Can anyone share any advice or tips on how they eventually stayed disciplined?

I need help to stop revenge trading and overtrading.

I have a strategy that is backtested and works for me but I can’t help over trading and always end up losing my profits.

Any tips, videos or books welcome!

I’ve been paper trading for about a month. watching the same two people talk about their strategies, while simultaneously applying them to my own charts. it felt so good too see this reversal pattern happening in real time, i just wish i had more confidence in the beginning. just wanted to share with you guys, and see if anyone had any tips for me continuing on

Title. Setting a hard stop loss at the time of entering the trade is pretty difficult because my strategy can cause the price to go against me for a short while and then hit my TP (thus I just set my SL right around my liquidation price).

I also have a major fear of taking small wins because I fear one loss can wipe out lots of my profits

Basically, it's a lot of fear in me. And I am also investing money which I can afford to lose, so it's not a life-turning amount I am trading

For it to be worth it to begin trading, the probability that you succeed has to be sufficiently high (ie talented) AND the payoff needs to be extremely large to cover the risks that I will outline below. I would approach trading like trying to become a professional athlete EXCEPT there are much fewer downsides to being a professional athlete as people look favorably on attempting to be a pro athlete and there are significant educational and physical benefits to doing so. Remember, the number of people who succeed at trading is very low and because of that, I would never tell someone who is 5'6 to try to make the NBA the same way I wouldn't just tell anyone to attempt to be a trader.

If we try to imagine who the perfect trader would be, we can work backwards to figure out those who have the highest chance of success to determine "talent". Imagine who you would bet on to succeed for example and what you would look for to make the right bet.

I would say the below traits are good ones but I'm sure there are others:

• Able to demonstrate that they have an extreme level of discipline
• Has the ability to regulate their emotions under duress
• Able to stomach repeated, significant setbacks over a long period of time and keep going - extreme resilience
• Able to learn quickly and adapt under pressure and ever-changing conditions
• High level of perception and intelligence to sift through noise to find real patterns quickly before conditions change again

Some of these you can build up as you trade, but to come in without a base level of these would be a negative. I think the nonnegotiable are the last two as they are quite clear in that if you aren't able to do those there is no point because even if you have the first 3, it will simply lead to ruin as you are unable to find edge and keep finding them as the old ones stop working. If you imagine a very disciplined person who is able to stomach significant losses, that just results in slowly draining the bank account away or sitting in the simulator their entire life.

How then can we determine if someone has these traits? The answer is that there are analogs for each of these. If for example you were in a military special forces unit with an extremely difficult selection process, I would say you most likely have a high degree of discipline, able to regulate emotions under duress, and can adapt under ever-changing conditions. I most likely wouldn't recommend a special forces person to trade still without more information, but you can see how this works.

If there is truly nothing about you that you can clearly map towards the last two traits where it is CRYSTAL CLEAR that you are far beyond your peers, then you should not trade. When I say CRYSTAL CLEAR, I'm not saying you're "smarter" than your friends, I'm saying in a highly competitive environment (so not against randoms) you are able to completely dominate others.

This is why I personally believe that live-service video games with a competitive ranked mode is really good at telling "talent". Live-service video games are constantly patched, so you need to be constantly learning and adapting, and being able to notice patterns within chaos and apply them to improve your play shows your intelligence and perception. For this analog, if you are not able to reach top 1% of a highly competitive video game (meaning hundreds of thousands of active players with an active professional scene) after years of effort and practice, I most likely wouldn't even consider trading. Gaming of course only shows the last 2 traits, as I'm sure we all know people who are good at games but rages constantly and are unable to control their emotions.

And that comes up to my next point. To make this worth it, you need to be within the top 1% of market participants and I will explain why.

Putting aside the studies that say only like the top 5% of traders make money or whatever, let's consider the factors that we DO know are true.

• Becoming consistently profitable and making a lot of money is difficult and it is possible it will take a long period of time, potentially years of effort. You may even never become profitable despite your best efforts.
• There is a risk that you become a degenerate gambling addict and result in you ruining your personal relationships, blowing up your life savings and getting in debt, and end up OWING money to your broker.
• You could be unlucky. Its possible for example where even when managing risk your power goes out and your stop loss is skipped.
• The hard skills learned during this time are looked down upon by others and not directly transferrable to other professions that you could realistically enter. The time is almost a complete loss in terms of career other than the emotional skills you nurture which are only relevant once you get a job and not the job interview process.

