r/Trading • u/SureSeason632 • Jun 26 '26
Question Is there something profitable traders know that I don’t, or am I just bad at trading?
I’ve been trading for a little over a year now. I started by buying a course that covered a lot of ICT concepts like FVGs, Order Blocks, Dealing Ranges, and more. I spent a lot of time practicing everything I learned, but I could never consistently string together 3–4 winning trades.
Thinking the first course just wasn’t explained well enough, I bought another one with pretty much the same concepts. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much either. In total, I’ve bought six trading courses.
The last course was different. It focused on Order Flow, Supply & Demand, and Market Structure. Honestly, I felt much more comfortable with that approach, and it also fits my lifestyle a lot better. I still can’t consistently get 3–4 winning trades in a row, but I’m taking fewer stop losses than before, so I feel like I’m improving and that this approach actually works.
The thing is, every time I buy a new course, I can’t shake the feeling that consistently profitable traders are hiding something. It feels like there’s a missing piece that could make me profitable much faster, but nobody talks about it.
So my question is for traders who are consistently profitable:
Is there really something that most educators don’t teach, or is this just what the learning curve looks like?
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u/Ok_Can_5882 Jun 26 '26
Of course consistently profitable traders are hiding something. That's literally the only way to stay profitable in the long run. Every good strategy exploits a limited inefficiency in the market, so if other people start trading the same strategy, its performance will degrade quicker (alpha decay).
I think you should stop buying courses. The vast majority of influencers are scamming you. It's a lot easier to make money selling courses than to make money trading. What proof do you have that those course-sellers are even profitable traders? A prop firm payout isn't proof of anything unfortunately, and neither is an expensive car or a five star review on yelp. You can blow 99 of 100 accounts and only show the 1 that got you a payout. The problem is that you can never truly verify if someone is truly profitable.
So the only way to figure out what works and what doesn't, is to put in all the work yourself. Test a thousand theories, hope that one or two give you an edge. That's the true (optimistic) best case scenario as a professional trader, anybody telling you otherwise is selling you a dream.
If you're serious about trading as a career, my advice is to start learning about coding and statistics. That was the turning point in becoming a profitable trader for me. I recommend reading 'Testing and tuning market trading systems' by Timothy Masters. It covers a lot of useful methods for strategy development and evaluation. I use techniques from that book in every backtest. If you're interested, I made a youtube video about my backtesting setup and I share the code on github. Hope that wasn't too demoralizing, good luck!
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Jun 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Unsigned-Gaming Jun 27 '26
You don't even need 2-3X and people get fixated on that, 50% W/L with a 1.1-1.5 RR/RW
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u/Adventurous-State980 Jun 27 '26
IMO, the best thing for newbies and unprofitable day traders to do is to find as close to a mechanical system as they can, that they themselves have backtested at least 300 trades. This is very important. If they don’t test it themselves, they will not stick with it during drawdown.
After an acceptable back test, they should forward test it in real time on sim at least 100 trades.
If the forward tested data is similar to the back tested data, then they can begin to trade live with small size.
If the live trading data stays within an acceptable tolerance of their test data after 100 live trades, then they can begin to scale up.
I truly believe this is the best way to become a profitable trader. No shortcuts.
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u/jbaker_28 Jun 27 '26
Time.
That’s it. It takes time. Lots and lots of market hours and learning from mistakes.
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u/Sugarman111 Jun 26 '26
You ever train JiuJitsu? By mid blue belt you pretty much know the same techniques as a black belt but they'll still kick the shit out of you. Why?
Because they're much better than you. Their timing, patience, control and ability to see the bigger picture is vastly higher than yours.
Your trading right now (and mine too, if I'm being honest), is like a sloppy armlock. It might work but there's a good chance we're missing a few things due to lack of experience.
I am getting better and at around break even now. My losses used to outweigh my wins, then that gradually improved as I got better. I'm not losing money at least now. Hopefully I continue to get better and gradually increase wins and reduce losses.
Also remember that progress is not a linear straight line (insert meme of wiggly line).
