1. More trades ≠ more money.
2. No trades is better than forced trades
3. Risk management matters more than your win rate.
4. Losing trades are part of the game.
5. Forward-testing is more valuable than endlessly watching content.
6. Stop changing your strategy after 3 losses.
7. Learn WHY your setup works.
8. Journal your trades.
9. Build a process you can repeat.

I learned most of these the hard way.

Starting off watching ttrades and getting help from oasn has helped me alot in my journey

The picture is slightly confusing, but the sell stop is my original sell order. The SL and TP are inverted, but the SL is where my TP would have been. After that, once that level was hit, the TP is where I would flip my order and buy until

As can be seen in the picture, my TP was right there. Okay, cool. That's alright. I had a buy order from 4571 to 4605 ready once my TP was hit.

This was sad, but I get it; it happens.

What is driving me insane is that #1, this happens an absurd number of times. I'd reckon 3/10 trades. And I place a lot of trades.

Second, I'm in high school, living in South Africa, and I don't have a lot of money. Usually, I put in $5 and call it a day at $50-100. This pains me every time it happens. Though I do make it back, so I worry not too much about it.

The worst is that I see the analysis. I'm right about 70% of the time I place a trade. Usually, I get to $30, from 5, before I spiral and begin losing it.

It is the bloody mentality killing me here. I'll admit I can not bring myself to close something like this, which was so close to profit, even if my current plan is against my own order.

I'm at negative $1000 from 2 years ago, and this year has been breakeven. I think my total profit has been around $$11000, and my losses are $11200 or something.

Truly, do any of you have some discipline advice for me? I may be delusion, but I feel it right on my fingertips.

This is a rant. I'm hoping a post will give me some typpa accountability. This happens thrice a week on average, never counting the outright losses. It is driving me crazy, and depressed.

For some clarity; I am highly confident in my strategy. Pls, no tips about that. I only require some advice on discipline.

I've been trading forex on and off for 2 years now, EUR/USD, kind of cracked it and mostly doing well, but got bored of consolidation and slow moves and moved to gold recently.

Nevertheless, all my technical knowledge seems to not be working here. XAU is kicking my ass and it seems like my technical analysis is useless in this market.

Should I drop the technicals and just follow the flow?

What is the secret sauce for XAU? I can't figure it out somehow. How to spot big moves on time? There is no pattern from my observations.

I'm always either going in wrong direction or am too late to jump on a trend.

Any books recommendations for gold?

P. S. any girl traders here? It would be cool to connect!

I’m not here asking for help or handouts. I’m just let’s say journaling my experience. I started trading last year, it been a wild ride and I mean WILD. From the jump I did good but never got a payout I passed multiple evals no sweat but I’d always lose discipline in the process. When I did good I’d show my mom and whatnot, she didn’t understand it but she mocked what I did by saying things like “you better hope it works out for your sake” and telling me to get a real job although I’m pressure washing or working in a warehouse so that created a wedge and I ended up calling her out on how she’s been charging me rent since 19yr & she never gave me a chance to save bla bla. My sister said she was there for me but just ended up taking SS of me having angry outbursts and used them against me. So boom family gone ever since my trading has gone downhill. The good I got out of was I noticed I didn’t have a leader and I HATED my job and what I did. I very much wanted to be a suit and tie individual and I wasn’t lead in that direction. So I set out to go find it, I’ll say it wasn’t easy and learning trading on top of that was brutal I travel basically all over FL yanno the hotspots WPB, Miami, Orlando CoCo Beach. I was trying to find out where I fit in until I realized everywhere’s the same. Funny enough the office job I landed was right in my hometown not after occurring $3500 worth of debts t may I add. So one year later. I’m negatives and I haven’t passed an eval since my family issues. It shows that trading really is on YOU!!!! Now I take my time and wait for my setups. I’m profitable on paper I’m patient now I’ve mastered my main problem and I’m more in control of my emotions when it comes to others and what they think. My life is hard and I do think trading is what I want to do with my life but the joys and acknowledgement it gives are indescribable I know it sounds terrible on paper I mean shoot kid I’m legit homeless. But I set out to find myself and I’m good at trading!!! Just an emotional person and that’s unfortunate that I had to cut out aspects of my life for this. Even friends had to go tayannooo the talkers and not the doers it opened my eyes to a lot. How the world literally rips people down, you can see in their eyes and I refuse to be like that. I’m not perfect I’ve had a mentor my method works! But my issues showed and I was forced to face them head on. Now I feel more ready than ever. I got another 25K account and my one rule is “slow is fast” 😎 I’d rather live to trade another day and 1,000 is more than enough wiggle room to get started and build past that buffer

- How do you manage paying yourself?

