**. The market decides when your setups appear and which of them win. What you control is how you take them.

In the example, the goal now needs $1,300, which is 13R. A strategy that wins 40% of the time at 1:2 makes about +0.2R a trade on average (the next lesson shows the sum), so 13R takes around 65 trades.

Set a process goal

Add a process goal such as Rule Violations at zero, Trades Reviewed or Daily Journals, and let it count itself for a month.

Chapter 7 of 7

## Demo, then small live, then funded

The road has **three stages**, each teaching what the one before cannot. Your demo runs on the same platform you will trade live, so the buttons never change.

MetaTrader 5 cTrader TradeLocker

The road each step is earned by the record

No dates on it on purpose. You move right when your record shows you are ready, and back left when it shows you are not.

| Stage | What it is for | A common bar for moving on |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Demo | The mechanics, and learning to follow a plan with nothing at stake. | A run of trades, often 30 to 50, all taken by the plan with a stop on every one. |
| Small live | Real money emotions at a size **too small to hurt**. | The live record follows the plan as well as the demo one did. |
| Funded or scaled | Trading the plan at its planned risk, with your own money or a prop firm’s. | **There is no finish line.** The record keeps deciding. |

Every arrow in the figure depends on your record, so it has to be one you cannot fool. Memory blurs the rule breaks, and a spreadsheet you type yourself can be tidied after a bad week. A **broker-synced record** cannot: trades come in as they were filled.

**Let the record, not a good week, decide when you move.** If the rules slip at a bigger size, **stepping back a stage is the process working**, not failing.

**Go deeper**

Prop firms get their own lesson in [Day 25](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/prop-firms-and-brokers).

With a broker-synced record you add only the part you know: why you took the trade and whether it followed the plan. That record is the honest scoreboard for you now, and later for a prop firm or anyone else who asks how you trade.

Quick review

## Check yourself

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## Placing your first trade

Day 07 · 8 min read

[Next in Learn to trade](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/the-math-behind-trading)

## The math behind trading

Day 09 · 10 min read

## Try it on your own account

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DT Academy is education, not financial advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any instrument. Trading carries a high risk of losing money, and past results, examples and backtests do not guarantee future results. [Risk disclosure](https://www.thedtterminal.com/risk-disclosure)

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Risk disclosure: Futures, forex and options trading contains substantial risk and is not for every investor. An investor could potentially lose all or more than the initial investment. Risk capital is money that can be lost without jeopardizing one's financial security or lifestyle. Only risk capital should be used for trading and only those with sufficient risk capital should consider trading. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. [Read the full risk disclosure](https://www.thedtterminal.com/legal/risk-disclosure).

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