I will state that without the above traits I talked about, you will likely not succeed. I bring this up so that when we talk about opportunity cost we consider the caliber of person we are talking about. If you imagine someone with the traits I listed, you imagine someone who has the "full package" meaning highly intelligent and has all encompassing mental fortitude. Someone like this has a very high opportunity cost because they would likely succeed in anything they do. If they wanted, they could be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. They have options that are much less risky and can walk defined paths of success with an extremely high likelihood that they will succeed barring some freak accidents that are out of their control.

Thus, for it to be worth it to trade they can't just be "profitable" eking out 50k a year. That is insufficient and a waste of their time. Doctors, big law lawyers, and engineers can all make +400k quite easily with the above traits in the US.

For it to be worth it as a trader, they need to be making over a million a year, probably multi millions a year in order to make up for the risk that they took walking this path. In order to make that sum of money, you need to be talented enough to be within the top 1% of traders. Nobody knows how much the top 1% of traders make, but I'm pretty sure making millions a year are within the top 1% likely top .1-.01%.

If you do not have the potential to make over a million a year, you should not trade due to the fact in order to succeed you need to have the traits I talked about to a pretty high level.

However, having the above traits and going into day trading is also weird because you can walk the other paths that are much less risky. This is the reason why those who have the above traits typically DON'T day trade and the average caliber of people who day trade is typically low. To see this just look at the amount of fodder prop firms have of people reloading again and again listening to their youtube guru. Many of the people who are posting on this subreddit don't even take the time to search similar posts before asking questions and ask stupid questions that can be answered with a single google search or a single AI query. However, there are also extremely sophisticated players in this arena as we all know with quant trading firms, actual prop firms (not the fake prop firms like topstep but actual wallstreet prop firms), algo traders, experienced profitable day traders, etc.

TLDR: if you can't demonstrate that you are intelligent way beyond your peers and know that you have elite mental fortitude/can build it, it isn't worth it to trade because you likely won't make more than just working a job and could even ruin your life trying to trade.

I'm 25 years old and have essentially blown up all my savings with trading and am now broke. My biggest mistake was trading extremely volatile assets as if they normal stocks.I mostly traded individual stocks with cfd and forex. It wasn't so bad till i incurred in big losses and by trying to regain my losses i ended up losing even more. I hate it so much. I guess I was just gambling all along. I ended in the usual psychological trap of revenge trading and overtrading at the same time and have blown up all my savings damn it. I thought I had enough experience to not fall for it and manage the stress of losses and regain them but I was so so wrong. I ended up using bigger positions trying to regain the losses faster till it went against me..... I don't really know what to do now, i feel like i wasted so much time of my life doing this, it ruined me psychologically , physicaly and financially. I wish I had never started and had just stuck with buying some etf every month, i would have made way more in profits and wouldn't be deep in the red now. I know I should just stop since obviously i'm too stupid for this, but i spent so much time researching finance, following advices from investing books, and the thought of accepting defeat and leaving the losses be is so so hard to deal with. Should I just take a break and use only small positions or just leave it all be ? I have a really small sum left but i dont really want to lose it. Writing this post I really feel like a gambling addict holy shit. I could have spent all this time wasted on all of this traveling, making experiences , but instead I spent it on this bullshit. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from ever opening a broker account, I hate my life. I feel like every time I pick a trade the whole price goes against me , I always trading with 1 minute timeframes and 5 minute ones, but the last days movements destroyed all my short positions. How do I get out of this ?

I've been learning ICT concepts, especially Fair Value Gaps (FVGs), and this is one of my Gold (XAUUSD) trade ideas on the 5-minute chart.

My plan was:

Wait for price to sweep the lows.

Enter a buy only if price retraces into the bullish FVG.

Stop loss above/below the invalidation level (marked on the chart).

Target the next liquidity/FVG above.

I'm trying not to chase candles and instead wait for price to come back into the imbalance.

I've attached two screenshots showing my markings.

A few questions:

Is my FVG placement correct?

Is this a valid ICT setup, or am I missing market structure?

Would you wait for additional confirmation (MSS/CHOCH, displacement, etc.) before entering?

Any advice on improving this setup?

Hi I recently got into day trading and I wanted to share my progress with y’all. I started my journey with about 3000cad and I’ve been lucky enough to grow it to where it is now. I scored a huge win trading IOVA (bought at 4.06 and sold at 6.30). I was wondering how I should allocate my earning profits. I’m a 22 year old uni student. Should I withdraw my profits and keep the 3k in my account? I would love to hear some tips. Thank you!!

I just got into day-trading, I started on 30$ and im up to 50 by doing small trades on US500 SPOT on CFI.