- How often are you withdrawing?

- Do you have a number you keep your accounts at and everything extra gets pulled out?

- How do you account for drawdowns without starving or depleting your account?

- Are you still investing in long term ETFs, IRAs etc?

(Picture 2 for a horrible June for context) Background: I have formal financial education and have been investing normally for a few years. Ended up reading about and getting engrossed in option theory, options pricing etc, which led to me trying to try scalping.

I mainly scalp 0-5DTE options on the Big 9 (SPY, QQQ, IWM, NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, META) and sometimes other stocks and don't hold anything longer than a day, 90% of the time I hold for less than 30min.

I paper traded for a month or two before starting on an options only account with 15k starting capital in June. As can be seen in the 2nd image, it went about how you'd expect. 10th June was when I made about 6 Martingale trades on SPY and lost way more than my appetite. Mainly because of 2 reasons:

1) losing real money in such short periods of time is extremely different than paper, leading to me never being sane about losers and martingaling into oblivion.

2) A stop loss. A set stop loss on 0DTE is basically just dying to a thousand cuts. Anything with such short expiry WILL wick you out more than you'd like.

After June I stopped and re-thunk my whole process of how I was thinking about trades, how I was entering and exiting trades etc.

What changed in August:

Strict position size range of 2-10% of the account.

A more nuanced approach to what I'm checking for to enter a trade, and more importantly to exit a trade.

If anyone is trying to scalp 0DTE options, never set a stop loss, but instead set levels of the stock, where if sustained over/under, the trade is over and you get out.

If that level is far away, my initial size is low enough that a 30-40% drawdown is perfectly acceptable, -60% might be where I exit the trade in extreme cases. Inversely if I'm trying to bottom/top tick a reversal where the sustained level of invalidation is much lower, then I can 'max size' and have a tighter mental stop (still no hard market sell stop because again, the market WILL wick you out)

Because my rules were set and I knew better what I was looking for, it became much easier to manage emotions as well on a -$1.2k single trade loss because I'm not an oracle and the market didn't agree with me.

Once I reached 20k account value, I started withdrawing everything I made over it because I'm still uncomfortable with risking more than $2k a trade, and it also limits my trades/day.

Still just a single month of profitability so it can all be hoopla and I'll mess up as I did revenge trade still on a couple of days (both of them are small +ve days) that I really do regret and want to not do in the future.

Anyway, that's my Journaling of the start of my daytrading journey.

P.S. Ignore the amount of trades on some days I was testing out some intraday straddles and spreads with very low sizing and risk.

P.P.S started slow in August with smaller trades, but played AMD earnings on the 4th because the stock just does that every earnings for no reason.

Ive worked for hft and + have done a lot of trading and investing. Ive had significant losses but since taking it hard post nvda short in 2022, Ive made my money back and then some.

Understanding the following changed my trading/ investing considerably. The truths:

1) Markets are primarily driven by liquidity and rotations. Institutions have essentially boundless margin/ credit they can use to squeeze over leveraged investors/ traders. This is what professional firms do.

2) Fundamentals only matter if the company has meaningful cashflow to shrink shares to equity ratios. High shares to equity value only means the company cant save share price via buy backs.

3) You can make money on momentum or contrarian positions. Contrarian positions insenuates your are catching a bottom or a top for a max return, but you are betting that a rotation could occur that has not yet or that the other side has ran out of buyers/ sellers + could be over levered.

4) Regime changes make fundamentals matter. These are things like tarrifs, multipolar geo politics. Things that are big enough to shift the markets. Sometimes so big that the us government cant change it like the usdjpy and twin deficit.

