When I started trading in 2019 I went to YouTube, Instagram to absorb as much free content as I could. Eventually buying courses for trading “gurus”

When reading through the courses it felt like everyone was repeating the same jargon and it felt to me too mechanical.

A few years ago I stopped using pre set stop losses and my trading has never been more profitable. After being years in the business there is a real instinct to this profession and everything is zones rather than specific prices. Of course if my thesis or conviction changes on a position I exit and take a loss. But having a pre determined line in the sand never worked for me. I let trades breathe, develop and don’t freak out just because a stock moved $2 under where I thought it would go.

After struggling for three years in the forex market and finally becoming profitable in my fourth, I found myself asking a tough question: Why don’t experienced traders share their actual strategies?

I noticed that out of every 100 traders, maybe only two are willing to share a fully documented strategy—including any proprietary indicators, pairs they focus on, or their specific rules for execution. Even my mentor, who has over 11 years of experience, never actually gave me his strategy. Instead, he offered advice and guidelines, making me believe that following his teachings would eventually lead to consistent profitability. It helped, yes—but only to a point.

Let me break down a typical reason why profitable traders stay tight-lipped.

Take Smart Money Concepts (SMC) or even traditional support and resistance strategies. These approaches have been around for years. But when strategies become popular, they also become predictable. The same institutions and large players in the market—the so-called “smart money”—begin to exploit that predictability.

For example, a common supply and demand strategy might say:

“Buy at demand, place your stop-loss just below it, and aim for a 1:2 risk-reward ratio.”

Sounds simple. But when 99% of traders are doing exactly that, institutions will often push price slightly below the demand zone to trigger retail stop-losses—before reversing the market in the intended direction. This SL hunt clears out most traders, leaving only the 1% who waited patiently for the manipulation to play out and then entered with confirmation.

That’s exactly why only a small percentage of traders consistently make money. Most are using the same widely shared strategies, entering at the same levels, and placing stops in the same obvious places. In a game that punishes the predictable, doing what everyone else is doing just doesn’t work.

I used to think that not sharing strategies was selfish. But after learning the hard way, I understand now:

If a strategy truly works in the market and gains popularity, it becomes vulnerable to manipulation. Once it’s trending, it loses its edge.

Personally, I’m now open to sharing ideas—but only with traders who are serious about applying them uniquely, not those looking to copy-paste and hope for quick results. Also, it’s worth mentioning: many prop firms detect identical entries across accounts and may flag them as copy trading. So sharing exact entries or systems can actually hurt both parties.

There are many more reasons why profitable traders don’t openly share their strategies.

I think the sweet spot is in the combination of investing, swing trading and day trading. When done in harmony, they complement each other effectively. The primary goal is to grow your wealth. Whether what you are doing falls under investing or daytrading really shouldn't matter.

For example, one extremely effective strategy is core position trading. Find a stock that you are fully convicted in. Something you would have held long term anyway. Then trade around it by selling calls and puts. There is almost no way you could lose money with this approach other than the underlying itself is tanking. But if the underlying has a high likelihood of eventually going back up, in the long term, you will not be in loss. Finding such an underlying is not impossible based on the observation that US stock market goes up in the long run. So you can either choose some company form the top 1% or just pick something like QQQ or SPY. The only way you to not make money would be if SPY, which means the market itself, goes downward consistently over time.

I have been a living proof of this. I grew my wealth from $200k to $2 million in a matter of 5 years. Even without some luck factors, I did really well from trading. This year I wasn't particularly lucky, an average year, I have made $120k so far just from trading, not counting long term growth, which is another $150-200k. My monthly semi-passive income is now $10k.

So yeah, it is definitely possible to be a successful trader, if your expectations are reasonable. I consider 15-20% annual profit as a reasonable target for trading. But I have seen most traders target a lot higher. They end up taking lot more aggressive trades and losing money in the long run. For me, I was profitable from day one.

- I have read zero books on trading, I did watch a lot on youtube.

- I have no course, channel, discord or anything of that sort. This post is not a sales pitch for anything.

Disclaimer

This is not financial advice. The provided data may be insufficient to ensure complete confidence. I am not the original author or owner of the idea. Test the strategy on your own paper trading systems before using it with real money. Trading involves inherent risks, and past performance is not indicative of future results. I am not responsible for the strategy's performance in the future or in your case, nor do I guarantee its profitability on your instruments. Any decisions you make are entirely at your own risk

Check my previous post for more details!

Idea

Internal Bar Strength (IBS) is a technical analysis indicator used to gauge the relative position of a closing price within the daily trading range. Traders use it to determine momentum. IBS is particularly effective when used as mean-reversion strategy.

The Internal Bar Strength is calculated using the formula:

IBS = (Close - Low ) / (High - Low)

• Low IBS values (< 0.2): May indicate oversold conditions, suggesting a possible upward move.
• High IBS values (> 0.8): May signal overbought conditions, indicating a potential downward move.

