Why Your First Few Years of Trading PnL Don’t Matter

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]This one trading mistake cost me over a billion dollar. Yes, I Lance Brightstein, a trader with over 15 years of experience and a hundred million dollars in verified profits, could have been a billionaire had I learned the lesson I'm covering today. Then I'd be on a yacht with Bezos instead of making YouTube videos. Just kidding. I'd still be making these videos. Anyways, here's the big lesson that traders overlook and the 10-step framework that can help you avoid this mistake. This all goes back to a concept presented in my favorite book ever, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

[00:00:34]James Clear explains that what you achieve is based on three factors. Your starting point, your rate of growth, and the time period that elapses. This framework applies perfectly to understanding what your career P&L will be as a trader. This is a beautiful simple framework, especially when you consider that if you're a trader watching this video, your starting point already occurred. So your whole career can be reduced down to two variables.

[00:01:00]The rate of growth, which is kind of how fast you learn, and the length of your career. Most traders obsess over their rate of growth. I spent my career trading at Trillium, running a desk, and working with traders at every level.

[00:01:12]Naturally, everyone obsesses over skill.

[00:01:15]How do I get better? How do I improve my risk management? How do I size up my trades? Or how do I control my emotions?

[00:01:21]All traders build out a process to improve, like using a daily report card, as I explained in this video, or they back test new strategies while they refine their current ones. They trade with other traders to help spot more opportunities and improve faster. And traders spend dozens of hours working to fix their FOMO or overtrading issues.

[00:01:40]All of those actions influence your rate of growth, and they are extremely important. Those actions are fully within your control and are the most direct way to influence how much you achieve in your career. For that reason, that is where 99% of the content in this industry lives. And yes, it does matter.

[00:01:58]And it's why I cover that sort of stuff on my channel. But using our framework with those three variables, the third one is arguably just as important and almost completely ignored. That variable, career length, and not appreciating it appropriately is what led to my billiondoll mistake. I underestimated this variable, as most people do, because it is so hard to grasp that if we work our asses off on the second variable, rate of growth, it's highly likely that our trading P&L over the course of our career will grow exponentially, not linearly. Here's what I mean by that. In your first year, you might lose maybe 20 grand. The next year, you might lose 10 grand. Then the third year you might be break even. It's wrong to assume that you will then make 10K and then 20K in the following years.

[00:02:46]That would be approximately linear growth. But with trading, most successful careers follow an exponential curve. Meaning you might eventually make 10K, then 50K, and then 250K in the following year. Early in your career, the results are almost always underwhelming. My first year, I lost money. My second year, I barely made anything. Even a few years in, there was nothing about my P&L curve that would have suggested I'd go on to have 8 figure P&L years. And that's not unique to me. I need to emphasize this hard.

[00:03:20]That is the standard path. The P&L curve is flat early, then it starts to bend, and eventually, if you survive long enough, it goes vertical. And that is where all the money is made. Now, let me explain my billion-dollar mistake. I did not follow the 10 steps that I'm going to outline in this video. And while I still trade, I don't do it anywhere close to full-time or at the intensity I used to. Now, what's crazy is that you saw my P&L curve from Trillium. Yet, in 2024, 3 years after I left Trillium, I had my best trading year ever by a mile and continued that curve even higher. In 2024, I made almost more than I made during the rest of my whole career. Now, think about if that growth continued or even stayed the same over the course of a few decades, making well north of $10 million per year for decades, then compounding that money in the market.

[00:04:12]Look, I'm not young, but I'm not old either. The future worth of those career earnings invested is easily well over a billion dollars. And yes, this is an extreme example, but the concept applies to all of you. Focusing on having a long career is how you build true freedom and a lifestyle that you can sustain because there are countless stories about traders who make it big, upgrade their life, then they can't afford to keep it.

[00:04:37]And that's why I make videos on mastering your mindset, and they're in this playlist. There's a stat about Warren Buffett that sounds almost fake, but it's true. Pretty much all of Warren's current wealth came after he turned 60 years old. Not because he suddenly got smarter, but because compounding had enough time to do its job. Trading works the same way. Your edge compounds, your capital compounds, and your confidence compounds. But none of that matters if you quit before you reach that phase. And that is exactly what most traders do. They grind through the hardest parts of the curve where progress feels slow and where the money isn't consistent. And then they walk away right before things would have started to click. So the real question isn't just how do you get better, it's how do you stay in the game long enough to let compounding work in your favor.