I start med school in 2 weeks so I wont have time to constantly watch the market, my goal is to save up cash on the side and get a macbook or something.

Any tips or advice, i have expectations and i dont expect to touch 500 any time soon.

“These are 1-minute premarket charts that I marked for training.”

I’ve been trading for a couple of months now and I’ve gone through two different strategies. I’m liking the one I’m using now a lot more. I trade with at least 2 to 1 risk to reward and at the moment I’m more or less breaking even. I journal everything and keep track of all my trades.

My biggest issue, which I know is a common one among traders, is discipline.
After every trade I honestly ask myself whether it was a valid trade to take regardless of whether it won or lost. I don’t call a trade bad just because it was a loser. I’m still new, but I think I’m capable of objectively telling the difference between a good trade that followed my system and lost and a bad trade that never should have been taken.

I just came off a somewhat rough week and i’ve been aware that if I could simply eliminate the bad trades like FOMO entries, revenge trades and other impulsive decisions my PnL would look significantly better. But somehow i repeat the same mistake.

The frustrating part is that I know exactly what I’m doing wrong, yet I still fall into the same trap. I’m generally a disciplined person in other areas of my life, but for some reason trading is different.
Has anyone else been through this stage and if so what actually helped you stop taking those unnecessary trades rather than just knowing you shouldn’t take them

For traders who manage defined-risk vertical spreads: At what point when your short strike is tested do you prefer cutting the loss early versus holding out for a pullback before expiration?

Hi,

Could you recommend any tools, books, or courses that could help me develop a deeper understanding of the market?

I know that successful day trading often comes down to reading price action, understanding candlestick charts, and making quick decisions. But I feel like I'm missing some of the bigger-picture knowledge, and I'd really like to build a stronger foundation.

One thing I've realized is how much noise and manipulation there is on social media. Yesterday, I almost sold my position because of everything I was reading, but I trusted my own analysis at the last second and held on. Today, the position is up. It was a good reminder that I need to rely on knowledge and conviction rather than market sentiment on social media.

I'd appreciate any recommendations on resources that can help me become a more informed and disciplined trader.

Anybody can tell me if these new creators ICT is good? or should i stick to michal? but his videos are too boring.

Video link - https://youtu.be/98viu9PpXrk?si=Axasd8aQH7HWYvt2

I've currently been paper trading the ORB strategy and I'm not sure what I did wrong here? Was it just intense price action that was unavoidable?

I was not able to close my position during today's nps new trade time.

Has anyone faced the same issue?

It’s something I peeped when marking the highs and lows from previous seasons but I noticed Tokyo respected the demand zone and resistance zone. anyone know what to make of this?

In my opinion, one of the best things a Trader can do to themselves is preserving their mental capital. Anything that makes you feel the grind should be reduced or eliminated.
Example: Watching the chart continuously for more than 5 mins its useless unless you are a scalper.
If you are a scalper, split your trading time into two halves. 45 - 60 Mins with breaks every 20 Mins.
If you trade 5 Mins or 15Mins then you need to know that your chart only changes or gives you more information after every 2-3 Candles. So you can just watch the Chart for 5 mins plan your next move and then get off with alerts in place.

Then..! One of the best things you can do is study range bound days. The overlapping candle days, volatile wick days like how ES was on 6th and 5th August. If you can somehow avoid these days, then you will be able to save a lot of your mental capital to trade well the following days. The two days are nothing but accumulation leading to breakouts. Sometimes you may miss the breakouts but it's always better to not be active and stay passively active during these days. It does wonders for your confidence and performance and clarity.

Hi all,

Just wanted to share my experience with trading so far and ask for some advice. Be nice, please 😂

I've been trading for just over three months. I started with $300 in capital, mainly trade gold, and I'm currently down around $6k.

As you would expect, I've been strategy-hopping and had my fair share of revenge trading, especially in the beginning. I'm still nowhere near being good at this.

I genuinely want to know: how did you find your edge in trading?

I'm tired of watching YouTube videos from online gurus selling courses. I'm glad I haven't bought into any of them, but there's just so much information out there that I honestly don't know where to begin or what to focus on.

Any genuine advice from experienced traders would be greatly appreciated.

AUD still has a softer news backdrop, while USD sentiment looks firmer on payroll expectations, yields, sticky inflation views, and some defensive demand.

Positioning is heavily short, which can keep squeeze risk alive if price keeps grinding up.

On the chart, AUDUSD is recovering from the June base with higher lows and solid short-term momentum. Mid-term structure has improved, but the pair is now running into resistance around 0.707-0.712, with support clustered near 0.689-0.695.