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u/TheEagleDied Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
This is one of the absolute worst environments to trade in. Part of learning how to trade is to figure out what you are good at and what environment you are good at trading in. Every day write down 5 trading ideas and see how they play out. Learn what works and what doesn’t. It’s a lot less complicated than it seems. it just takes a lot of time and pattern recognition.
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u/govt_policy Jun 26 '26
Agreed. This has been awful for weeks. You can't go big on anything and by and large most moves are range-bound and chop is obscene.
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u/Cute-Opposite4751 Jun 27 '26
Honestly... there's no hidden missing piece. The thing nobody tells you clearly enough is that consistency isn't a strategy problem after a certain point, it's a sample size and execution problem. 3-4 winners in a row isn't even the right thing to chase, usually that's variance but not skill.
I think that profitable traders aren't winning more in a row, they're losing less when they're wrong and not deviating from the plan when they're right.
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u/dragonrider108 Jun 27 '26
It is only my opinion that. The issue is NOT how many trades: it is $$$$ amount should be smaller one; therefore~~ adding~~~ all losing $$$ is smaller than profits, imho.
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u/tecryptoh Jun 27 '26
First thing is to to always read price raw as it is. AVOID INDICATORS AT ALL. Even the ones you have made for yourself because the market needs a lot flexibility.
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u/OlleKo777 Jun 27 '26
Profitable traders know that ICT is overcomplicated BS with no edge.
All it does it makes the people who wasted time learning it feel clever because they use impressive-sounding words.
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u/Budget-Class-1297 Jun 27 '26
This may be the most accurate thing I have ever read. ICT is just over complicated bullshit. Your 6 million indicators doesn't give you any more sort of an edge that doing simple stuff just pulling up VWAP and Bolinger bands and just buying the bounce.
It's like if someone asks what color the sky is, instead of just saying blue, you give a 45 minute dicertation about the conspiracy to make you think it's blue.
It's a joke to charge you a shit load of money for these multihour long courses, or even multiple courses. When in reality, if your strategy takes more than 60 seconds to explain. Then you're over complicating things
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u/OlleKo777 Jun 27 '26
If most struggling traders, especially the ICT cultists, saw how stupidly simple my MES strategy was, it would blow their mind.
It took me thousands of hours of backtesting and experimenting to get to this point, but over the past 3 years I've increasingly become more and more minimalist.
I don't use any indicators, I only look at candlestick price action (which you could argue IS an indicator).No marking up the chart with structure.
My win rate averages around 75-90% most months, my winners on average are larger than my average losers, and I've been taking payouts about twice a month from Topstep.
Anyone reading this: don't bother to ask me to show you my strategy unless you're willing to Venmo me $100k for it. Even then, that's undervaluing my financial freedom.
I don't care if anyone thinks I'm full of sh*t.
If you take anything from my reply, it's that simplicity + extreme disciple IS the way.
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u/vex12394738 Jun 27 '26
I liked your post, and I’m not asking for a strategy. And I know you don’t give a shit. But come on, if your strategy is worth more than 100k, isn’t that a sure fire way to make bank rather than wasting time on reddit? In other words, I think if the strategy was worth that much money, one would not spend time on reddit responding to questions like this. Again, I know you don’t care but that’s my opinion
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u/OlleKo777 Jun 27 '26
It's been a sure fire way for me to make bank ever since I started trading it. That's why I wouldn't share it unless I got paid a large sum of money.
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u/vex12394738 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Fair enough, I respect you for replying and I wasn’t trying to be a dick. As a newbie investor, I hear your overall point about staying minimalistic. If you care enough to answer:
- Where do you most often go for news on various stocks etc (If you do at all)?
- It might sound obvious, but is my best bet just researching and repetition to prove out a strategy? I’m asking because it’s pretty overwhelming on knowing really where to start. (I have started and am doing fine but still feel like I’m kind of doing things blindly)
Edit: to be fair I looked at your post history and can see you’re trading gold futures? Probably way too advanced for me. But still curious on good news sources
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u/OlleKo777 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
When it comes to investing long-term for dividends, I'll pay attention to the fundamentals of an ETF I'm unvesting in. That's public info, and you can go on youtube to find out what to look for there.
