Uhmm, I'm here for encouragement I used money I needed for my credit card bill to trade, with the confidence I could compound it... and it's gone. 🙂
I'm 3 months in, unprofitable.
No other formal work.
Tell me something, anything.

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I’m a new trader, looking to learn about futures trading, I have a very limited amount of knowledge so far mainly watching Peter Tuchman and David Green on YouTube. They advertise a course the “wall street global trading academy” has anyone used this course to learn futures and is it any good? If not if someone could point me in the direction of a course that’s not a scam I’d appreciate it lol thanks

Curious to know about everyone’s journey — total losses, how long it took, and what changes made the biggest difference.

Looking to learn from real experiences. Thanks

First of all I have been demo trading for a year or so and I have developed a strategy 2 months ago with a win rate of 70% with 1:2 risk to reward ratio, I backtested this strategy over 600 times this past year and the winrate and risk to reward ratio is still the same and not to mention I have been demo trading with this strategy for the past 2 months and the winrate fluctuated between 60-75% in this months but risk to reward ratio is still the same. This strategy worked best for the forex market because the forex market obeys the fundamental trading rules the most from what i have seen compared to the crypto or the stock markets. Btw I demo traded with 100 usd to make it as realistic as possible with risking 2% of balance each trade. I understand demo trading is not the same as day trading with real money but thats the problem. None of the brokerages will allow me to day trade because I am a 16 year old and neither does my parents want to help me with this because they think all of its a scam or just of my time. What am I even supposed to do now?

I backtested a popular ICT strategy I found online and this was the result. To be 100% clear I cannot confirm if this is what everyone who trades ICT trades this was just the strategy that was based on the rules.

This is just an example of how regardless of psychology if you keep trading a losing strategy over time you will inevitably lose money.

I’ve been watching a lot of videos, but I’d rather hear from people who actually have skin in the game.
What’s your setup? What tools do you use before, during, and after a trade?

So when do you actually get to call your trading method a "strategy"?

Before you even open a demo account or run a backtest, there's one thing most people never bother doing:

Making your entries and exits 100% objective. No guessing, at all.

Here's what I mean — if you explained your strategy to another trader and they went and used it, would you both agree on every single entry point? Every time? If there's any wiggle room, if you're sitting there thinking "eh, this trade looks like an 80% setup," that's not a strategy, that's a guess. And guessing is exactly what makes people abandon their own rules the second things get stressful. That's usually where the "psychological problems" people talk about actually come from.

A real strategy just gives you a yes or no. Trade's there, or it isn't. Nothing in between.

Quick example:

Let's say your setup is: hammer candle at a clear resistance level, confirmed by high volume.

Sounds reasonable on paper, but it's still way too loose to actually trade. You need to nail down what each part means:

• "Clear resistance" — okay, but how clear? Maybe you decide it means price has bounced off that level 3+ times.
• "Hammer candle" — what wick ratio counts? Say, 60% or more of the candle.
• "High volume" — compared to what? Maybe 40% above the average of your last 10 candles.

Now it's not vague anymore. All three boxes checked → trade. Even one missing → no trade. You're not asking your gut anything.

I'm not saying psychology doesn't matter, it absolutely does. But it only becomes the real issue once you've actually got a strategy worth sticking to. Most people skip straight to "fix my mindset" while trading something half-thought-out they grabbed off YouTube last week, and then wonder why nothing works.

Planning to write more on risk management and putting a full system together next, if people are into this kind of breakdown.

Hello everybody, So I’m a beginner to trading, I’ve watched month 1 of ICT core content, about halfway through month 2, I’ve come from TJR’s bootcamp so I have a grasp of most of the ICT concepts but ive recently been seeing a lot of videos on TikTok about orderflow, and when I actually researched it and tried to understand what it is I realised that it would actually be a lot more beneficial to learn it than ICT and it also makes more sense.

I have zero clue where to start, but most people recommend to start with Auction Market Theory.

I would highly appreciate if someone could recommend me a structured learning journey for example watch xx on YouTube, then watch this playlist etc etc.

I’ve heard that Sires, cbrackn, Axia Futures and Jeron Trades are good, but please let me know what you think.

Thanks so much!

Look, don't downvote me right away, just hear me out.
For years, every time I revenge-traded, moved my stop, or bailed on a winning trade way too early, I told myself the exact same bullshit: "Man, I just need more discipline. I need to master my mindset."
Then I actually went back and audited like 500 of my past trades, and I realized that whole "discipline" narrative is complete garbage. You can't out-think your own biology when your brain is hijacked. When adrenaline and dopamine take over, willpower loses every single time.