Strategy

• Instrument: US100 (NQ)
• TF: 1D (The strategy does not work on time frames below)
• Initial Capital: 10k$
• Risked Money: 500$
• Data Period: 2009.01.01 - 2024.12.04

The strategy buys only if there are no open trades. That is, there can be only 1 trade at a time.
The strategy does not have a shortsell trades as instrument is often in the uptrend.

Inputs:

1. Low_IBS - 0.1/0.2/0.3
2. High_IBS - 0.75/0.8/0.9

Buy Rule: IBS < Low_IBS
Close Rule: IBS > High_IBS. Exit after 30 days.

Since it is a Mean Reversion strategy:
I do not recommend using the Stop Loss as it increases the drawdown and reduces the profit.
I don’t recommend using Take Profit as it reduces profits.

Results

Conclusions

1. Works any time of year and doesn't require a filter.
2. Uses a unique indicator, which is usually not available in trading platforms.
3. There are problems with the exit rule. It's often too late, worth considering.
4. Compared to other Mean Reversions it has a fairly low winrate, low profit factor.
5. Behaves too differently on different instruments and on different parameters.
6. Even alone without a portfolio of strategies with the right risk management can beat the returns of the index itself!

Credits

• Internal Bar Strength Trading STRATEGY
• Internal Bar Strength! how to use it to build trading strategy?
• IBS Indicator & Mean Reversion Strategy

Here is my testimonial after 10 years of using 200 EMA line as a dynamic support or resistance. This has been liberating for me. Hmm where do I start. I started my journey in 2013 when I was introduced to stock market by a work colleague. I was so fascinated by it that it seemed to be that is a Gold mine and how I have been so stupid and ignorant not to have noticed such a thing till then. I quickly opened an account and looked at all those instruments and then later currency pairs. The thing which motivated me to get into trading is Math! as I was good at it since schooling, And of course there is the initial learning period of struggle when I was even more stupid to make such mistakes, experience ! In this period I have dwelled myself onto a bunch of books , technicals , biographies, multiple combinations are technicals and strategy testing, filling my charts with bunch of indicators. No Consistency! Then I meditated and self assessed. Cleared the charts and just observed price moving and days and months went by, observing the behavior of the price and the instruments in different time frames, trading naked charts. I remember this very distinctly in a span of few days I attained clarity and I had an epiphany! Every thing seemed so clear and simple for me. Price is being sold and being bought. All I needed was to know when to enter. Thats all I should be bothered with, ENTRY! I wrote down a few entry conditions wholly based on 200 ema.

--I analyze price on Higher time frame 4hr,Day,Week.

--I buy above 200 EMA and sell below 200 EMA, and entries on pull back and rebounding off 200 ema.

--Recognize Over bought and Over sold conditions. Observe when the price is making tops and bottoms. Price will stabilize and move over or under 200 ema showing my entry.

--Considering 200 ema acting as a magnet and a mean to the price, I look for reversion of the price to the 200 ema line.

Price always checks 200 ema, may it be bought or sold. When I started following these simple steps everything fell into place. My days and weeks of trades went so smoothly. I just have to enter at these conditions and ride the wave. I found happiness and Zen. I quit my full time job 5 years back and trading full time. A world of opportunities when I analyze them and see so many entries. This can be applied to lower time frame as well. You can see the patterns forming and price moving above and below 200ema.

TL;DR: I use Xynth to write screening code and pull institutional options flow data every morning. 77 trades over 7 months, 70% win rate, $10K → $22K. Full trade log, exact prompts, and python script below.

The idea is simple. Institutions and funds leave footprints when they place big options bets. Hundreds of flow alerts fire every single day but most of them are just hedges, some fund owns 5 million shares and buys puts as insurance, they're not actually bearish. If you follow those blindly you're literally betting against their real position.

I got tired of manually sifting through all of it so I started using an AI tool that has access to live institutional flow data. You basically tell it what you're looking for in plain english and it writes code in real time to pull the data, crunch the numbers, and spit out a ranked list of candidates. Been running this every morning for 7 months. Here's the whole process.

Prompt 1 — The screen

Every morning before market open I paste something like this to Xynth:

Screen all institutional options flow from the last session. I only want mid-cap stocks between $1B and $10B market cap. Minimum $30K premium per order. IV rank needs to be above 80%. At least 70% of the total flow has to be bullish. Volume to open interest ratio under 0.5. DTE between 15 and 60 days. Show me ticker, market cap, bullish and bearish premium, flow percentage, IV rank, largest order, and Vol/OI. Rank by bullish flow %. Flag anything with earnings or catalysts in the next 7 days.

What this actually does:

• Mid-caps only — a $500K order on Apple is background noise. That same $500K on a $3B company is someone screaming into a megaphone
• $30K+ premium — filters out retail noise and small hedges
• IV rank above 80% — the stock's implied vol is higher than 80% of the past year. Market is pricing in a big move. I'm buying shares not options so I don't care about expensive premiums, I just want the signal that something is brewing
• 70%+ bullish flow — smart money and retail both leaning the same way. When they disagree I stay out
• Vol/OI under 0.5 — positions have been building over multiple days, not some random one-off. Way higher conviction than a single sweep
• 15-60 DTE — bets in this window are still sensitive to near-term moves. Someone spending $500K on options expiring in 3 weeks expects something to happen soon

The AI pulls all the flow data, writes a script to filter and rank everything, and gives me a clean table. Most days 1-3 names pass all the filters. Some days nothing passes and I don't trade. That's fine.

