If you are just starting out trading

If you study the Market Wizards or other many very successful traders who are not featured in market Wizard , most took around 10 years to put together a complete method. Many blew up couple of times before that.

What happened during that period is they had many beliefs and assumptions that got shattered or changed.

If you are just starting out trading your objective should be to reduce that timeframe from ten years to few months. It took me around 2 years to be profitable. Those 2 years were intense 18 hours a day effort to learn about markets and test thousands of things.

Most important thing is not to blow up during learning stage. The Market Wizards and others might have done that , but you don't need to repeat that mistake. I  never lost original capital during learning phase. In fact multiplied the original capital many many fold in last 14 years.

Reject lot of hypothesis , you will hear lot of things about market or stocks, don't take those things at face value. Your ability to reject ideas is important.

Find out what actually real traders use. This is the most important thing. Find out what tools they use. What setup they use. What kind of process they use to find and manage trades. The earlier you do it higher will be your probability of being successful.

Find how traders really make money. Do they make it on one or two big trades in a year. Do they make it by catching hundreds of moves. Do they make it by risking large amount to catch small move. Often highlighted trades can be deceptive. If I say my trade made 15% , it mans nothing unless you know what was the size of the trade and how much was it as % of capital. Get hold of actual trades of real traders with entry exit and more importantly position size to understand how they really make money as against what you believe they make money. That might be eye opener for you.

Talk in person to real trader . You will learn more that way. Person to person interaction will tell you more as you can get things clarified. Never give up an opportunity to meet face to face with good traders. One hour spent with them will help you learn more than reading hundreds of books.

Innovate around indicators and patterns. Obvious things do not work. I see lot of new traders trying to trade things like MA or MACD and then they are frustrated. Learn to use them in innovative ways and you can make them work. Most edges are built by innovating around indicators or patterns , obvious and popular things  do not work as good as you think they should. Most successful traders will tell you that.

Don't spend crazy amount during the learning period. Use free resources and internet.