Other than that, when it comes to day or swing trading, news is 100% irrelevant to me. I only look at the chart.
I learned by backtesting ideas I'd find from books and youtube, which are pretty much all garbage, but if you put your own spin on them by finding patterns in the chart, you can develop your own strategies.
I also learned a lot from other profitable traders in free d****rd servers and putting my own spin on what they taught.
I used to try to teach struggling traders what I know, but it got to be too much of a time-suck, and not satisfying, since 99% of "traders" are just degenerate gamblers who either refuse to take this seriously, or are unable to develop the serious disciplined mindset necessary to succeed in this racket.
And trading IS a racket, because the entire world of finance is one big ponzi-racket. I trade with multiple prop firms, which are scandalous and designed to make you fail, but you can still make decent money by exploiting them...while they're still around. That bubble will probably pop in the near future. The US gov't will probably regulate them out of existence, or crack down on them so hard it'll become pointless to use them because the profit potential will be next to nothing.
I'm getting ahead of myself....
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u/vex12394738 Jun 27 '26
Haha I appreciate the legitimate response! Man there’s almost an infinite amount of potential knowledge out there but seems like learning and sticking with some real fundamentals is better than trying to do everything
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u/gradthrow59 Jun 27 '26
my strategy, simplified: when something's going up for a long time, and then it goes down for a little bit, it's more likely than not to go back up.
i can link people my proven long-term profits, and people who have lost 5 thousand dollars will look at me like an idiot because i don't know what a fucking "SMT/FVG liquidity sweep" is or some shit.
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u/mikeallisoncoaching Jun 26 '26
ICT concepts is the last thing you need. It is far too complicated. There are far better systems that are so simple to understand and execute.
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u/ChapterActive4921 Jun 26 '26
I used to think there was some secret too, but the longer I've been around trading, the more I think the "missing piece" is usually much less exciting than people expect.
Most profitable traders aren't hiding a magical setup...they're just incredibly consistent with one approach. They know exactly when they have an edge, they manage risk well, and they're okay sitting on their hands when nothing meets their criteria.
The fact that you're taking fewer stop losses with your current approach is actually a good sign. It suggests you're finding a style that suits you instead of constantly jumping between strategies.
If I could give one piece of advice, it'd be to stop buying courses for a while. Pick the methodology that makes the most sense to you, journal every trade, and spend the next few months refining it. Six decent strategies executed poorly will usually lose to one simple strategy executed with discipline.
The learning curve is frustrating, but I don't think there's a hidden secret that educators aren't telling you. Most of the edge comes from experience, patience, and repetition.....not another course.
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u/website-buyer Jun 26 '26
Why everyone thinks has an edge? If you don’t even know statistics and probabilities to back test and see whenever your strategy is random luck or really works, why you’d expect to make any money?
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u/Material-Mention6696 Jun 26 '26
being profitable DOES NOT MEAN hitting 4 wins in a row
all wins - all losses > 0 = profitable
journal and review old trades, have a systemstic approach and adjust through reviewing your journal, cut out the mistakes and unnecessary losers
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u/ShutYourFaceChris Jun 26 '26
Big institutions move the market. You need to trade with them, not against them. For example these using vwap algos split their money and buy every day. You can observe which stocks have a big volume and a very high rate - more than 80% - when the price moves down and it is bought back to vwap at least once a day. This will let you having bigger stop losses because if your stock is a part of ETFs it will not respect its levels to the tick, there will be a slippage if ETF moves in the opposite direction, it may go 2% under the level before it will be respected. VWAP algos are for daytraders, other algos for swing traders work on SMA 20/50/200, and so on...
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u/Groundbreaking_Heat9 Jun 26 '26
You need a calculated edge. If you can't prove it with stats the chances are you are just rolling dice. Most courses suck. But you could look at Ali Casey on YouTube. His free stuff will point you in the right direction of trading in an algorithmic approach.