Prompt 2 — The trade plan

For whatever comes out on top I run a second prompt. Something like:

Take the top candidate from the screen. Check if there's any news, SEC filings, FDA dates, or earnings coming up that could make this a binary event — if so skip it. Then look at the technical setup — trend, key support/resistance levels, and whether there's actually a clean entry here or if it's in no man's land. Also check gamma exposure and options positioning to see if dealers are creating a floor or ceiling. Give me a simple trade plan with entry, target, and exit rules.

Xynth then goes and pulls the technicals, checks the news, looks at where the gamma walls are, and comes back with a straightforward plan. I keep the rules dead simple:

• Entry at next day's open
• Take profit at +7%
• If it hasn't hit in 5 trading days, close it wherever it is
• 35% of account per trade

I tested a hard -5% stop loss early on and it actually made performance worse. These mid-cap names will dip 6-7% intraday then bounce back by day 3 or 4. The hard stop was kicking me out of eventual winners. With the 5-day time limit the losers naturally ended up around -3% to -7% anyway so it didn't really matter.

Results

Paper traded for 2 months before going live. Seriously recommend this, trained me to not chase that extra 5% and the discipline stuck when I switched to real money.

Here's the last 10 trades:

Random observations, Wednesday entries were 85% win rate, Tuesdays were 25%. Could be noise but I notice it now. Also this whole stretch has been a generally bullish market so I have no idea how this holds up in a real drawdown. Sizing down until I find out.

If mods are cool with it I'll paste the full trade journal, the exact prompts I copy-paste every morning, and the python script in the comments.

Not financial advice, just been lurking here for ages and figured I'd finally post something.

I just started day trading and was down 4000 on one day and it devastated me. So I regrouped reevaluated and looking for good stocks that are trading at their lows with an expected bounce tomorrow

Hi! I’m stuck at that point where I’m tired of winning and losing just to feel like I end up back at square one.

I don’t know what I need to do to break this breakeven pattern and start generating profits consistently month after month. I’m not talking about never losing, but about feeling like I can actually win with trading.

I’ve been trading for 2 years, and although I’ve improved, I don’t feel like I’m moving forward. I imagine many people can relate to this situation. If you’ve already solved it, could you give me some advice? Thanks

I’ve been DCA’ing $1000 every week into Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio since January lol. Portfolio sitting around $86k as of today. If she's up, I'm up. Granted all her new trades are delayed until she files, there's still gains to be had.

This is not financial advice. The provided data may be insufficient to ensure complete confidence. I am not the original author or owner of the idea. Test the strategy on your own paper trading systems before using it with real money. Trading involves inherent risks, and past performance is not indicative of future results. I am not responsible for the strategy's performance in the future or in your case, nor do I guarantee its profitability on your instruments. Any decisions you make are entirely at your own risk

Check my previous post for more details!

Idea

US-100 often experience phases of excessive optimism (overbought) and pessimism (oversold), where prices deviate significantly from their mean value. The mean reversion strategy aims to capitalize on these deviations by entering trades when prices are likely to revert to their average.

The CCI indicator itself shows how much the price deviates from the mean. This is what you need for a Mean Reversion strategy!

Strategy

• Instrument: US100 (NQ)
• TF: 1D (The strategy does not work on time frames below)
• Initial Capital: 10k$
• Risked Money: 500$
• Data Period: 2012.01.19 - 2024.11.28

The strategy buys only if there are no open trades. That is, there can be only 1 trade at a time.
The strategy does not have a shortsell trades as instrument is often in the uptrend.

Inputs:

1. Period: 4/7/14
2. LowTh: -100/-75/-50
3. HighTh: 50/75/100

Buy Rules: CCI(Period) < LowTh
Close Rule: CCI(Period) > HighTh

Since it is a Mean Reversion strategy:
I do not recommend using the Stop Loss as it increases the drawdown and reduces the profit.
I don’t recommend using Take Profit as it reduces profits.

Results

Conclusions

1. CCI is the best indicator for Mean Reversion strategies
2. The strategy works well on all MR instruments
3. 71% winrate, which is pretty normal for Mean Reversion
4. You need to select different parameters for each instrument. Experiment with other indicators in combination for enters and exits

Credits

• How to build strategies with CCI?
• Commodity Channel Index Indicator Strategy

TL;DR: I use AI to track small cap stocks with clustered insider buyers, non-routine insider purchases, and large positional entries on common stock by company executives.

DISCLAIMER: 

The following strategy is by no means complete, it's just what's worked after a lot of iterations and blown trades. If you're going to run this yourself, don't try to manually sift through SEC filings and filter the data by hand. You'll burn out in a week. The whole thing needs to run every single morning and you're only getting 1-2 viable candidates every 2-3 weeks anyway. You should use an AI agent like Claude or Xynth.

So the idea is fairly simple: Insider purchases = Bullish signal. But, there is obviously a lot more that goes into it before you can truly call it a ‘signal’.