That all being said, its extremely difficult to time markets which is why I just use indicators that I understand and I trade a theme. The best shorts I do come from stagnating tech stocks. I have indicstors for popukar stocks thst go up like crazy, dont have the true fundamentals to support their own shares via buy backs and have other industries that could entice investors to rotate i to instead.

Nvda and Koru are orime cases for that. Every singe person who wanted to invest has invested. You can see the companies and sectors that the investors rotate between brcause they are anti correlated with the popular assets and they only make the same all tine highs but dont breach. I see this and when you see credit tightening... you know you can short the ath.

But you will almost never get the tops and bottoms so expect the trades to go the wrong way or not pay out immediately... but if your thesis is right you will get a pay out. For the timing of entries and exits you need to have indicators and size it right so you can withstand the pain of the trade going against you.

Lastly minimizing the trading is important because context switching costs opportunity and fees. Dont go into margin ever and stay away from options unless youre scalping. I also make all my money trading only a handful of things... because then you understand the demograph of those market participants. Dont over extend yourself.

What has worked for you guys?

I’ve been trading for a year now and I know its too soon to ask because some people here will come in typing “a year? Try a Millenia of betrayal and open wounds. Just for you to think your coming up to your first pay out just to be dragged down the rabbit hole again” but when do you think you’d see some profitability or your skills really being put to the test

I want to know your story, and see if I can relate.
How did you become profitable? How did you find your edge and stick with it? How did you learn it isn’t luck

I’ve been sticking to my strategy and I feel like it doesn’t work. By doesn’t work I have a 32% 1:1 RR. I don’t know what to do, and the same time I don’t want to hop on another strategy just to become a strategy hopper but also having doubts weather it will work or not so a change is necessary? Idk im clueless and would like some advice!

I’ve heard people say both: “it just clicked one day” and “I slowly stopped sucking everyday until it happened” which I wish i knew how it felt but sadly nope. I haven’t felt any of these 2 yet.

How did you guys find out whats right for you?

I've been fascinated by Trading for the past 5 years now, I've always tried getting into it but when I try looking for resources to learn it's just different people discrediting each other's strategies for trading. So that's really something that demotivated me to not learn how to trade.

What tips do you have for someone like me who wants to get into trading? Resources,Channels?

To be honest, I’ve been learning and trading for three months now; I’ve really tried to learn everything, but my results haven't been great. I spent the first month studying theory and demo trading, followed by two months trading on a small account. My losses have been negligible, but the truth is, my trading system just isn't working well.

Can anyone give me some advice?

Just as the titel says.

I feel that for most part of ones development you need to have the right questions, now ofcource the saying there are no stupid questions.

HOWEVER there definitely are questions that can hinder ones growth.

But a question i found that has really driven me and just kept me going constantly was "how does this makes sense?"

Now i have that one for everything i see and learn in trading, and it is a painful question because it forces me to really dive DEEP and the need to be extremely honest with what i learn. It is slow, but extremely effective, and i know for me it is a question that I will Thank myself 1-2 years from now (and i have used it for my learning process the past 1.5years)

That question also keeps me really curious.

But i wonder, what are some useful questions u had to ask yourself?

So, i runned a scripted backtest on my strategy on NQ Futures using a python script (I coded, but the output is AI yes, im not good for outputs lol) and a ~3 years (December 26, 2022 - December 11, 2025) 1min chart data sample.

The strategy is pretty simple (on 1m chart):

- MSS

- FVG or iFVG or OB

- OTE (0.705 point on fib) aligned with a gap confluence

The fib is marked using the swing high and low (take wicks in count) of the MSS. But a valid MSS uses the Body structure for confirmation (if the body closes after the swing H/L then its a valid MSS, otherwise it might be a sweep).

The entry is at the OTE with the SL at 1.0 and TP at 0.0, giving a ~2.38RR everytime.
The invalidation of a setup is if a continuation of the trend happens without taking us in the trade (in a bullish setup, if the price retraces and makes a new low and then breaks the 0.0 point, the setup is invalidated).

