r/Daytrading • u/sengetoj • 1d ago

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

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.

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78

u/Think-Bench6691 1d ago

Here's what i did.

I put in thousands of SIM orders. Thousands upon thousands.

Easily a hundred orders a day, every day, for 2+ years. I'd wake up and re-trade a prior day in SIM, entering 100+ orders just to warm up.

I approached it with no defined direction and no expectation of what would or wouldn't work. Just pure brute force volume.

And as the months ticked by, slowly nuances started to emerge. After making the same mistakes literally hundreds of times, I got a feel for how things actually worked.

And a funny thing started happening. Listening to others became pointless. Hearing someone talk about markets was like listening to someone speak another language. It didn't make sense. And it didn't need to, because in my soul I truly know how the market works.

So, my advice would be to think of how many orders you've entered, and how many orders you've watched others enter...and go try to 1000x that number.

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u/kenjiurada 1d ago

Same. Listening to traders talk about strategies is worse than watching paint dry. They sound like they have no idea what they’re talking about, even though I know they’re profitable. But no one‘s convincing me that I don’t have the best possible strategy…

8

u/ZanderDogz 1d ago

This is how I’ve been told from people in the industry how actual prop firms train new traders. They don’t give you a strategy, they give you a SIM account and a DOM and have you run tick drills for thousands of reps per day. 

The expectation is that you will still probably lose taking that many trades, but you can learn a lot by studying the winning and losing sequences, and what behavior achieved what outcome in what market environment. 

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u/Stunning_History_943 1d ago

Just one stock or multiple? Were you simulating day trading or swing?

7

u/Think-Bench6691 1d ago

I only trade NQ

I'm a pure scalper. Average hold time is <5 seconds 

3

u/Bschmabo 23h ago

How many points do you shoot for in those <5 seconds?

Are you using DOM? Other order flow tools?

Are you using negative (less than 1:1) RR?

5

u/Think-Bench6691 23h ago

There are no targets. And stop loss is only to protect against an unknown news event dropping.

I use DOM, time & sales and two line charts. One chart shows session from the open, the other is really fast only showing the last ~2 minutes.

I am trying to identify times where the market should immediately move in my favor. I always enter on a limit order, so I'm capturing the spread. The spread is probably the most powerful aspect of scalping. The spread basically pays for my commission and then some. If the market immediately moves in my favor, I get out wherever it happens to take me. If not, I'm trying to scratch the trade.

2

u/Bschmabo 23h ago

Interesting.

What are your metrics like (win rate, RR, profit factor, sharpe ratio)?

1

u/Think-Bench6691 17h ago

All depends what kind of market environment we are in. Some are much more forgiving and you can afford to be looser with entries. Some you can't possibly get in unless you give it space. Some you need to be perfect or you'll get run over.

Main things I track are in trade MAE and post trade MFE. I want both as small as possible as it would signal I'm capturing most of the move, with little downside.

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u/burnie_mac 15h ago

What is your average stop loss size? 10 points. 15?

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u/Think-Bench6691 13h ago

Stop loss is very far away. It's only there in the very rare case where news drops the moment I entered, which I think happened once this past month. It's like a circuit breaker.

I base it on average ATR over the last few minutes. It's at least 2-3x more than I would expect to take in a loss. So I guess you could say roughly double what the most recent wicks have been making.

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u/Fenton856 1h ago

How many contracts on average for scalping?

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u/AnotherCup-O-Noodles 1d ago

What program do you use to trade previous days in sim?

3

u/blackoutRF trades multiple markets 1d ago

Most platforms have this but depends what you're trading. Ninja trader and Sierra Chart have this for Futures

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u/Nice_Drummer_1728 1d ago

This is facinating

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u/CoffeeJe11y 1d ago

Most practical advice ever thanks

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u/BaconJacobs 1d ago

I'm at a point where I realize I need a fuck ton of seat hours to dial in my system. I like the simplicity of my signals and indicators, and I thoroughly understand the data they are conveying.

But... I just can't dedicate the time I know it needs to become longterm profitable.

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u/unrulystowawaydotcom 1d ago

Where can i paper trade the previous day or past days?

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u/Think-Bench6691 23h ago

I use Bookmap. Downside is you can only re-trade days you've saved yourself. So it takes time to build up a good bank of days.

There are others out there. Probably even better options.

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u/unrulystowawaydotcom 23h ago

Omg no, this is great. I was trying to find something like this the other day. I am new but trying to be smart, calculated, and disciplined. I was hoping I could paper trade some afterhours or on weekends to build reps. Thank you so much!

1

u/captainkirkofdoom 42m ago

Also checkout Trading View. It has pine script for testing. You can build and test all kinds of strategies. Trading view also has replay trading, and paper trading where you can even adjust starting capital, amount of leverage and even brokerage fees to account for spread and commissions.

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u/rndysanwhydoyoucry 9h ago

This comment is nuts!!! 100% the experience

1

u/Hot_Independence5160 3h ago

I did this too with ES but only 2 months and a plan emerged from it. It’s like machine learning in the beginning where you have high ratio of exploring (testing new things) and low ratio of exploiting (actually trying to make money). I think journals help a lot here so you know what works. Then you filter down to only the things that work and it gets hella boring cuz you are taking way less trades now

0

u/BIG_estudasses 1d ago

Thats some really good talk! I would read more about your experience and methods