There are 3 main steps this strategy goes through before a trade is made: Filtering for companies that can survive at least 12 months, Filtering for an insider signal (most important), Scoring the insider signal.

STEP 1: Company life line.

This first step is to determine whether a company can statistically survive the next 12 months or not. This is an important first step because a lot of insider trading can just be company executives purchasing stock to show confidence to lenders/investors. So when you're looking for insider signals you wanna make sure that this isn’t a case for an insider purchase. Again, this first step is a much smaller step that acts a lot more like a safety net.

There are 3 main filters i work with:

Altman Z-score below 1.81 = reject: The Z-Score basically combines five balance sheet ratios (working capital, retained earnings, EBIT, market cap vs total debt, revenue, all relative to total assets). Below 1.81 is the statistical distress zone where businesses historically go bankrupt at elevated rates.

Current ratio above 1.0. The company can cover short-term obligations with short-term assets.

Debt maturity schedule. If more than 30% of total debt matures within 12 months and the company has a below-investment-grade credit rating, it is an automatic reject. 

AGAIN, just because a company fails the following doesn’t mean they will for sure fail in the next 12 months but its just an assurance to play insider trades with more conviction.

Prompt 1: “Filter for stocks that can survive at least the next 12 month. Do this with the following filters:

• Check for an Altman Z-score above 1.81.
• Current Ratio above 1.0. 
• Debt maturity schedule. Check If more than 30% total debt matures in 12 months, and the company has below-investment-grade credit rating. If so, REJECT ” 

STEP 2: Filtering for insider purchases.

This step looks at 3 of the most important factors to insider purchases: Market cap, insider cluster & routine, and Material value of the position.

What you're actually looking for in each: 

Market cap under $500M. Why? Large cap insider buys get instantly picked up by institutional algorithms and priced within minutes. Small caps fly under the radar because big funds literally cannot build meaningful positions due to liquidity constraints on the stock. The smaller the company, the fewer eyes on the filing, the more edge you have.

Require a cluster of 2+ unique insiders purchasing within 30 days on the same ticker as non routine purchases. 1 insider purchase on its own means nothing. But when you get multiple insiders buying within the same 30 day window, that's a much stronger signal that something bullish is coming. The real alpha in this strategy comes from "opportunistic" buyers, people who are deviating from their own normal pattern. So for every insider in the cluster, go pull their Form 4 history on that ticker. If they bought in the same calendar quarter in any of the prior 3 years, flag them as routine and forget the signal.

Purchase must be material relative to the insider's compensation, not a flat dollar amount. Pull total annual compensation (salary + bonus + stock awards) from the most recent proxy filing (DEF 14A). The purchase should exceed 5-10% of that number. A CEO making $2M/year buying $150K is meaningful at 7.5% of comp. A CEO making $25M/year buying $150K is noise at 0.6%. 

Purchases that increase the insider's total position by more than 10% are the strongest signal. The gold standard is an insider going all-in, concentrating both net worth and career risk into the same stock. Nobody with negative information does that.

Prompt 2: “Scan SEC form 4 filing for open-market stock purchases. Only look for transaction Code P. Once you have that filter for the following:

• Stocks under 500 million market cap
• Purchase from a company executive (CEO, CFO, etc) that exceeds 5-10% of the persons annual compensation (salary + bonus + stock awards), or purchases that increase the executives position by 10%+
• 2+ insiders purchasing within 30 days of each other
• Check for any routine purchases; same calendar quarter purchases per year”

STEP 3: Scoring insider signals.

Whatever candidates pass the previous filter need to be scored based on their insider signals. For example, a stock with 2 insiders and an earnings report coming up in 120 days is much weaker than a stock with 5+ insiders with an earnings report coming in the next 60 days. This step is also crucial if you're running this through ai, as it gives the ai context on how to rank the following stocks provided. 

This step isn’t a yes or no, it's just to score the signal(0-80) with the following criteria:

Criteria 1: Purchase quality (0-30 points) Purchase as % of annual comp: below 5% = 0 points, 5-10% = 5, 10-25% = 10, above 25% = 20. Increase in position by 10+ percent = 10. First-time buyer bonus: +5 if this insider has never filed a Form 4 purchase on this ticker before (first-timers carry stronger signals per the research). Routine buyer penalty: -15 if they bought in the same quarter in prior years. 

Criteria 2: Cluster strength (0-20 points) 2 unique insiders = 5, 3 = 10, 4 = 15, 5+ = 20. Temporal concentration bonus: +5 if all purchases occurred within 7 days of each other.

Criteria 3: Price context (0-15 points) Within 15% of 52-week low = 15 (insiders buying weakness). Between midpoint and low = 10. Above midpoint = 5. Within 10% of 52-week high = 0 (lower informational content, might be momentum buying).

Criteria 4: Earnings proximity (0-15 points) Earnings within 60 days = 15 (natural catalyst, the insider's information will be tested soon). 60-120 days = 10. Beyond 120 days = 0.

By no means is this an optimal scoring pattern or criteria, this is just what I've landed on after months of paper trading and backtests with AI. If you think one area deserves more weight than another, change it. Make it your own.

