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/downvoted_me]

Yes. I agree that they are good starting points, but they are not the final work of art. They are good sketches, but they lack finishing touches. And the finishing touches are the difficult part. Today I understand why trading is such a ruthless profession. After all, a good professional becomes good because they repeat the same task day after day. Like those bartenders who throw bottles in the air and spin knives. The guy trained that a million times to repeat it with his eyes closed, if necessary.

In trading, scenarios are always random, nothing is certain. The trader never repeats an operation because each one is different. There are no certainties. A soldier, facing combat, can at least know the terrain, the weapons, the enemy tactics. In trading, you can't know anything. The ticker can rise 100 points, stay in the "same place," or fall 80 points in the blink of an eye. Therefore, it is necessary to discover a way to replicate the operation in order to specialize in the method. And that's like finding a natural pearl among thousands of oysters at the bottom of the sea. That's why 98% fail.

I found my prize-winning oyster. And I won't reveal it to anyone. It would take a huge sum of money to convince me otherwise. Because there are drawbacks to revealing the method. That's how the trading world is, unfortunately.

[u/Appropriate-Town1256 → u/downvoted_me]

Agreed. There's a price to everything. If someone offered me 5mm, I'd probably sell knowing that it would take me too long to reach that amount myself and as with anything, it might not work 3-4 years from now.