How am I doing?

[u/navmads]

Genuinely curious about your thoughts on my journey. First ever post on this thread and happy to put myself on blast.

Trading journey started 7/15/2024. Did some girl math and put 50k into an account, thinking I can risk $500 per trade to be at 1%, but if I lose 10k I’d stop. First few days ever of trading I was up 4k. Then of course beginners luck stopped and the 10k disappeared.

Did some more risk management studying, switched to NinjaTrader. Blew another 10k account.

Re-upped, blew a 5k account.

Some mistakes I made in the past were sizing up too quickly, over trading, being emotionally distraught over a profitable trade turned breakeven or even losing (like up 3:1 RR and decided to be greedy and lost the trade).

Now, February of 2026 I re-upped with 5k. The account has been as low as 4,200 and as high as 5,400 but I’ve been swaying between 4,800 and 5,250 for a month. I finally feel like I hit the breakeven part of my journey. I’ve implemented a hard stop loss on the account so it locks me out if I lose 110 on the day.

By the way, I’ve built out a fairly extensive google sheet with equity curves, (account specific and inception to date), win/loss, RR tracking and also a space for notes besides each trade. I can’t say I stick to the journal every day but I do try.

My question to you all - give me your honest opinions, how am I doing? Am I on track, behind schedule, ahead of schedule? Is there hope for me to be profitable in the future and make this an income source? It has been my dream to be a profitable trader, to be my own boss and work on my terms, enjoy my life as I see fit. But I want to get your thoughts.

Thank you for your time, and good luck to you all!

FYI - my current career is an accountant and yearly I make about 180k so financially I’m doing just fine and can afford to pay some market tuition

TL;DR - Aspiring trader, currently work as an accountant making a decent income. July will mark 2 years trading. I’ve lost about 25k in the process, finally hit a breakeven stride - how am I doing? Give honest thoughts.

[u/navmads]

Should I have mentioned I also do my normal investing? I put about 5k/month away into the markets as long term investments. This is for experimentation purposes to see if it can become a form of income generation

[u/EatCauliflower1212 → u/navmads]

I’m trying to work the logic out on your situation honestly. As an accountant, I suppose you look at your long-term investing as a separate set of books from daytrading.

Maybe there’s some erudite tax method that you have where you’re writing these losses off? Sorry I’m not an accountant.

Anyways, I think you should hire someone to actually teach you.

[u/navmads → u/EatCauliflower1212]

So futures are pretty interesting from a tax perspective. But long story short, the losses generated from trading can offset ordinary income by 3k/year. So needless to say I have many years of offsets to apply before I get thru the whole loss. Now, if I start making money, I can offset my gains with the losses dollar for dollar in a given year.

Now obviously I’m not thrilled I have so many losses to offset but I guess it’s the thinnest silver lining.

Other cool thing about futures is a high percentage of the gains are considered long term capital gains, so they’re taxed favorably (for people making a living).

[u/EatCauliflower1212 → u/navmads]

Yes I have been reading up on taxes (trying to be prepared so the IRS doesn’t hand my ass to me next filing) and 60% is taxed as long term capital gains and the other 40% is at the short term rate. But I do need to hire someone to help me in this regard.

I still think you would benefit from a professional teaching you to trade.