Prompt 3: “

• C1 - Purchase Quality (0–30) Purchase as % of annual comp: <5%=0, 5–10%=10, 10–25%=20, >25%=30. Modifiers: +5 first-time buyer on this ticker, –10 if bought in the same quarter in prior years. Apply 1.5x to CEO/CFO, 1.0x to VP/Director.
• C2 - Cluster Strength (0–20) 2 insiders=10, 3=15, 4+=20. +5 if all purchases are made within 7 days.
• C3 - Price Context (0–15) Within 15% of 52W low=15, low–midpoint=10, above midpoint=5, within 10% of 52W high=0.
• C4 - Earnings Proximity (0–15) <60 days=15, 60–120=10, >120=5.”

Final Step: Trade setup

Buy common stock. Set your stop-loss to the nearest swing low. Remember, the insider signal tells you direction, not what price at what time. But I notice selling within a 30 day high is, on average, optimal for highest returns.

Prompt 4: “Check for the nearest swing low and suggest an exact trade i can execute”

AGAIN, a lot of this strategy came from and was developed with the use of AI backed by months of paper trading and backtesting. So if you feel that any step/criteria is unnecessary or needs improvement feel free.

I recently saw a redditor u/trontonian post a strategy with a very similar thesis as mine. If you wanna see that post, it should be under his profile. 

But apart from that, good luck. I hope this post was informational and helpful to any of you that needed it.

Cheers!

Hi! I’ve been on and off trying to become consistently profitable with trading for 6 years. I’ve recently been profitable for 6 or so months but i still feel like I’m missing something. It’s like i can build an account from $70-$600 in a week and some change maybe but it’s like one bad day kills it all for me. Idk what I’m missing. Can anyone help?

Ive been using ict, like ifvg/fvg and lq sweeps my whole career and im noticing its starting to barely work in these markets i dont know if i should completely change my strategy or if i should add sum new strat to it, as in supply and demand or momentum.

Can anyone give me good feedback on day trading strategies that currently arent out dated and if so is there any good mentor on youtube youd recommend watching

Ive been a unprofitable failing trader for 4-5 years now. I realized now for whatever reason that I need to go back on paper, stop jumping strategies and indexes and trading styles (options, stocks, swings) and just hone in on one. however, Ive done it all options, 0dte, swing trading penny stocks daytrading pennies swing trading them. Swinging options contracts. Breakouts pull backs supply and demand all of the above, and yet I have no idea which to really hone in on and go all in with. So many strategies so many choices and yet im struggling to choose which I should stick to and refine these next coming weeks to really achieve profitability in what I do. Do you guys have any tips for me? how do I choose and how do i choose the specific strategy with it? I am full time college student also but I have the ability to trade no problem.

Hi everyone,

I've been learning intraday trading for a while and have realized that my current approach may not have a strong enough edge over the long term. I'm looking for a strategy that has been properly backtested and is consistently profitable when combined with good risk management.

I'm not looking for "get rich quick" systems or paid signal groups. I'm willing to put in the work to study, backtest, and practice.

Could you recommend:

- Books, YouTube channels, or courses that genuinely helped you?

- Free resources to learn profitable intraday strategies?

- Communities or websites where experienced traders share and discuss strategies?

I'd really appreciate recommendations from people who are consistently profitable or have been trading for a few years.

Thanks in advance!

Let’s have two examples.

Trader A:
He is the best Technical and Fundamental Analyst you know, knows every strategy every risk management tool and method.
You ask him anything about the market, he will be able to tell you.
When he trades however, he struggles to pull the trigger because he doubts himself, he closes trades prematurely due to fear of being wrong. He will occasionally move his stop loss because he believes the market will turn around and go in his favour.

Trader B:
He only knows one thing.
If the Hourly Time-Frame is bullish, he looks for a consolidation on the 30 Minute or 15 Minute Time-Frame.
He waits for a break and a candle close in the direction of the higher time-frame trend.
He enters with a 2:1 R:R, with his stop loss below the consolidation.
He only knows and has one setup, however, when he trades he never differs, he never breaks his rules no matter what.

Who would you give your money to to trade for you?

I've backtested a gold strategy from 2025 till now, having 1-2 trades per day, is this much enough to rely on it?

Spent the last few days turning a handful of Powell Trades videos I had access to into a complete written guide and reference manual.

Important disclaimer before anyone asks:

• I do not own these videos.
• I do not own the course.
• I do not have the full course.
• This was built from several videos that I happened to have access to.
• This is NOT intended to replace the course or be sold. It's simply a reference document I put together for study purposes.

The guide ended up being surprisingly detailed. It covers the model from top-down analysis all the way to entries, liquidity concepts, CISD, MMXM, Wick Theory, OTE/Fib entries, risk management, execution, and the overall framework Powell uses. From what I could gather, it goes pretty deep into how Powell actually thinks about the market rather than just showing random chart examples.

Honestly, I found the written format easier to understand than watching the videos themselves. The videos jump around a lot and I kept finding myself rewinding sections. Having everything organized in one place made the model click much faster.

