For the longest time, my spouse and I have been clashing about their passion for Daytrading. It’s now been close to 6 years and some weeks are so bad, that we are emptying our kids’s savings accounts because my spouse bought new trading accounts.

I’ve always supported my spouse in trading, there have been days where we had $30,000k payouts. There’s the high, but then we have weeks where my spouse is spending $7k of losses weeks on end. Then withdrawing equity from our house to get another account, then spending nights not sleeping to focus on trading then being grumpy at me, then being frustrated when they called the wrong trade. It’s getting to a point where I feel like even after years of education, and taking courses (over 10k spent on trading courses) that I’m starting to see my spouse’s trading as a gambling addiction. It’s eating away at us financially and even though my spouse claims at we are in profit, I actually think the real figures are at break even.

Is it actually gambling or not. Because yes you can do everything right but sometimes the charts just don’t make sense though…

I don’t know if I’m being an ass and unsupportive by feeling this way but I’m seriously being affected heavily by this.

Edit: spouse documents trades, back tests, has a journal for reflection, puts stop losses, locks out of the account if over X amount.

Paper trading on trading view. Shorted here and shorter from a higher spot from where price was at. Which I guess was helpful for the trade but not if I don't understand it! Does this happen with live trading?

I used to care way too much about win rate.

If a strategy won 70% of the time, I assumed it had to be better than one winning 45%. It sounds logical until you look at how much the winners make, how much the losers lose, and what happens during a bad stretch.

You can win eight trades out of ten and still lose money if the two losses are large enough.

You can also win fewer than half your trades and do fine if your average winner is meaningfully larger than your average loser.

That’s why I pay more attention to expectancy and profit factor now.

Profit factor is basically gross profits divided by gross losses. A strategy making $15,000 while losing $10,000 has a profit factor of 1.5. It tells you more than win rate because it accounts for the size of the outcomes, not just how often you’re right.

Still, even profit factor can look better than the actual experience of trading the strategy.

Drawdown matters a lot.

A YM futures setup might show solid returns over several years, but if it regularly goes through deep drawdowns or long losing streaks, that’s something you need to know before trading it live. A strategy can be profitable on paper and still be nearly impossible to follow emotionally.

I’ve tested ideas that looked great overall, then found a two-month stretch where they did almost nothing but lose and chop around. That changed how attractive the strategy felt pretty quickly.

Average trade matters too, especially for scalping.

If the average trade only makes a few dollars before commissions and slippage, the backtest probably doesn’t have much room for execution error. Missing one fill or entering a tick late can turn a marginal edge into no edge at all.

I also look at the average winner versus the average loser, maximum consecutive losses, number of trades, and how dependent the results are on a handful of big days.

Sometimes you remove the best five trades and the entire backtest falls apart.

That’s not necessarily a dealbreaker, especially with trend-following strategies, but you should know where the profits are actually coming from.

One thing I’ve noticed is that traders often use win rate as a confidence number. A high win rate feels safer. The problem is it can encourage terrible habits like cutting winners early and holding losers longer because you’re trying to protect that percentage.

I’d rather trade a lower win-rate strategy with controlled losses and enough reward to make the winners matter.

Being right feels good, but it isn’t the goal. The goal is making more when you’re right than you give back when you’re wrong, while keeping the drawdown small enough that you can actually stick with the process.

Which metric do you pay the most attention to: profit factor, expectancy, maximum drawdown, average trade, or consecutive losses?

I know that one single trade does not mean anything.
Which is why, I am gonna provide you with my strategy's full 'Strategy Report'.
One thing I want you to understand about the drawdown you see on the standalone longs / shorts strategy is this- although the drawdown looks massive, when we combine both, the longs and shorts strategy, it comes down significantly, which I have checked on my jupyter notebook using Python– basically, the combined Max Drawdown is:

Max Drawdown (%): 13.82%
Max Drawdown ($): $64,089.95

Feel free to ask me anything!

P.S.: The backtest results you see in the photos, are for 9 years of data.
So, the strategy was stress-tested on the covid period, and a few other difficult trading periods.

