You are right, to become a profitable trader you need to have a strategy that works and the second option you gave is also correct but one important thing that you missed to add is risk management. A trader could have the right strategy and can also know how to effectively use the strategy but because they don't know how to manage risk, they can not maximize profit but would rather encounter so much losses or even blow their accounts. The good number of times that I blew up my account was not because I didn't have a strategy that worked for me but it was because I was not taking care if my risk properly. I still use the same strategy till now and it works for me.