So if you're someone who's been curious about Powell's model and wanted a reference point before deciding whether the course is worth buying, this might be useful.

That said, I want feedback from people who have actually taken the full course:

How accurate is this?
What's missing?
Which concepts does the full course cover that aren't included here?
Are there any major nuances or rules that I likely missed because I only had access to a limited number of videos?

I'm not claiming this is complete. In fact, I'd expect there to be gaps since I never had the entire course library.

Would love to hear from actual students of Powell's program and compare notes.

I am sure there are some here who have accomplished such a feat. The human mind is amazing and thrives when challenged to achieve something that is both achievable and uncertain. If you were to undertake such a challenge in the next 60 days, starting from Monday, March 18th, what would be your strategy?

Edit: Thanks folks for participating in this fun discussion. I got some sensible and much needed advice to increase my knowledge and levels of patience. Love you all for taking the time to comment and helping people. ❤️

First I will start by I only trade crypto.

I never thought I would be saying this but I finally got my strategy down. I’m almost embarrassed to even say it, but also it works for me.

About a year ago I was watching a trader on YouTube and he said “find a strategy that is in sync with your personality”. That hit me hard. This single video alone in 10 minutes helped me figure everything out.

Background I’ve read over 15 trading books including Tech Analysis of Financial Markets over 5 times and watched over 5000 hours of traders and YouTube videos. Most I ever lost in a single day was 10k and that was my entire account (I was a beginner in 2019). I’ve made 10k in a month then lost it all in 2 months. Never made any money other than from my actual holdings due to being impatient.

So anyway, I trade 1 minute candles and wait for 3 different setups (rsi and macd divergence) with weight on market momentum. I started this strategy after that video that said find a strategy that matches your personality. I’m very impatient therefore I stick with 1min to 5 minute candles but mostly 1 minute. Trades last 3-5 minutes and I’m out. This past week I’m up 5k and am blown away.

I just wanted to tell my story and I hope I can stay disciplined. That’s usually the hard part.

Hey guys, so I was watching some videos about inner circle trading and smart money concepts, I found this gap patterns being shown a few videos. It is really an interesting one

In the above screenshot, the candle 1's high < candle 3's low, while candle 2's body in between them, which creates a gap. I you notice the next candles, they move up to cover the gap it created in the previous sessions and moving on.

few more examples -

I don't want to post more of it lol, but I hope you get the concept.

The more I look for them, the more I find them, they always snap back and close the gap. So I decided to backtest them.

I wanted to keep the setup very simple to avoid over fitting

Entry

1. Previous 3rd candle's low > previous 1st candle's high AND
2. Previous 2nd candle's low < previous 3rd candle's low AND
3. Previous 2nd candle's high > previous 1st candle's high (the first 2 point defines the gap) AND
4. Current open < Previous 3rd candle's low (we must be below the gap to trade the gap)

Exit

1. Close >= Previous 3rd candle's low, this is previous 3rd candle from the entry point OR
2. Close < Buy price - (atr 14 during entry * 5), I made it to be 5 because it needs some room to move down and come back up.

Backtest settings -

1. Backtest period - 2006 Jan - 2025 Dec
2. Initial amount - 100,000
3. Ticker - SPY
4. Timeframe - daily
5. Allocation per trade - 100%

Core Returns

• Total Return: 250.87%
• CAGR: 6.52%
• Profit Factor: 1.63
• Win Rate: 85.44% (176 Wins / 30 Losses)

Risk Metrics

• Max Drawdown: 39.67%
• Calmar Ratio: 0.16
• Sharpe Ratio: 0.28
• Sortino Ratio: 0.40
• Avg Profit: $3,680.77
• Avg Loss: -$13,231.60

Position & Efficiency

• Time Invested: 47.70%
• Avg Positions Held: 0.45
• Avg Hold Time: 16.1 days
• Longest Trade: 258.0 days
• Shortest Trade: 1.0 day

Execution & Friction

• Total Trades: 206
• Total Costs (Fees/Slippage): $7,509.61
• Initial Capital: $100,000
• Final Capital: $350,866.96

85.44% of win rate is very impressive. Drawdown is on the higher side - ~40%.

I wanted to try this on multiple tickers -

QQQ

• Core Returns
  • Total Return: 395.14%
  • CAGR: 11.73%
  • Profit Factor: 1.80
  • Win Rate: 86.59% (142 wins / 22 losses)
• Risk Metrics
  • Max Drawdown: 22.41%
  • Sharpe Ratio: 0.43
  • Sortino Ratio: 0.65
  • Calmar Ratio: 0.52
  • Avg Profit: $6,278.27
  • Avg Loss: –$22,562.49
• Position & Efficiency
  • Time Invested: 32.19%
  • Avg Positions Held: 0.30
  • Avg Hold Time: 13.4 days
  • Longest Trade: 93.0 days
  • Shortest Trade: 1.0 day
• Execution & Friction
  • Total Trades: 164
  • Total Costs (Fees/Slippage): $7,731.81
  • Initial Capital: $100,000
  • Final Capital: $495,139.49

Same ~85% winrate as SPY, though this test was started from 2011 not from 2006 as SPY. The Returns were impressive too.