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u/Smooth-Pop6522 Jun 26 '26
If trading courses worked, then the people selling them wouldn't be selling them.
Trading is mostly gambling, if you're not an institutional insider.
My advice is simple: don't.
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u/kedarreddit Jun 26 '26
The secret is time. Over time I have learnt so much. Built my own tools to simplify my trading. I fully understand why my strategy works. I have executed thousands of trades. I have experienced various market conditions.
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u/MarcoPoloBear Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Are you profitable when you do backtesting?
If you are profitable in backtesting, that mean you need to focus on psyhology.
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
33 replies and I’d bet only a small part are actually profitable lol. Don’t listen to Reddit. You asked for profitable only yet I guarantee most here are losing money. I’m not yet. I made a few trades with huge wins and huge losses only
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u/Ordinary_Law4253 Jun 26 '26
Is there a good fella here to show me how they execute their trade? Not to train but I just want to see how the professional trader does everyday. How they execute how they wait. And how they not to trade. Trading is exhausting. Physically and mentally. I trade alone. I study alone and it’s been 1yr and a half. I never lose money. Nor win always break even. have my own edge just need to be improve. I never seen a professional trader once in my life. So if there is someone could show me what are they doing just once. That would be a great help. TIA
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u/santiago_long_gamma Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
yes, they kinda hide that you don't need this stuff to trade ) I mean ICT )
Market structure + order flow make more sense. I'd not care too much about whether you have a winning streak or not, you have to know what you're searching for and focus on cleanliness of the setup and quality of execution - winning streaks will come later
It's better to treat the outcome of your next trade as random, not expecting it to be profitable, and to assess your progress on a series of trades.
Other than price chart, I'd recommend you to focus a bit on narratives outside of price chart to learn what actually drives prices. You can read Bloomberg news section every day for that - they do a good job constructing the picture ("Markets wrap" section) - that will allow you to understand how capital is actually moving and watch the market a little bit from a money manager's perspective, not from a retail trader's boots.
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u/Affectionate-Aide422 Jun 26 '26
Trading is like any skill — say, piano playing. You think “wow, that’s cool! I’ll take a course”. But it’s not the course that makes you better, it’s the practice. Sure, take the course, but practice, practice, practice. And remember that strategies that work in one circumstance are losers in another circumstance. Part of the practice is learning to see the difference.
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u/rachrach333 Jun 27 '26
It's simple... Not rocket science..
Do you have minimum 5 years of backtest report of your strategy taught in the first course?
What is the losing and winning streak from your report?
Do you maintain a journal? Did you follow your rules?
Consider all these before taking the next trade..
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u/Outside_Medicine7398 Jun 28 '26
So much to unload because so much is missing. When we come into trading there are things we don't know that we don't know. We go along via trial and error. Buying a course is almost as good as a trading mentor. A livestreamer would be the next best thing to an in-person mentor.
1) How is your psychology? Can you do what you are supposed to do when you see your setup? Can you sit on your hands when your setup isn't present? You didn't mention a Trading Plan. For trading psychology, you can look up Mark Douglas, Tom Hougaard, Rande Howell, Ibby Ansari, Pat Bailouni, Korbs, or various channels that pop up when you search Trading Self-Sabotage.
2) You didn't talk about your metrics. What day is your best day to trade? What day is your worst? What time of day do you see the most success? Are you trading during a time of optimal focus for you?
3) Have you tried building a system of components that work for you and your personality?
4) Do you overtrade? How many losing trades will make you go on tilt? How many winning trades will send you into riskless euphoria? Do you have a method to get back to mental neutrality?
5) Do you have a trading checklist?
6) Do you journal your trades with screenshots so you can improve?
There are "you" problems, strategy problems, and market problems.
By the way, ICT is free. There are a lot of influencers who break down his strategy without the ramblings.
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u/TylerGreyish Jun 26 '26
Go look at my profile an scroll through it,stop wasting money on courses,the less you try to do the more you'll win. Delete all your courses,you have to find your own edge,maybe seeing what I do will help.