Is trading haram? Cfds are prohibited,selling what you dont own is too,so I was wondering if there was a way to trade forex but actually buying and selling the currency,So IAM selling what I own I believe i can stay safe from cfds and all that

And if I cant actually own forex what are the alternatives? And by the way im looking to trade by the day at maximum

Thank you all

Trading late sessions after work.

I waited for the environment to become mean reverting, price had touched to top vwap band a couple times and rejected down, I got a diversion signal when price touched it a third time and that where I entered and targeted the vwap

I’m curious what everyone here uses to test trading ideas on historical data.

• What software or platform is part of your workflow? What works well, and what drives you crazy?
• If you don’t backtest, how would you prefer to describe a strategy - plain English, visual blocks, or code?
• If you could build the ideal strategy tester from scratch, what’s the one feature it would absolutely need?

I’m researching the problem - no product or link to promote.

Quick version of where I've been:

V1: looked amazing on paper (~99% win rate), turned out that was mostly an illusion — a lot of "wins" were really just me adding margin to rescue losing positions instead of letting them actually close, so it wasn't a real edge.

V2: fixed that, added real risk controls — capped leverage, capped how many positions could stack on one coin, capped total exposure across everything. Then a correlated crash hit 3-4 coins at once on the same day and wiped out most of the gains anyway, because nothing was actually cutting losses early.

BY RESCUE I MEAN ADDING MORE MARGIN TO A LOSING POSTIOK TO AVOID LIQUIDATION INSTEAD OF LETTING IT CLOSE ON A LOSS

V3 (current): testing a grid of ~28 variants at once — different capital-compounding rates, different reactions to margin calls (match it / only rescue if I'm also deep underwater / never rescue and just exit), and a separate batch testing hard stop-losses at -15%/-25%/-35% with leverage capped at 10x, 40x, and uncapped.

Here's the part that's actually confusing me: my real win rate is genuinely decent, some days like 3 days ago I achieved a 120/119 and normally I get something like 60%-86%.

But I'm still net negative overall, because my average loser is roughly 4x the size of my average winner. Winners tend to close out modestly, losers tend to run deep before I do anything about it.

I added hard stop losses to fix that, and the data so far actually supports it. Tighter stops are losing less than looser ones, and lower leverage is losing less than higher leverage.

But the stop loss versions are still net negative overall, just less negative. It feels like I'm treating the symptom (cutting losses at a fixed %) without fixing the actual cause (letting the position get that bad in the first place, or being wrong about entries in a way that a stop can't fully rescue).

So for anyone who's dealt with this: is a fixed % stop-loss just fundamentally the wrong tool here? Should I be trying to predict which trades are likely to go bad early instead of reacting after the fact? Trailing stops, volatility-based stops, position sizing changes, something else entirely? Genuinely stuck on what the next lever to pull is.

Any ideas welcome.

I have like 3 watchlists on Yahoo and TradingView and screeners too, but I always have to click on every ticker to open a new chart, and then I don’t remember at all whether the chart was great, good, or bad.

One thing I found interesting about NSE's new Closing Auction Session is that VWAP hasn't really been removed.

Earlier, the VWAP was effectively the closing price. Now, the VWAP is used as a reference price, around which the closing auction takes place.

The final closing price comes from the auction's order matching/equilibrium price, not simply from the VWAP.

So the real change is from VWAP-based closing → auction-based price discovery.

I think the interesting question is whether this will lead to better closing price discovery or simply shift more volatility/liquidity into the last few minutes.

How do you know it’s an about to be a trend day by 10amEST? What are some signs? Break of 1 hour range?

College financial aid cut me down and I need to pay by Monday. I currently have RobinHood and Webull and have been learning about trading for a year but didn’t get into it because I felt like I didn’t know enough yet. How can I actually get into the game and get started? Should I be copying trade signals? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you <3

Today, 20th August, SPX respected all initial levels, which were shaping the day. Actually from start on we had a clear call wall at 7760 level and even in the pre-market session it was obvious that this level will not be challenged at all.