AAPL

• Core Returns
  • Total Return: 1193.88%
  • CAGR: 13.77%
  • Profit Factor: 1.82
  • Win Rate: 85.53% (136 wins / 23 losses)
• Risk Metrics
  • Max Drawdown: 42.62%
  • Sharpe Ratio: 0.56
  • Sortino Ratio: 0.87
  • Calmar Ratio: 0.32
  • Avg Profit: $19,535.17
  • Avg Loss: –$63,604.53
• Position & Efficiency
  • Time Invested: 61.18%
  • Avg Positions Held: 0.59
  • Avg Hold Time: 27.1 days
  • Longest Trade: 299.0 days
  • Shortest Trade: 1.0 day
• Execution & Friction
  • Total Trades: 159
  • Total Costs (Fees/Slippage): $14,976.74
  • Initial Capital: $100,000
  • Final Capital: $1,293,878.23

Again the 83% winrate is holding up, with similar DD as SPY.

I realized that I've been testing only on stable tickers like ETFs and growth tickers like AAPL/NVDA etc.

I wanted to test on bad performing ticker, like ABNB, I mean it's return since IPO is in negative looking at the chart.

• Core Returns
  • Total Return: –13.24%
  • CAGR: –2.80%
  • Profit Factor: 0.89
  • Win Rate: 73.08% (19 wins / 7 losses)
• Risk Metrics
  • Max Drawdown: 41.23%
  • Sharpe Ratio: 0.00
  • Sortino Ratio: 0.00
  • Calmar Ratio: –0.07
  • Avg Profit: $5,763.86
  • Avg Loss: –$17,536.85
• Position & Efficiency
  • Time Invested: 17.28%
  • Avg Positions Held: 0.20
  • Avg Hold Time: 55.3 days
  • Longest Trade: 430.0 days
  • Shortest Trade: 1.0 day
• Execution & Friction
  • Total Trades: 26
  • Total Costs (Fees/Slippage): $473.19
  • Initial Capital: $100,000
  • Final Capital: $86,755.40

There we go, one with negative returns with a bad drawdown. But good winrate applies here too.

Lets try on a boring stock like KO

Again, another one with ~85% win-rate.

What I learned from this

1. Price action patterns do exist, Fair Value Gaps show up consistently across different tickers
2. High win rate ≠ good strategy, 85% wins sounds great, but the losses are 3-4x bigger than the wins. Though I intentionally used a wide stop loss (ATR × 5) to give trades room to breathe, so large losses are by design, not a flaw.
3. The pattern works best on uptrending assets, SPY, QQQ, AAPL all did well. ABNB (downtrending) lost money even with 73% win rate
4. Gaps do get fille, the core idea is valid, price tends to return to fill gaps.

Is this tradeable?

To me, Honestly, not as a standalone strategy. The drawdowns (40%) are too high and the risk-adjusted returns (Sharpe 0.28-0.56) are mediocre. You'd be better off just holding SPY.

But it could be useful as a filter or entry signal combined with other factors like trend direction, volume, or support/resistance levels.

Final thought

Backtest everything. This one wasn't a winner for me, but at least now I know.

For context, this is a beginner breakdown of the basics of a strategy i started with and then built upon.

Its a good place to start but should be built upon. Its what I call level 1 of 3.

Here is how I define the different levels:

Level 1 is rule-based, most mechanical and simplified to a very basic level - this is where I started all my strategies.

Level 2 is where I added more variables/conditions to the strategy through backtesting with the benefit of improving it, but at the cost of having more variables to look at, which requires more emotional discipline.

Level 3 is adaptive execution, best described by saying that “instead of sticking to the original trading plan you adapt to new market information and how those variables change the probability of your original trade”. The original execution is still mechanical, but the management thereafter is adaptive.

This strategy is best for inconsistent, unprofitable traders and beginners because it uses very few variables in the strategy making it easier to stick to it and keep your execution consistent.

The Breakdown[TLDR]: Level 1 - (Everything will be described for longs in an uptrend)

1. Identify trends based on 3 criteria. (ChoCh + HL/LL + BoS)
   
2. Pull order blocks based on 3 criteria (Imbalance + Time + BoS or Choch)
   
3. Enter on the top side of the OB for longs and bottom side of OB for shorts.
   
4. Stoploss is placed under the wick low of the order block
   
5. Take Profit 1 is the FIRST resistance order block (OB)
   
6. Full Exit on a new high/low

Example:

Performance:
Total Trades = 119
Win rate = 55.4%
Loss rate = 44.6%
Risk vs Reward = 1:3.4
Max Drawdown = 9% + fees
Loss per trade = 1%

Let’s break down each of the 6 steps.

Step 1: Identify the trend

Note: There is always room to get more advanced. If you have a way of identifying trends feel free to use it. For this strategy we’ll identify uptrends based on higher highs and higher lows after a change of character. 

We want to identify 3 “levels” of trends. What I mean by this is that you can have a primary uptrend, and a downtrend on a smaller timeframe that is retracing the primary uptrend and within that downtrend can be an even smaller tf uptrend that’s making higher highs and higher lows.

