I've actively bought and sold since 2012. In that time span however, I've probably only placed like 10-20 trades over 10 years. I spend wayyy more time studying

I've actively bought and sold since 2012. In that time span however, I've probably only placed like 10-20 trades over 10 years. I spend wayyy more time studying than trading. This is also a hobby and I did many other things in the meantime like studying portrait drawing, I started/sold a digital agency: https://buildthis.com/ https://buildthis.com/. So it wasn't actively trading. I once spent 8 months studying soybean futures after work only to wind up shorting the dow jones on a recommendation which netted me a couple grand in 30 minutes. If you think about that, that's a very small amount of money to make over 8 months. So I'm not exactly making a lot of money. But, at the end of the day, I have not lost money. I have only made money even though it is a TINY TINY amount. I'm talking like dollars.