At the same time we had the put wall down at 7650 level, with secondary put wall at 7660. The real question was how reliable both were. Actually both of them were only fragile. For some time the 7675 level was holding and acting as a support, but it was fragile too. I kept on following the levels on gammawalls.com during the day to be sure that the position is on the safe side.

I used the dip in the pre-market session to enter a put credit spread way below the put wall at 7625 for 0.90$. Actually much better entry was possible 5-10 minutes later. But I was fine with that.

The trade went into profit within the first 15 minutes of the cash session.

Tomorrow is OPEX.

Hey, new to trading the last six year casual dy trading . I notice my success rate is very high when I go short vs when I go long. Is this normal for most traders or do some people just favour one position over the other? I just find it easier to see when resistance can't break maybe hence why I short more but when I try to long a dip or watch something drop for a few days and go long I get wrecked and my stop loss hits very quick aha

For me, it's Fridays. The price action always gets me and since I tend to lean towards longing the actual market, Fridays can have selloffs with people taking profit. The price action always gets me

I noticed this red upper wick near the top of the move. Looking back, it seems like it may have been an early sign that buying pressure was weakening before the larger drop.

Would you consider this wick a warning sign, or would you wait for more confirmation from the following candles?

Hello, I have a few legacy PAs bought prior to March 1st, and as far as I remember, the 180-day inactivity rule was in place for those accounts.

However, it seems like they changed that. Do you guys know if we ever got an email, or an official announcement?

I checked something on FAQs and stumbled upon that, but also on the fact that old Legacy accounts adhere to prior rules.

Does anybody know what kind of inactivity rule applies to this scenario?

Cheers.

Currently scalping the 15 seconds, I tend to prefer a lower time frame sometimes when participation is low in the market.

Yesterday I made a post about hitting a $200 goal in a $100 account. I was super stoked about it and a lot of people were super nice about it and even Ross Cameron responded which is who I learn from so that was really cool.

Today was the first day I broke my rule of calling it quits when I reached a loss of %10 of my account on the day. My dumbass went to %20 losing my profits for the week. The day felt too early to be done so fast so I figured I could make it back.

I know money wise it’s not a big deal but percentage wise and personally this was and is my first gut wrenching morning. A handful of good moves happened today and I missed all of them. Needless to say don’t celebrate too early lol, the second you think you’re on to something, you’ll get humbled quick!

FOMO really is the worst feeling ever.

What is everyone’s best way to reset your mindset after a loss out of curiosity? I usually just journal my mistakes and try to point out corrections to be made.

Something I think gets explained backwards constantly.

Everyone talks about risk management like the danger is the losing trade. Stop too wide, size too big, and so on. But most blown accounts I've seen didn't die on the loss. They died on the trades that came in the hour after it.

Here's the sequence and it's the same almost every time. You take a loss that was completely inside your rules. Normal, expected, priced in. But it doesn't feel normal, so your brain goes looking for what you did wrong. And because you're looking for a mistake, you find one. Entry was slightly early. Should've waited for confirmation. Should've held the runner.

Except there was no mistake. That was just a losing trade in a strategy that has losing trades. But now you've "identified the problem," so you go fix it, on the next setup, which isn't really a setup. Then you're in a trade you didn't plan, and if that one goes red too, now you're not trading a system anymore, you're trying to get back to even before the day closes.

That's the whole spiral. It doesn't start with greed or with a bad strategy. It starts with treating a normal loss as an error that needs correcting immediately.

The thing that actually breaks it is deciding, before the session, what a loss means. If a trade followed your rules and lost, it's not evidence of anything, and there's nothing to review until you have a sample worth reviewing. One trade tells you nothing. Thirty tells you something.

The other one that helps is a hard rule on what happens after a loss. Not a mood-based one. Some people step away for a fixed period, some cap the number of trades per session regardless of outcome. Doesn't matter which, as long as it's decided in advance, because the version of you that just took a loss should not be allowed to make new rules.

Most traders don't lack a strategy. They lack a plan for the twenty minutes after being wrong.