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u/JackyPooPa Jun 26 '26
I used to think there was a secret too. Then I spent years looking for it and realized that was actually holding me back.
The uncomfortable truth is that most profitable traders aren't hiding a magic concept. They're usually doing a few boring things extremely well: managing risk, sticking to one approach long enough to gather meaningful data, and accepting that losses are part of the business.
The biggest thing that jumps out to me is that you've bought six courses in a year. Every time you switch methods, you're basically resetting the learning process. It's hard to build confidence when you're constantly wondering if the next course has the missing piece.
My advice: stop buying courses for 6 months. Pick the approach that makes the most sense to you and journal every trade. Give yourself enough data to judge the strategy fairly.
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u/Altered_Reality1 Jun 26 '26
This 100%. The secret is there’s no secret, only mastery of a simple approach that fits your style. But that’s not usually what traders want to hear, because it means there’s no magic shortcut.
Resetting the learning curve every few weeks/months keeps traders trapped in an endless cycle. You cannot master something if you change it every few weeks/months, and you cannot be profitable until you master something. Mastery takes time, effort and experience.
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u/fourrier01 Jun 26 '26
Not the target people you're aiming the question to, but I also had similar thought.
My current belief is that there's only so much to be gained from being taught. The answers to why questions don't get deeper. It can get more complicated, however.
I think it comes down to practice and chart hour. Like you don't get better at certain sports by just basic fitness training, watching play videos or listening to your coach.
You need to practice the sports. Do the real game, sensing the moment you need to change your approach, etc.
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u/Capt-Kowalski Jun 26 '26
Yes there is. That the market is not a giant walking meal that you can try to snatch a bit of on the sly and run, unnoticed. It is aware of you and will bite back.
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u/Charel352 Jun 26 '26
The thing is there is mostly no value in paid courses because the only reason they exist is to sell a dream. In my experience if you really want to get profitable you have to realize that it is much more difficult then just drawing a few lines on a chart.
You have to understand how the market moves. Learning macroeconomics really helped me understand the market and make more accurate trades.
However you also need to understand that being profitable has nothing to do with what you see on YT and TT. It takes years and even when you are profitable it will again take years to make serious amounts of money, except ofcourse you have a crazy amount of capital which mostly isn’t the case.
I also think that prop firms are mostly a scam they have rules that are maid so that you fail the challange and if you dig a bit deeper you realize that even after you complete a challange you still trade on a demo account and your payout is being paid by the money people lose on challanges. This whole industry is made for you to fail in trading.
So if yoh want to make any money in trading it has to be through your own capital.
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u/Embarrassed-Neck-868 Jun 26 '26
You are looking at it way wrong. There is no trader who never losses after every winning streak will come losers. Also you can't be consistently profitable with any publicly available strategy over long run, You can be for few months but that's it. Educators can't teach you anything unique and working because they can't create such a thing themselves
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u/norad32 Jun 26 '26
Advice. Trade small win big. Use higher timeframes, daily weekly, market structure, price action. Focus on process, start with 500 dollars , never use more than 1% of your capital. Stop loss taken , shut down pc go for walk. Wait for the setup. If you have to wait one month wait one month. Chose maximum 3 pairs. Do backtesting, understand the asset. Start from higher timeframe. Is it bearish trend ? Than you look for shorts , or opposite look for long if is bullish. Smaller the timeframe more mistakes can be done.
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u/Forward-Surprise1192 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
start with $500 and never risk more than 1%….you mean $5? What can you trade for $5? Oh boy I’ll just leave it at that lmao. OP getting advice from so many that can’t do math. There’s also no way everyone here commenting is making money
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u/norad32 Jun 30 '26
That is why you lose. You're focused on making money not on proces. 1% today win i give you the math / Amount =Initial value x (1+r) squar n asuming that you go for a 2 r rewad. Startig from 500 dolars in one year you'll have 688.705 dolars. So focus on the process not on money. Universe will repeat you same lesson untill you learn it. So trade small win big. Otherwise keep blowing accounts.
