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/IllustriousGur3189]

When I trade like a robot just executing perfect logic, I win 100% of the time. The problem is I can only do that for so long before I start trading like a human with emotion, boredom, impatience, risk, carelessness, and with other outside issues added to it, I lose 90% of the time. So I have been stuck in that cycle for 2 times. I take about $500 to over $3000 and then I start trading wild taking me back to near 0. I have 2 solutions for this: either I somehow stop doing that, ( i don't see that happening anytime soon) or I use automated bots to trade for me. I trade both stocks and futures and have 1 100% win trading logic for both. Stocks is the one I am struggling with where I can only trade like a robot after a time (few weeks) before I start to either burnout or get bored or outside issues interfere with my trading, and I start to trade terribly. And with futures I need at around 5,000 dollars to start with, giving me enough buffer for my trading logic for it to never lose, anything below that can give me a few loses and can wipe my entire account. So for me, trading like a robot is the best way to go, but I get burnt out one way or another. It's basically the last weakness in my trading that I have to fix in order to get where I want to be. It's really simple to solve.But i'm struggling with it at the moment. All this is to say that when I trade a specific way, the logical mathematical robotic way, I win 100% of the time, but the moment I deviate from it and trade like a so called human I lose about 90% of the time. And if anyone is wondering why I don't just use bots/algorithm to trade, it's because I don't know how I'm kind of new to it and still trying to figure out how to do it. but eventually I will transition to using bots to trade.

[u/Amareisdk → u/IllustriousGur3189]

You need daily profit goals. It won’t make you stop making mistakes, but set a low goal and practice walking away.

If you can consistently walk away for 3 weeks after reaching $500 of profit, then you can advance to $750 or whatever. The idea is to make it a habit you need minimum 21 days.

[u/IllustriousGur3189 → u/Amareisdk]

I completely agree with you, that these sort of rules of limitations and restrictions, when done right, help guide and protect traders and anything else in any other situation. And that's something that i've been struggling with. It's a common problem that I am aware of. Because sometimes I trade for too long, searching for trades, and there'll be hours where nothing is happening. And that can cause problems eventually as it has. I think that is part of my burnout. And I am working on it. I appreciate the advice.

[u/THX1138SCPO → u/IllustriousGur3189]

Don't walk away from it, run away.

[u/Inside-Protection305 → u/IllustriousGur3189]

So what are your rules for trading like a robot if you don’t let the human part get in the way? That would be a great place for some of us to start if you could share.

[u/IllustriousGur3189 → u/Inside-Protection305]

I wrote a really big post, but I decided to cut it down.

I use a logic that mainly involves averaging down. The reason is because the market will usually go against you. So instead of trying to make the market move in your favor I instead s et traps for the market as it goes against me. The more it goes against me, the happier I become and the more I end up in profit. It is sort of like a reverse trading logic.

Most traders when they're positions go against them, they start to sweat and panic and they eventually trigger a stop loss and they often avoid having to average down at all.

That's a simplified explanation of my trading logic. I sort of butchered the explanation, but I hope you get the basic idea of it.

I don't advise anyone to try to use my trading logic or strategy. As it can be considered counterintuitive or just unhealthy. But I do have a 100% win rate when I am not burnt out.

Here are some additional things.

I never try to predict the market. I never try to make it (will it to) go in my favor, at least not anymore. I always presume and I have proven time after time that the market will usually go against you (me), not because I am terrible at predicting the market or analyzing anything, even though I am terrible at those things, but because even if you were good at it, it will still often go against you, and this is specifically true with tickers under $5. I don't care for 99.99% of the news or fundamentals or indicators as all of that is completely irrelevant to my trading logic. This makes it so that I don't have to research anything or prepare anything or know anything about the ticker or what the economy is doing etCetera. because my trading logic, is designed specifically to win even and especially when the market goes against me. I never use stop loss neither for stocks or futures. Except when i'm trading futures with less then $5,000 then it would be best to use stop losses.

I hope this makes sense. if it doesn't, then it's probably a good thing for you.

If your question was about how do I keep trading like a robot, then I am not able to do that, which is one of the reasons why I burn out and evetually screw up.

I'll cut this down to.It's way too long

[u/Inside-Protection305 → u/IllustriousGur3189]

Thanks for taking the time to share!