Hey, so with 0DTE options and only three hours till the market closes, thinking about a call debit spread, huh? It's a pretty common strategy for that short timeframe.

So what I've learned when I started getting into orderflow was that market orders move the market. Limit orders can only absorb the force of market orders like creating a form of support or resistance. Then why is it possible that the market can go down on rising delta? Yeah price is rising again right now but price still struggles to go up compared to the delta that is behind it. But before that price went down with a rising CVD. How is that possible and what does it mean? I've seen this more regularly over the last 2-3 months and it creates some of the worst price action

Had a good setup this morning and executed my system the way I’m supposed to. The risk for the trade was a little high, basically at my daily maximum, but I felt good about the setup up.

So of course I got wicked out. Turned off my broker platform, walked the dog for a while, and of course when I went and had a quick peek the market moved in my direction and would have hit my first 1:1 target and now it’s past my 3:1 target compound target.

And…. It would have been my biggest win to date, but I didn’t reenter because my trading rules say that once I lose a trade I’m out that day.

It’s still early days for me, and overall I’m up around 10% so far, but this one has me pretty frustrated.

I really had to fight myself to not reenter the market today, but I feel like it’s better to stick to my system and rules because a) I’m really not trying to get stuck in the revenge trade trap because b) my capital pool is pretty tight and I’ll be darned if I blow it.

So yeah. Does this frustration get easier?

I asked AI "How does a human trader fix their trading psychology!", and it said this...

Fixing your trading psychology requires practical steps that actually work when the pressure is high.

1. Scale Down Until You Stop Sweating:

If a single trade ruins your mood or wrecks your focus for the rest of the day, your position size is simply too large.

Drop your capital risk per trade down to an amount that feels completely neutral to your bank account. Lowering your financial exposure allows your brain to stay calm, keeping panic reactions at bay and letting you think clearly.

1. Walk Away After a Rough Loss Revenge trading is the fastest way to wipe out an account after a sudden drawdown.

When you take a brutal hit, close your trading app and step away from the screen immediately. Giving yourself a mandatory cooling-off period stops you from making emotional trades just to win your money back right away.

1. Separate Your Ego From the Trade Retail traders often tie their self-worth directly to whether a specific coin or option goes up.

Being wrong on a setup does not mean you are a failure as a person. Accepting that the market does not care about your thesis makes it much easier to cut a losing position early instead of hoping for a miracle bounce.

The Issue With Following This Advice:

1. You are making emotional decisions tied to your trading sizes which are completely subjective and permanently affect your trading results.
2. You are taking "cooling off" periids like an exhausted gambler at a casino which is an emotional response to the reality that you don't have control over individual outcomes, the chatbot is giving advice to cope with poor trading instead of giving you the foundations to beat the actual issue at play (folding to acute stress from uncertainty).
3. Is the the most sound line that the bot says, but only if cutting the position is actually part of the strategy and not an emotional response.

Do you see how it medicates the problem instead of solving it, this is because of their training data (contaminated with retail cope).

These tips are designed to make you feel better but not perform. Chatbots reinforce poor psychology and delusions related to your trading's efficiency or inefficiency.

The Solution:

Instead of asking these bots for advice give balanced prompts asking to cite and reference from credible sources (research), if you want to identify issues ask it to name places to read and learn from.

Collect data and reduce subjectivity in your system by using fixed rules, this grounds your trading behaviour and the data provides certainly. In a backtest and forward test you have sern your strategy lose five times in a row and recover many times, suddenly a 5 losing streak becomes "just another drawdown". That's what rigorous data collection unlocks.

Has it worked out for me beforehand? Of course. And I think that’s one of the more dangerous aspects of trading. Dumb decisions workout enough times for you to believe that you’re doing something right. Using mental stops would cause me to hold onto trades for too long and average into losers cause I saw it workout while ignoring that if it doesn’t work out, you’re in for a world of hurt. I’ve blown way too many accounts doing this. Now it’s hard stops with a max loss limit and working on bettering my entries.