The market is currently extremely poor: liquidity is leaving, order books are empty, technical analysis (any analysis at all) stops working against the background of the absence of 'real' money in assets. The smartest thing to do in such conditions is to take a break from trading and improve your skills.

There are at least 3 main options for learning: personal mentoring, group training, and self-study.

Personal training

You find an experienced scalper with an impeccable reputation in the scalping community, who openly shows their statistics and trades. You convince them that for the next few months you will become their apprentice (in a good sense): strictly following all the rules, keeping a trade diary, etc. In such a scenario, you can reach profitable trading as quickly as 2-4 months.

Provided that you have a psychological predisposition to trading.

The vast majority of people do not have such predispositions and will never be able to make trading their profession. This is a sad fact, but it should always be kept in mind and not build inflated expectations.

The only, but very significant downside of personal training is its cost. I don't think a professional scalper would be interested in working with you for less than $5000.

Self-learning

This is the path I once took. I regret it very much.

The main disadvantage of self-learning is that at the beginning of your journey, you do not understand which public traders provide useful information and convey sound ideas. You consume all the content available online (which is unrealistically vast now), and a mess of trading strategies, opinions, ideas, etc., arises in your mind.

The most dangerous aspect of self-learning is solidifying incorrect patterns of interaction with the market in your mind. It may take years to correct these bugs later.

Most people choose to learn trading independently due to a lack of funds for education. I don't want to give advice; everyone has their own life situation. But here's what I would do if I could go back three years with my current understanding – I would collect money for education and not enter the market on my own. I would go work in construction or as a courier for a few months.

Such an approach would ultimately save me a lot of time, nerves, and money.

Group training

In my opinion, this is the optimal option for a beginner who does not have the opportunity for personal training but wants to establish themselves in trading for the long term. The cost of group training is, on average, $600-1000.

You can undergo group training in a scalping community or in a prop company. In the latter case, by the way, there are options for free training. The most well-known scalping communities, from which many great traders have emerged: SIREYAN and ScalpSecta. (I do not know if they currently offer training; it's better to check with them). Prop companies with a good reputation: Vataga, LOG Capital.

In fact, there are a lot of crypto communities and prop firms. I have only listed those whose competence, personally for me, raises no doubts.

In my personal experience, the average time to reach stable profitable trading after group training is 6-12 months.

Agree that after a year of training, reaching the income level that, for example, a surgeon took 10-15 years to achieve is very impressive!

I will reiterate that these figures are only valid for those who have a predisposition to trading.

In the end, I would like to say a few words about what you absolutely should not do at the beginning of your journey.

1. Join paid (and free) TG channels with signals.

2. Buy access to closed channels where trading gurus reveal their secrets.

3. Buy courses or other info products from trader-bloggers who actively maintain their media presence. Specifically in what they do, there is nothing wrong. It's just a different profession. You can watch them for general development, but it’s not worth investing money there.

4. Crypto prop firms are gaining popularity now, where you can take (buy) a challenge and receive capital to manage. I will explain these firms in detail in the next post and why this is a scam. For now, just take my word for it.

Wishing everyone profits!