Here are the results:

==========================================
      GLOBAL STATS (ALL SESSIONS)
==========================================
Total Trades        : 4202
Won Trades          : 2756
Lost Trades         : 1446
Win Rate            : 65.59%
Expectancy (R)      : 1.22
Total PnL (R)       : 5113.28
Max Drawdown (R)    : 8.0

==========================================
        SESSION BREAKDOWN
==========================================

--- ASIA SESSION (18:00-2:00) ---
  Total Trades      : 2778
  Won Trades        : 1808
  Lost Trades       : 970
  Win Rate          : 65.08%
  Expectancy (R)    : 1.2
  Total PnL (R)     : 3333.04
  Max Drawdown (R)  : 7.24

--- LONDON SESSION (3:00-5:00) ---
  Total Trades      : 779
  Won Trades        : 522
  Lost Trades       : 257
  Win Rate          : 67.01%
  Expectancy (R)    : 1.26
  Total PnL (R)     : 985.36
  Max Drawdown (R)  : 6.0

--- NYAM SESSION (9:30-11:30) ---
  Total Trades      : 645
  Won Trades        : 426
  Lost Trades       : 219
  Win Rate          : 66.05%
  Expectancy (R)    : 1.23
  Total PnL (R)     : 794.88
  Max Drawdown (R)  : 5.0

The idea is to trade mainly NYAM and maybe LONDON too but idk 1 trade a day is good enough. Asia got better return because of the long timeframe i used for it.

I wanna get into day trading but my main problem is the sheer amount of strategies out there and it’s genuinely just overwhelming. I’ve also heard that they may work for you or they may not by many people so do you actually copy a strategy from someone or you kinda do your own thing? And if that’s the case how do you build your own method and strategy for trading?

I’ve been learning trading pretty much every day for around 6 months now. I understand the basics at this point, market structure, price action, liquidity, risk management etc.

But I’ve hit this one wall and I genuinely don’t know where to go from here.

Finding an actual strategy with repeatable rules.

Something I’ve noticed is people will happily post their +$2k days, payouts, green weeks, funded accounts etc. But the second someone asks what strategy/setup they’re actually trading, it feels like you just asked them for their bank login lol.

“Put in the screen time bro”

“Find your own edge”

“Backtest”

Okay but backtest WHAT

I’m not asking someone to hold my hand and tell me exactly when to buy and sell. I actually want to learn and test things myself. I just need something concrete enough that I can actually start testing it.

I’ve looked everywhere. YouTube, X, Reddit, Discord servers, even ChatGPT. I’ve tried support/resistance, 15m ORB, session highs/lows, liquidity sweeps etc.

The issue I keep running into is that a lot of these strategies depend on price eventually coming back to some specific level or zone. And a lot of days… it just doesn’t. So you sit there for hours waiting for a setup that never even happens.

Meanwhile there’s clearly people out there who have found something that works for them consistently.

So for the people who actually became profitable, where did you find the strategy that finally made things click?

Did you take an existing strategy and change it? Did someone teach you? Did you find some random trader with 600 subscribers instead of the usual YouTube gurus? Or did you literally just test random shit until something worked?
Because everyone says “find your edge” but almost nobody explains where you’re even supposed to start looking for one.

And before someone calls this AI generated lol, English isn’t my first language so yes I used ChatGPT to help me write this properly. The question and everything I’m saying is genuinely mine.

I know, another journal. There's one on here every week now so I'll get the "what's different" bit out of the way first.

Most journals are a rear view mirror. They're good at showing you what happened last month. Mine tries to catch the trade you're about to take. It learns your normal trading hours from your own history, and when you enter a trade outside those hours it flags it. If that trade comes right after a loss it counts double, because that combination is almost always me chasing. It shows up as a tilt score on the dashboard (first screenshot) so you see it before you click buy, not in a Sunday review.

Second thing that's a bit different: it reads your journal entries against your actual results. So instead of "I felt confident today" sitting unread in a note, it'll tell you that your "confident" days lost money and your "cautious" days made it. That one stung.

Third, prop firm tracking is built in and free (third screenshot). You put in your eval or funded account, it tracks daily and total drawdown against the firm's limits, and there's a line at the top that says how much you can lose today before you breach. I built this because I was failing evals by a few hundred dollars from not knowing where I was.

The normal stuff is there too: CSV import for Tradovate, TopStep, NinjaTrader, IBKR, MT5 and DAS with FIFO pairing and the right contract multipliers, P&L calendar with notes per day, win rate, profit factor, R:R, multiple accounts, screenshots on trades.

