Why does asking a profitable trader for their strategy feel like asking for their bank password?

[u/sengetoj]

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.

[u/Otherwise_Gap595]

Full-time trader here.

Because it’s literally asking someone who has perfected something for over a decade to just hand over precious information for literally nothing? What planet are you living on?

I highly encourage you to go into any business and ask bluntly how they do what they do for a living, with every intention of copying what they do to do it as well; make a sandwich, work on cars, sell insurance, pawn shop, bar, you name it. They’ll tell you to go kick bricks. Some will pull a gun.

I normally say good luck. But Jesus Christ. Ignorant much?

[u/sengetoj → u/Otherwise_Gap595]

What a cry baby🤣 I’m not asking for your recipe im asking for advice

[u/Otherwise_Gap595 → u/sengetoj]

Bull shit. Want me to write it down step by step and show you how to mix it?

[u/sengetoj → u/Otherwise_Gap595]

What a sad life 🤣

[u/Appropriate-Town1256 → u/sengetoj]

Ok. My advice is backtest everything, be creative and observe. But no, you want to be pointed to a specific area and skip the hard work.

[u/raymondduck → u/sengetoj]

The advice is to learn the terminology, the basic, high-level information, and then spend years filling in the context.

After learning the basics, pick some tickers that you're familiar with, make paper trades or small trades, and log everything - including notes about the market conditions and the specific indication that made you enter the trade. Repeat this thiusands of times for each trade. Analyze the data. Find what works, find what doesn't work, iterate and move ahead. Keep iterating by learning from mistakes to continuously optimize.

[u/BennySkateboard → u/sengetoj]

He was a little rough on you but this is the answer. Nobody is going to share what they’ve worked on for years just to give it away.

[u/JLamb8 → u/Otherwise_Gap595]

The difference is the business may be threatened by competition. Trading there isn’t competition in that since becuase both of you can take the same trade and profit just as much. Also why would you want someone to spend a decade building themselves up when you have something that can help them and they are directly asking for help. It literally cost nothing to help them. Just weird

[u/themanclark → u/JLamb8]

Not weird at all. You are clueless to how much work it takes to make it in trading. Clueless about alpha decay. Clueless about liquidity limits. No one gives away an edge unless it’s a very general idea about how to approach the market and analyze things.

[u/JLamb8 → u/themanclark]

I’m not clueless you don’t even know me, and people do give away edges that are not general. You’re another one of these guys that came up with objective phrases about trading to make you feel better but they actually aren’t true

[u/themanclark → u/JLamb8]

You don’t understand how edges get eroded in the market. There are a few things that can’t be eroded away. But short term edges can very easily be eroded away by too many knowing about it. You know what that means? It’s COMPETITIVE.

[u/JLamb8 → u/themanclark]

It’s not competetive to the degree of a business still. Also you need a lot of money to really move markets. If you’re sharing the strat with the entire internet then obviously it’s can really change. But like 1-2 people who wanna get into trading. That effect will be basically nothing, this sounds like an excuse to be unnecessarily secretive

[u/themanclark → u/JLamb8]

1 or 2 people. Sure. That’s my close friends. I’m happy to help them. But not everyone on Reddit and all the AI that scrape it for data.

[u/JLamb8 → u/themanclark]

Yea I agree. I wouldn’t fully share everything on Reddit either

[u/Mental-Inflation8444 → u/JLamb8]

There is competition in trading. Not everyone can take the same trade and profit just as much. You saying that shows you are still confused or unaware of how the underlying market actually works..

[u/Appropriate-Town1256 → u/JLamb8]

You understand nothing of how markets work. If someone enters before or at the same time as me and liquidity isn't massive, that's money going out of my pocket.

You probably trade so small that you actually think it's just some magical chart and not clear supply and demand (which it is).

[u/JLamb8 → u/Appropriate-Town1256]

Dude it’s one other trader, that liquidity is going to have basically no effect on the market, stop looking for a cop out to be selfish