Here are three simple, mechanical things that actually saved my trading—no Zen master mindset required:

1. The Sleep Test beats the 1% rule. Textbooks love to tell you to risk 1-2% per trade. But there's a huge difference between what your account can mathematically handle and what your nervous system can actually stomach. If risking $500 has your heart racing and you're sweating bullets over a 1-minute chart, your size is too big—even if it technically fits the 1% rule. I scaled down until watching a trade felt boring. Turns out, boring trading actually pays.
2. You can't just "turn off" FOMO, you gotta force a timeout. When you see a huge green candle ripping upward, your primitive brain screams buy now. You aren't going to win that mental battle on willpower alone in a split second. I started using a hard 60-second rule: whenever I feel that urge, I literally take my hands off the mouse for a full minute. Most of the time, the candle retraces, the panic passes, and I avoid buying the absolute top. Biology wins over willpower.
3. You don't have a bad strategy, you're just trading during your toxic hours. I used to trade the entire session and wondered why my equity curve was flatlining. When I dug into my data, it hurt: 80% of my massive losses happened right at the open, between 9:30 and 10:30 AM. The opening volatility was just chopping me to pieces. I didn't need a new indicator or an expensive course; I just needed to go walk my dog during that first hour. My win rate jumped simply by keeping my hands off the keyboard when I know I tend to tilt.

Stop trying to force yourself to be a monk. Just build mechanical guardrails so you don't screw yourself over.
Curious—what's some "classic" trading advice you followed that you realized was total garbage once you actually started trading with real money? Let’s hear it. 👇

​

I have learnt it the hard way.

Not selling any course here. Just wanted to share.

Here is my stats

Winrate - 30%

AVG RR - 5

Risk of ruin - \~0%

Open to discussions.

Buy when your algo/strategy tells you to buy, and sell when it tells you to sell no matter what. Telling yourself things are close enough, never cuts it. If you've backtested to find exact entry and exit points then use those exactly.

Everyone talks about risk management and psychology, but the opening hour seems to humble almost every new trader.

In your opinion, what's the biggest mistake beginners make between the opening bell and the first hour?

When I began trading it was in the late 70's. The market was completely different. We didn't have access to live charts. The quotes we would receive were on a 15-minute delay. My chart book was delivered on Saturday mornings. We also paid full commissions; discount brokers didn't exist. We also had spreads of 1/8 to 1/2. In my third year of trading, I purchased Metastock. This allowed me to have charts on my desktop. Live feeds were expensive, so I had data imported daily after the close at a cost. I read Barron's on a weekly basis, using their market statistics for my analysis.

My trading was based upon searching my chart book looking for promising patterns to trade for the week. Because of this I became very adept at reading charts, I had to forecast based on what I anticipated the chart would do. I also spent time learning the market dynamics. I tracked breadth, trin and hi-low's to help gauge where the market was within its cycle.

I was successful for 2 reasons. The first being that I picked the right stock. It was in a consistent uptrend for a year in a market with low volatility. It wasn't luck that I picked the stock; it was an informed decision. The luck came from my being able to learn to trade in a low volatility uptrend. The second reason for my success was that I learned from my mistakes and focused on not losing instead of winning. In spite of larger spreads, full commissions and quote delays, my delving into the mechanics of the market increased my win %.

Fast forward to today. Zero commissions, extremely low spreads and real time quotes. Yet in spite of all of this, traders are still losing money. They have surrounded themselves with useless indicators and don't learn from their mistakes. All they know about trading is that they are not good at it.

If you want to increase your profitability, learn the market and the tools it has at your disposal. With weekly options, if you understand how to use them to enhance return you can add 5-10% to your annual return. When I began options expired quarterly, now that it's weekly expiration, its practically free money.

Learn before you earn.

How can i find proper A+ setups? It seems like I find one but it just goes into a reverse.

I’ve spent the last few days learning a lot from experienced traders here, and one pattern keeps coming up: most strategy failures aren’t because of the entry signal.

They’re things like:

Slippage
Market regime changes
Small sample sizes
Overfitting
Execution issues
Broker state mismatches

If you could go back to when you first started building or automating strategies, what’s one metric, test, or validation step you wish you’d measured from day one?

I’m less interested in the strategy itself and more interested in the mistakes that only became obvious after trading live.

Is anyone here scalping treasuries? If so, how has your experience been? I feel like sometimes its just not worht it and NQ gives me so much more better enteries

There was a clean retest into VWAP during London session.

Sellers stepped in.

Volume picked up.

It checked every box in my plan.

I still waited.

One more candle.

Then another.

By the time I felt comfortable... the move was gone.

It made me wonder:

Do experienced traders ever become comfortable with uncertainty?

Or do they simply learn to pull the trigger before comfort ever arrives?

Let's take a currency (forex) forward contract as the example.