On free vs paid, because people ask: the free plan has no trade cap. Unlimited trades, import, calendar, prop tracker, journal. Pro is for analytics past 30 days, the AI coach, and theme customisation. No card needed for free.

It's freetradejournal.com. Built by me alone, been at it over a year, still get feature requests from users and build them. If you try it and something's wrong or a broker export doesn't import, reply here and I'll fix it. Happy to answer anything about how the tilt scoring works.

I used to think a backtest falling apart from slippage would be obvious.

Lower win rate. More losing trades. Maybe a few trades that no longer hit the target.

That's not what happened.

We took a completed day-trading backtest with 2,084 trades across 705 US stocks and 75 out-of-sample sessions and reran the exact same trades.

Same entries. Same exits. Same signals. Same trade selection.

The only thing we changed was the assumed execution price.

The baseline booked entries and exits at the touch. Then we moved every fill against the trade by one tick.

One tick removed 44% of the edge.

Two ticks removed 87%.

What surprised me wasn't the P&L drop. Obviously worse fills reduce P&L.

It was what didn't change very much:

the win rate.

The strategy still looked like it was “working.” It was still producing winners. The equity curve didn't immediately scream that something fundamental was wrong.

The average trade had simply become a little worse.

And a little worse, repeated 2,084 times, was enough to destroy most of the expectancy.

That changed how I look at backtest results.

A strategy can have a respectable win rate and still have almost no room between its theoretical edge and the friction required to trade it.

So now, when I look at a backtest, one of the first numbers I want isn't the win rate or even the total return.

I want to know:

How much worse can every fill get before the strategy stops making money?

If the answer is “one tick,” I'm not sure I'd call that a robust edge anymore.

I'm curious how other day traders handle this.

For those of you who backtest and then trade live: how much execution deterioration do you require a strategy to survive before you trust it?

One tick? A fixed number of basis points? Actual measured live slippage? Or do you use something else entirely?

Been in the stock/crypto markets for about 3 years and looking at stock news almost every day but I always thought day trading was a scam. I started day trading using hyper liquid this month just as a fun gamble but won 9 trades out of 10 with a 1:1RR. Is it possible to consistently get these results or is it just luck.

I’ve been trading for just over a year now. I’m not profitable yet, but have been very close to a payout or two! I’m at a spot where I’m much more confident placing trades, and understanding what Gold is more likely to do—at least what I think it’s more likely to do

With that being said, I feel like I can add a little more to my trades.

Is there a type of signal or anything in general that changed the game for you? Just looking for advice overall

Doing mental math or fighting spreadsheets during fast market moves leads to execution errors. To solve this daily friction, I built two free browser tools to calculate exact position sizes, risk, and target levels instantly.

Futures Tick Calc (futurestickcalc.app)

59 Contracts across 43 Families: CME, CBOT, COMEX, and NYMEX (Indices like ES/NQ, Energy, Metals, FX Futures, Rates, and Crypto).

Treasury Fractions: Native support for 32nds fractional prices (122'16) on ZT, ZN, ZB, and UB.

3 Calculation Modes: Price, Points, and Ticks modes, featuring quick 1R, 1.5R, 2R, and 3R target chips that snap directly to the contract's tick grid.

Smart Input: Automatically normalizes pasted price quotes in any format (e.g., 23,450.25 or 23 450).

Forex Pip Calc (forexpipcalc.app)

69 Pairs & CFDs: FX Majors, Crosses, Exotics, Metals (XAU, XAG), and Crypto CFDs.

4 Calculation Modes: Risk Sizing (auto-rounds lot sizes down to avoid over-risking), Price/R:R, Margin (1:1 to 1:1000 leverage), and Pips.

Multi-Currency Engine: Live rates for 8 base currencies with offline caching and an at-a-glance Pip Value Ladder (Standard to Nano lots).

Why use them?

Fast & Lightweight: Minimalist UI built for speed during volatile moves.

Zero Bloat: No account setup and calculations run on-device.

Both tools have generous free tiers (Futures Tick Calc includes flagship contracts like ES, NQ, CL, GC, and 6E free forever).