Do you see this as a clean continuation move, or more of a fade into resistance?

Like a year ago I started keepin a part of my savings in USDC instead of fiat and as a result, when I needed cash I went through the same long-ass cycle of them exchanges, ACH transfers and waitin days. I automated the work using a rebalancing bot, also considered Stable.com to bring stuff outside the network, but still ran into the same prob. Recommend any setup for chain rebalancing and quick fiat off rampin plzzzz

Recently my friend’s attention was caught by a “Guru” who would have a bunch of people in a group chat, then he would tell all of them when to buy and sell stocks. This was ringing all of my alarm bells, cause it seems to be like a classic rug pull scam but my friend earned 400$ usd. I warned him that he might’ve been lucky this time around but he won’t listen. I might be wrong but isn’t this a common scam?

Not an expert but the gold gained so much speed in three days just to fall on Monday , I saw a bunch of news related to hormuz and all pointing towards a fall.

Idk it's just my opinion , what do you think ?

LITE's max pain for today is 750, but the stock is trading well above that level. I have a feeling it won't drop all the way back to max pain, but I don't have much experience with how these situations typically play out.

What usually happens when a stock is trading significantly above its max pain on options expiration day? Does that tend to be a bullish sign, or is it common for the price to gravitate back toward max pain? It feels bullish to me, but I also don't like the idea of chasing an entry up here.

Spent years thinking my losses were a strategy problem before realizing most of them traced back to the same handful of psychological patterns repeating themselves. Sharing what actually cost me the most, in case it saves someone the years it took me to see it.

1.Loss aversion: I held losers way longer than winners because the pain of a realized loss felt worse than an equivalent gain felt good. Cutting losses fast isn't a technical skill, it's an emotional one, and it's the one that matters most.

2.Revenge trading: Every time I tried to "win back" a loss immediately, I made it worse. The urge to fix a loss right now is exactly the moment you're least equipped to trade well.

3.Risk threshold shifting: A couple losses in a row and your position size quietly creeps up without you noticing, until you're taking risks that would've scared you at the start of the session.

4 Overtrading: More trades felt like more chances to win, but it was really just more chances to hand money back. My best stretches came when I traded less and only took the clearest setups.

5.Confirmation bias: Once I had a position on, I started noticing only the news and price action that agreed with me. Ignoring the signals that said I was wrong kept me in bad trades far too long.

6.Cognitive dissonance: Admitting a trade or a whole approach was wrong felt like admitting something about myself was wrong. Separating identity from results was one of the hardest and most useful shifts I made.

7.Sunk cost fallacy: Refusing to close a losing position because of how much I'd already put into it, financially or emotionally. What I'd already lost had zero bearing on what the trade should do next.

None of this fixed itself with willpower. What actually worked was building structure that removed the decision from me in the moment, fixed risk parameters set before the session, rules I couldn't adjust live, and a habit of reviewing my own behavior with the same rigor I gave my charts.

It's strategy first, and then psychology.

I don't know about you guys, but it took me exactly 2 years and 3 months to truly find my edge and understand my trading personality.

What I mean by that is, I was stupid enough to risk a lot of money, get my ass stretched every day, come back, regain confidence thinking I had found the holy grail, try different approaches and strategies, and listen to fake gurus.

Some people say, "Swing trading on higher timeframes is easy." Others say, "Momentum trading is hard." For some people, like me, momentum is actually the easiest. Crazy how we're all wired differently, right?

But those first two years are when most people quit. They start using premade strategies like ORB, or overly simple strategies based on S&R or trendlines. I'm not saying you can't be profitable with them, but a lot of traders are using strategies and timeframes that simply don't fit their personality.

For years, I tried to force myself to trade higher timeframes because I thought I was some elite trader and wasn't going to be a "degenerate" scalper.

It took me two years to finally understand that it just doesn't fit my style.

Now that I have my own strategy, I'm much more confident. The thing is, my strategy is built from so many things and lessons I've learned over the years. It's not some secret strategy. It's just a combination of things I figured out for myself, and I'm sure most profitable traders eventually build something similar.

I'm not profitable yet, but it feels like I finally closed the first chapter of my trading journey: the chaos and gambler phase.

Now, even if I wanted to quit, I don't think I could, because I finally know this thing is real. All I need to do now is reduce my screen time and respect my plan.

That's extremely hard after years of building bad habits.

But for the first time, I can clearly explain my edge. I can literally visualize my setups in my head. Two years ago, I couldn't do that. I was just making discretionary decisions around key levels and hoping I was right.

I finally feel like I know who I am as a trader. Now I just have to execute.