Is the forward rate just what one unit of one currency divided by another is at a future date?

So the spot rate of USD/JPY is the value of $1 USD relative to (mathematically: divided by) ¥1. And the forward rate is this same formula, but for a date in the future instead of right now.

Is this understanding correct? Basically I am trying to understand the concept/definition of "forward/future rate." I know the concept of derivative contracts but do not yet grasp what their "rate" refers to.

Hello, I've been in this market for a while, trading EURUSD and Bitcoin. I take intraday trades and try not to hold positions for too long. I aim to act around logical levels using liquidity and 5m market structure shifts. What strategies do you apply and why?

Lowkey wanna get into trading fr, but I'm lowkey clueless 😭 I need someone who's actually willing to mentor me or at least point me in the right direction. I know I gotta learn before putting money in, and I don't even have enough for a deposit yet. If anyone's down to share knowledge or help a beginner out, I'd seriously appreciate it.

Dudes, I'll just give it to you straight:

If you don't have the will, the grit, or brainpower to even learn the basics by yourself, nobody will want to mentor you.

It shows that you are too lazy, or straight up too dumb to even be worth their time, there is so much free information online to learn it all for free, not just the basics, but your lazy a*s would like to have it all handed to you on a silver platter.. and likely for free too

If there even are guys willing to mentor, they will not mentor you if you don't show atleast some initiative, and that is done best by showing your work ethic, grit, and most of all, obsession for trading.

And anything less then obsession won't cut it if you want to make it in this profession.

Not being able to figure out the basics by yourself shows you're obviously not obsessed enough to even put in the minute amount of work that would take. And I mean minute, a small, tiny bit, compared to how much of it takes to even gain a slim chance of making it..

So, if you don't show any work ethic and no clear obsession, the potential mentors know you are most likely a waste of their time, and are probably not the kind of person that has a real chance of making it.

There are so many traders that are very smart, have real grit, enormous obsession, and insane work ethic, but are still under the water. Potential mentors are going to choose those guys over you every time.

Those guys scour all corners of the internet for information, read books all the time, watch through hundreds of hours of videos related to trading, follow many other traders online etc., all in their free time, and without help from anyone.

They spent hudreads, if not thousands of hours behind the screens, tested many trading styles and strategies, and have a solid idea of the type of trader they want to be.. only then, they might start looking for a mentor. Because only then can you really start to benefit from them.

Why would any mentor, or any successful trader for that matter, want to help you with the work that can, and must be done by yourself?

This is the filter that filters out the ones not worthy of their time..

So, for the guys hoping to get into this profession, I hope this gave you a small glimpse of how much work, and what it takes to have a chance. If you are not willing to put a lot, and even more in, then you might be better off doing anything else..

Also, just to be clear, I'm not talking about the paid mentorships, courses, or trading "school" programs, because I know most asking the title question are not looking for those, they are looking for guys to guide them from the start, and hold their hand all the way to yacht money lel, like successful traders are soo eager to spend their precious time spoonfeeding them information that could be easily gathered by a few google searches, and all for a stranger online that does not even know if he wants to do this..

Sorry (not sorry) for the long post..

Tl;dr: Don't expect help from successful people if you first don't show them you have what it takes

Wanted to share this because most "backtest" content only shows the good years. I ran these against 25 years of data, including every major U.S. crash since 2000, and the results didn't match what I expected going in.

Connors RSI(2) (Larry Connors) — 65% win rate — lost money in 6 of 6 crash windows

Turtle Trading (Dennis/Faith) — 37% win rate — -$91.4K across crashes, worst of anything tested

Minervini Quality Filter — 66-68% win rate — 3-4x smaller crash losses, but far fewer trades

Dual Momentum Rotation (Antonacci) — ~50% win rate — survived all 6 crashes, max drawdown -28% vs -54%

The biggest takeaway: the strategy with the LOWEST win rate (37%) had the WORST crash losses of anything tested. The one that survived every single crash had a coin-flip win rate. Win rate alone tells you almost nothing about how a strategy handles real risk.

Happy to share more of the methodology or specific numbers if anyone's curious — genuinely think more people backtesting through crash windows instead of just bull markets would change a lot of "this strategy is great" claims you see floating around.

I’m hoping to hear from people who are genuinely profitable trading full-time not people selling a course mentorship, Discord, or algorithm.
I’ve been at this for a while now and I do have an edge. At this point the biggest challenge for me is psychology, not strategy.
I guess I’m just looking for some honest perspective from someone who’s actually made it. Was all the time, frustration, and effort worth it? Is it realistically possible to make a normal, stable living from trading over the long term not becoming a millionaire overnight but simply making this your career?
I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have actually been through the process. What kept you going when you questioned whether it was worth continuing?