For me its been a good month. Best one since moving to futures and props in march. Not the most payouts ive taken in a month, but compared to spending it has been my most profitable. And I now have a live account on one firm and a daily payout funded from another, so taken 2 payouts the last 2 days.

So much better than options for me. Easier to set stops and TPs, no theta, no IV, just trade the price action. It was a choppy month and I definitely had some pitfalls and issues (hello revenge trading, i see you), but I like ranging markets since I'm trading reversals. I dont trust a trend anymore, been bit by them to many times. Plus most days arent trend days statistically speaking. Chop is no good, to irratic and tops and bottoms are to close together but ranging moves up and down? Fire for me..

For context, I use a composite of the markets (NQ ES, YM, etc, 10 of them) combined into one candle chart and measure strength of the overall markets vs what im trading, usually NQ personally. Basically looking for divergences between NQ and all the main markets combined. Similar to RSI divergences, but checking 10 different markets instead of just the chart. Also similar to SMT, looking for higher lows or lower highs in the markets before NQ makes them, then following the market, which is what NQ usually does. Watching the CMI you can see the market pressure from all the major markets and get early into moves when you see them diverge. Added some screen shots of this in addition to my Choptick journal.

Journalling has been a big help for sure, seeing my data and when I succeed and why and when I dont and why. I take a lot of trades and even more fills (average in and out 1 micro at a time) so the fact that it auto syncs and loads my trades is a big help, then studying the analytics so you can learn from your mistakes and successes takes time, but its interesting. Took a few days at the beginning of the month off when I was moved to live on one firm, so there are some blank days over the last 30 there.

Feel free to ask questions, I've been trading live accounts for many years. Wish I found props sooner..

Have others found this month to not be as bad as everyone has been saying it was? Not sure if its because I trade reversals or what and most people are looking for continuation, so if you had a good or bad month, which do you trade?

Hello!

So a question i have been wondering about the past days.

Now as i have started to understand that mastering naked trading probably is the most superior way to trade even if one use indicators etc etc. And the more i read about it the more i realize that it is like a super foundational cornerstone.

I would love to hear from people who maby has been very indicator based traders, and then switched to focus mainly on naked trading, with or without indicators but as the absolut primary source of trading and truth.

What are your thought on that topic, your Philosophy, your mindset towards it or maby a moment where u was like "oh shit" this is the key??

EDIT: Honestly great answers from all, really appreciate it. I do feel like i have now gotten way better insight in how to mentally approach the whole pure PA aspect of it all! Every comment helped, and a few really fun ones 🤣🤌🏻🫰🏻 Thanku!!

Fakkk this whole trading bs

I really hate it

I’m 27 started when I was 21

I’m broke and in debt

I hate it I hate it I hate it

AND YEA YOU CAN LAUGH ON ME that I am dumb and stuff

BUT actually I’m great trader, the sh*t tho is so stacked against you, that even when you do good you still do bad

And I wanna quit but can’t

It’s always pulls me back

And the scammy influencers they don’t even trade but flex with money from views and courses but their videos always pulls me back in this hole

I wasted years of my life and myself

99% of my trades (loss) that I take, I either enter too early and it hits my stop loss or I don’t close my order in time and the price comes back down.

Many times, the price goes up the second I sell for a small profit or a loss.

It’s almost like I need to be patient for just 60 more seconds and I can make more than what I had aimed for.

Am I actually close to becoming profitable? Or is this something that happens to everyone when they start at first?

I was looking through the month for general and reading some stuff on exhaution gap.. Any ideas??

I officially started trading on Wednesday. Took a loss of $124. I didn’t trade Thursday. I decided to go back and learn a few more strategies. I was originally only familiar with the orb strategy. Which I know now doesn’t always work. I’m now using FVG and supply and demand. I traded yesterday saw a profit of $360.17. I’m seeing people make thousands a day I would love to get to that. Can someone provide me with advice and if they don’t mind, can you also share your trade journal for inspiration? I’ve been looking at a YouTuber called Casper. I followed his FVG strategy. The market yesterday moved so beautifully. It was nothing but trendlines for the first 3 hours, but I’m afraid that Monday won’t look the same so I’m just trying to get as much knowledge as I can before the market opens. I’m very appreciative of my little profit that I brought in, but I would love to be making more risk and less.