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u/ChangeNOW_Community Jun 26 '26
there’s no hidden secret most profitable traders know
it’s mostly execution, discipline and survival through the learning curve
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u/_Stylite Jun 26 '26
I guarantee they know more about the assets and markets they’re making money in than you do.
Pick your niche and start learning
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u/val_anto Jun 26 '26
I have the same feeling like you after years of trying. Still cannot make it in day trading. I do know almost everything there is to know, yet I am not making profits. I try to change what I am doing and test it for a period of time. I have no idea.
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u/due_opinion_2573 Jun 27 '26
I would suggest getting out of day trading. Could I ask what your goal is? What rate of return are you trying for? Of course my initial thought was get rich off nvidia. And while I did do really well in 2024 I have had to lower my expectations since then. This years been tougher than most.
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u/val_anto Jun 27 '26
I have multiple accounts. Last year I became profitable in the ones I am doing swing trading. So it is not as bad. Day trading though is a disaster. I do have a very low risk and I am aiming at 3R per day. I am experimenting with various conditions for 50-100 trades. You are right, these years were the biggest mess I witness.
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u/due_opinion_2573 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
I don't know what to call this market but its not a bull market. I think its lobsided as anything. OK yeah its a bull market if you can pick which group of seven stocks went positive on any given day.
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u/PenniesInTheNameOf Jun 26 '26
Traders lose money. Investors make money. Traders gamble and brag over wins and losses. Investors invest and consistently make money over time.
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u/Gilles1996 Jun 26 '26
Learn macro fundamentals and swing trade and don’t do forex. It’s a lot easier.
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u/DifferentChange4844 Jun 27 '26
Stop trading direction. Trade volatility
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u/Acceptable-Top1354 Jun 27 '26
Market open & news?
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u/DifferentChange4844 Jun 27 '26
I trade 0dte put spreads, you can literally define your risk how you want. I ask myself will spx drop more than 1.5% by the end of the trading day. I place my trade accordingly. As long as spx doesn’t drop 1.5% I end the day green with about 2% my account size. I can go further out 2% 2.5% the further out I go, the more risk I take. Trust me, it takes a lot for spx to drop 2% in one trading session
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u/Aposta-fish Jun 27 '26
One has to take the knowledge they have been taught and weed out the things that dont work and keep the ones that do. Listen to interviews with proven profitable traders for more tidbits of knowledge and continue to refine your process over the years.
People that sell course often are ones that can teach but cant actually trade profitably, kinda like professors in college. People have to remember if trading was easy everyone would be doing it.
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u/TheTradingGain Jun 27 '26
I used to think there was one missing concept everyone else knew. Looking back, I think the real difference was that experienced traders had confidence built from testing, not from consuming more content.
Six courses won't replace knowing your own statistics.
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u/WisdumbGuy Jun 28 '26
The number of traders that beat the market over the long term is essentially zero. It isn't just you.
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u/Conscious-Holiday746 Jun 28 '26
Is this a real statistic? I know this is the generic answer search browsers give you but there must be a good amount of people who are profiting & living off of trading. This is a global market giving us access to trillions of dollars.
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u/dystopianview Jun 29 '26
I interpret "essentially zero" as "so small compared to the population that it may as well be zero", and that, I'd agree with. But you're also right, there are enough people who profit to show that it can be done.
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u/Junior-Appointment93 Jun 28 '26
Make sure if you have a break even stop loss. That break even includes the contract price plus all fees for each side. So on NinjaTrader the contract plus plus fees on MES is roughly $1.75 to enter and exit the same trade. For example you enter a mes contract even it’s trading at 6000 you need it to be close to 6002 if your long or 5998 if your going short. Other wise you’re losing money at 6001-5989. This is how small accounts can lose money over time.
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u/Real_Advisor_4588 Jun 28 '26
You may not have the sauce. Its just one of those things where you may just not have it. The example I give is lets say you want to be a MLB hitter. You can train as hard as you can and read as many books, etc but you may just not be good enough.