[00:05:22]The goal is not to be the trader who burns bright for a few years and then disappears. The goal is to be the trader who is still in this game 10, 15, 20 years later, continuously improving and positioned to capitalize when the right market conditions show up because those periods will come. Mike Bellofury of SMB Capital always does such an incredible job emphasizing this point to his traders. For every 10 years, most years will be average. A few years will be awful, and you're even going to question whether you want to stay in the game.

[00:05:53]But there will be a year or two where everything aligns, where your skill set perfectly matches the environment, and the opportunity is everywhere. Those years can define your entire career, but they only matter if you are still around to take advantage of them. Maximizing career P&L comes down to how well you execute on these 10 steps so that you can survive for the long run. And this is a framework I wish every trader understood early because every single one of these ties directly into whether you make it to the part of the curve where the real money is made. Step number one is playing your own game. One of the fastest ways to burn out in trading is forcing a style that doesn't match your personality. If you're naturally slower, more analytical, and patient, trying to scalp news at high frequency is going to drain you. If you're high energy and thrive on fast decision-making, sitting in swing trades might drive you insane. That mismatch creates issues and issues lead to burnout. The traders who last are the ones who align their strategy with how they naturally think and operate. Step two is trading with your friends or building a tight trading pod to work with. Trading is an incredibly mentally taxing job. And doing it alone makes it exponentially harder. When you have people around you going through the same process, it reduces the emotional load.

[00:07:04]You get accountability, you get feedback, and you get perspective.

[00:07:07]Isolation is what accelerates burnout.

[00:07:09]while shared experience makes the grind much more fun and sustainable. Step number three, socialize with traders in real life. And this needs to go beyond just having a discord or group chat.

[00:07:20]Being around other traders in person normalizes the ups and downs of the job.

[00:07:24]You realize that everyone has draw downs. Everyone has doubt and everyone has stretches where their trading strategies don't work. That perspective keeps you grounded during tough periods and builds long-term resilience. Step four, making risk management your top priority. Nothing ends a career faster than one bad loss. You can be doing everything right for months, even years, and one moment of poor discipline can wipe it out. Your number one job is survival. That means respecting your risk limits, cutting losses when you're supposed to, and never putting yourself in a position where one trade can take you out of the game. Step five, building a daily routine you can actually sustain. There are periods in your career where intensity is required, especially early on when you're learning. But if your entire approach relies on maximum effort every single day, you're going to burn out. You need a routine that balances effort with sustainability so you can show up consistently over years, not just months. Step six, chasing mastery instead of money. When you focus on money, you create pressure, anxiety, and short-term thinking. When you focus on the long game of mastery, you improve your process, and the results will follow. The traders who last in this game are obsessed with getting better, not just getting paid. Money is the byproduct, not the goal. Step seven, diversify your life outside of trading.

[00:08:43]If your entire identity and emotional state is tied to your P&L, you're putting yourself in a dangerous position. You need other outlets, whether that's relationships, hobbies, or even, dare I say, fitness. This reduces emotional dependence on trading and it makes the inevitable volatility in your results much easier to handle.

[00:09:02]Step eight is using experience to build perspective. Over time, you start to see patterns not just in charts but in your own performance. You realize draw downs are temporary, that hot streaks don't last forever and that the market moves in cycles. That perspective is what allows experienced traders to stay calm while newer traders spiral. Draw downs will happen and instead of reacting emotionally, I follow a strict draw down process which I share in these two videos. So if you know what's good for you, you'll watch them after this one.

[00:09:31]Like all the videos mentioned, they're linked below. Step nine is about removing expectations. Expectations are one of the biggest sources of frustration in trading. You think you should be making more, progressing faster, or performing at a certain level. And when reality does not match that, that creates pressure and anxiety.

[00:09:49]That pressure leads to forcing trades and making mistakes. The best traders though, they stay grounded in the process and let results come when they come. Step 10, evolving your strategy as your life evolves. The market changes, but so do you. Your priorities will shift. Your energy changes, your interests change. The traders who last are the ones who adapt. They adjust their style, their size, and their approach to match both the market and their current life situation. That flexibility is what allows them to stay in the game long enough to capture the real upside. If you execute on these 10 steps, you are not just improving your trading, you are extending your career.

[00:10:26]And that is the real edge sometimes because the longer you stay in the game, the more you allow compounding to work in your favor. And if you're serious about building a trading career, check out my trading course so that you can save yourself years of costly mistakes and be one of the traders that is a long, profitable, happy career. My goal is to teach you how to fish and show you how I think in my monthly Q&As's, trading reviews, and if you want, you can even book a one-on-one session with me. You know where the link is. Thank you for watching. Hit that subscribe button, and I'll see you in the next one, cuz we're all going to go on for a nice, long, happy career.