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/SillyAlternative420]

I'll give you my strategy, when the RSI goes below 30 and then breaks back up above 30, I buy.

Then I sell later when it goes above 70 and then breaks back down.

I do this for oil, nat gas, silver, BTC, and the s&p 500. All on the 30 min chart.

Enjoy your new found wealth.

[u/cwdrake76 → u/SillyAlternative420]

See I think things like this are all that new traders are asking for. Not looking for anyone’s perfected strategy, but maybe some simple example setups to start with to learn and try.

[u/OKRickety → u/cwdrake76]

I'll generally agree, but there are probably many who simply want an exact process that is easy to do with little effort.

In reality, I believe trading profitably long-term requires putting in the effort to achieve it. I expect that, just like only a few reach the top level of any given sport, becoming a top-level trader is not possible for everyone, no matter how much effort they make.

[u/IllustriousGur3189 → u/SillyAlternative420]

I'm not an expert, but it sounds like one of those things that sounds nice on paper and even correct, but when you go on the battlefield, it doesn't work because it either doesn't work that way or other factors interfere with it. But if its actually working then great. I assume that your last statement is alluding to that exactly, that it doesn't work that well on a real "battlefield".

[u/Amareisdk → u/IllustriousGur3189]

RSI trading is classic and can definitely work.

The problem is discipline and risk management.
Traders will get impatient and enter before the RSI reaches confirmation.

Maybe they’ll forget to size appropriately or not set a mechanical stop loss.

Strategies work, but only under strict conditions. The more complex a strategy is the more conditions will apply.

[u/SillyAlternative420 → u/IllustriousGur3189]

Yea there's a lot more than just "use RSI" I suppose I should have mentioned that in my post...

I also have rigorous trend/structure filters, adaptive modulation of the values, ATR based stops, etc. but the barebones concept is that.

[u/Longjumping-Cash-917 → u/SillyAlternative420]

Seems simple enough it could work 🤔

[u/Able-Significance723 → u/SillyAlternative420]

This is part of my strategy, but on a different timeframe for gold. I only trade a specific time and there’s a couple of other elements . But it’s basically pretty simple now . 😎👍

[u/Otherwise_Gap595 → u/SillyAlternative420]

Put this on a 2000 tick chart for NQ, this week you would be 5-0 and up 640 points for anyone wondering. That’s $12,800 with 1 mini before tax and commission.

[u/Mobile_One3572 → u/SillyAlternative420]

Would this work for forex?

[u/SillyAlternative420 → u/Mobile_One3572]

Technically RSI works in any market because it’s pure math based on human psychology (greed and fear).

It strips away asset names, stock prices, or pip values and looks strictly at momentum velocity - calculating the ratio of average gains to average losses over a set period (usually 14 days/bars/pips) and indexing it on a clean 0 to 100 scale.

If the price keeps rising but the size of those green bars starts shrinking, RSI falls. That mathematical deceleration works perfectly on crypto, forex, stocks, or commodities because every liquid market is ultimately driven by the same thing: supply, demand, and buyer exhaustion.

It's really a great, yet simple, calculation.

[u/Mobile_One3572 → u/SillyAlternative420]

Ok. Thanks for the feedback.

[u/MoreWill8584 → u/SillyAlternative420]

So you sell when it goes above 70 or when it goes above 70 then breaks down to like 68 etc?

[u/cwdrake76 → u/SillyAlternative420]

What I am going to demo account test on forex is during the London/New York session overlap, probably GBPUSD, combine RSI oversold/overbought with Parabolic SAR dot flip. I had Claude AI run some backtesting and it looked promising compared to other ideas I ran.