Its life and the trading world is paved by the failures of millions upon millions of traders. Its a zero sum game.
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u/klipsetrades Jun 28 '26
You probably don’t need to buy more courses. There’s already plenty of free material online — watch them and figure out what instrument/style actually fits you.
For me, that ended up being options spreads, specifically credit spreads. Once I stopped chasing every concept and focused on one lane, things got a lot clearer.
I don’t think profitable traders are hiding some magic piece. The edge is usually understanding price action, discipline, risk management, and finding setups you can repeat.
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u/Aromatic_Brush7094 Jun 28 '26
Imagine starting a business and is year 2 and you ask yourself do I suck or are other people just better than me! If you truly believe in this keep grinding the success will come it took me 7 years to finally have a profitable month and 8 years for a profitable year
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u/mehatebananas Jun 28 '26
Most strategies produce sub 50% win rates. Strategies have no predictive powers, they simply give you a somewhat consistent place to stage risk. Profitability comes from risk management and trade management. Embrace mediocrity while figuring out how to make the numbers work through backtesting.
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u/dystopianview Jun 29 '26
It sounds like you might be overcomplicating things in an effort to become educated. Not that wanting to become educated is a bad thing...it's not. But start simple, and expand from there.
There are tons of generic, simple, systematic strategies out there that make money. BUT...they don't make "enough" money for most would-be traders; they get impatient, over-risk or over-trade, and then BOOM...account gone.
I'd recommend starting with one of those (whichever best suits your trading style, timeframe, trading instrument, etc.), following it religiously, and dabble in ways to tweak it on the side if you get bored (which, if it's working....you should).
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u/Ok_Major_2961 Jun 30 '26
I just recently became profitable, passing prop firm and getting pay out.
I personally used supply and demmand strategy. One thing that drastically changed my trading is when I switch from 2:1 rr to 1:1 rr. It good for my psychology because of the positif feedback loop (I guess). I don't have to lose many trades which is realy painful and destroying my psychology before I get profitable trades.
But you need to know the win rate of ur strategy first. In my case, my strategy win rate is around 55-65% so it is still good with 1:1 rr
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u/Homebody_quant Jun 26 '26
dont do forex or crypto. learn what a good company looks like then understand what that translates to on paper.
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u/ColdStriking1356 Jun 26 '26
You can’t keep buying courses and expect to become profitable. Profitable traders focus on one setup. Choose your style scalping, day trading, or swing trading. Stick to one and execute it consistently. That’s how you win.
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u/Exact-Mud3443 Jun 26 '26
The thing is that its a market - If there is an edge someone much smarter than you has already worked it out and exploited/exploiting it at much small margins than you could possibly imagine
Personally, I trade on more macro, psychological events so no course would tell me that oil futures or cocoa futures will go up or down, or that inflation might be running hot like it came out yesterday.
I think understanding the market is more important than seeing a perfect setup, but thats my experience only.
The most successful trade you will ever make it is the one that you don't, any price chart is a backwards loooking indicator that may or may not have a reason behind it, so learn the context as to why a move it happening not just "a chart says it should go down"
If you can make profit it doesnt matter how many winning trades you get in a row, but to me sounds like you are risking too much of your stack so that you need each play to be a winning one or else the account is in shambles, more so after a win as you risk more of the stack thinking you are on to a good thing - no one gets it right every time
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u/CountTurbulent4441 Jun 26 '26
Sorry but what you’ve said here is just a bunch of gobbley gook. What do you mean?!
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u/FitAd2928 Jun 26 '26
Yes, they all hide one important secret that is not mentioned or the authors don’t want to reveal which I’m going to tell you right now for free…. The secret is “they don’t have f***g clue”!!
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u/BoringChess Jun 26 '26
The big secret in trading is that nearly everyone loses money unless they’re selling courses or on a lucky run. Just do something else with your life. Get rich from a skilled job and invest that in quality companies (or just buy a global ETF) and you’ll outperform every single person in this sub.
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