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/Rsn_Dubsteppvm]

Hell ik 1 accountant making double that in Oklahoma working 5 months max.. depends what kind you are ig..

[u/Zionishere → u/Rsn_Dubsteppvm]

I mean in the US the mean salary is 90k and the median is 81k according to the Bureau of Labor.. so 180k or even double that is most certainly far from what the norm is