1) 2 years. 3 years. I did work as a stock broker after college but it did not help with day trading.
2) CL primarily. Have recently started trading ES, GC and SI. I only trade ES,GC and SI when there is a macro shift in the market like Big move in US $ etc. With these instruments i take only 1 trade for the day. I actively trade CL throughout N.Y session.
3) Mark Fisher ACD and Market Profile.
4) 1, 5 and 15 minute.
5) Intra day.
6) 4-8 a day for CL and 1 for other trading instruments.
7) Money Management using ACD method.
8) No leverage. For Crude Oil , one need 15 k of equity. Thus if one has 30k account, one should trade 2 contracts. If one is not clearing 500-1000$/day on 70% of trading days, keep on practicing and do not increase position size. Get rid of indicators, chat rooms etc as soon as possible. Start a journal. Focus on ONE instruments and become master first before moving on to other trading instruments. For Crude Oil focus on getting 30-50 ticks of gains for each trade. Do not quit day job to start trading unless you have 2 years of living expenses. I have helped some traders. The difference between failures vs successful traders ( assuming trading method is the same) was that successful traders had their day jobs. Only one quit job but he had more money than i had.