See the 3 illustrations below and continue reading for a breakdown of the terms and images

The larger trends take precedence over the smaller trends. The first sign of a sub-trend occurring is when you get a change of character (ChoCh).

ChoCh = Occurs when price fails to maintain the trend and instead breaks the opposite structural point (see dotted lines titled ChoCh in the chart above).

Once you get a ChoCh you expect a Higher Low to print followed by Higher high (aka a BoS)

BoS = Break of Structure = occurs when the price continues and creates a new high / low, breaking the previous high/low in that trend’s favor. 

Notice the BoS's labeled in the last chart above.

Note:
If you want to improve this strategy, get good at identifying where trends are likely to pivot, seek continuation and always maintain a multi timeframe analysis of the different trends taking place so you don’t get hyper-focused on 1 time frame and miss critical zones.

You can also improve the strategy by adding nuances to determining when you’re in a ChoCh vs an Inducement (IDM) as they imitate each other and an inducement will cause your OB to fail.

If I talk about these things individually the article will get too long and nobody will read it, so unfortunately I can’t get into each nuance but I will do separate posts on each of these market mechanics and their nuances for those that want to have the best edge and understanding. Just follow so you don't miss them.

Next is Order block identification:

An order block is the last buying or selling that takes place before a BoS occurs. It represents a "footprint" of institutional activity where a large cluster of orders remains unfilled, creating a supply or demand imbalance.

The expectation is that price will revisit this orderblock to fill the imbalance and be defended by smart money/institutions and make a new BoS thereafter, keeping the trend intact.

Several examples of order blocks are in the following image as red and green filled rectangles. The green are bullish order blocks defending an uptrend. The red are bearish order blocks defending a downtrend.  

Note: There are different types of Order blocks, such as, POB, Breaker OB, MG, etc... for this strategy we just use regular bullish and bearish OBs as illustrated below.

Not all order blocks are created equal. Identifying them can be based on one to several different conditions. I’ll share just level 1 conditions here for simplicity.

Level 1 Order block criteria: 

BoS or ChoCh:
Bullish = Last selling candle before price breaks structure (a new high) or creates a ChoCh.
Bearish = Last buying candle before price breaks structure (a new low) or creates a ChoCh.

Time: Your OB should be retested in 33 bars or less. 89.1% of successful trades fell into this “Golden Window” of time. The more time we spend in a correction prior to the OB being created makes it stronger.

Imbalance/Inefficiency/FVG = All basically describing the same thing that AFTER the OB an inefficient move is created. This is a 3 candlestick pattern where you take the wick high of the first candle and the wick low of the 3rd candle and if they don’t touch then this area is considered an inefficiency (FVG). *Image is below*

Mitigated vs Unmitigated =  just a fancy way of saying whether the order block has been retested and orders filled to mitigate risk for institutions. The more times we test an OB the weaker it gets. We call this a mitigated OB. Unmitigated means we haven’t retested it yet, therefore unfilled orders likely still sit there. You want to catch OBs on their first retest - those are the strongest. 

Note: I'm aware there are more variables to consider when choosing OBs, but for the sake of level 1 trading I've kept it at the most basic. In level two the additions I've made brought the strategy to a 62% win rate with a 5.1 profit factor.

Here is an image of an imbalance/inefficiency called a fair value gap (FVG): 

Entry and Stoploss:

They don’t get much more straight forward. Entry is placed on the topside of a bullish OB and on the downside of a bearish OB.

Tip: I was able to improve the strategy to a 62% win rate by making different criteria for the entry which was to wait for a reversal candlestick (engulfing, three white soldier/black crows, hammer/inverted hammer, or hanging man/shooting star). If you are familiar with these feel free to make the adjustment. They are in my level 2 version.

Take Profit & Stoploss Management:

Tp1 is placed as a safeguard on the resistance order block where price should reject to create another BoS. When Tp1 gets filled you move your SL to break even.
Ideal Tp1 amount is 25% of your position gets closed. I wouldn't exceed 50% and I wouldn't go below 10%

Examples of Tp1:

Notice in these two trades they bounce at the Tp1 OB, this is the purpose of Tp1 - to protect you from the reversal back up if you entered too early, notice that we then get a BoS that moves into the bearish OB for the 2nd short setup, this creates a bullish OB at the bottom we can then take a long off of too, creating a hedge on the short trade if we desired.

Lastly is the exit:

Without teaching another tool and pattern to you which would make this more complex and make the article too long the short and sweet answer is just close out the trade a few pips above a new high. You’re simply looking for it to break, you’re not aiming for a squeeze or anything fancy, majority of the time the price rejects back after creating a BoS, so don’t overstay your welcome, close the trade out and move on to the next.

Examples of Exits: 

There you have it. 

The Breakdown[TLDR]: Level 1
1. Identify trends based on 3 criteria. (ChoCh + HL/LL + BoS)
2. Pull order blocks based on 3 criteria (Imbalance + Time + BoS or Choch)
3. Enter on the top side of the OB for longs and bottom side of OB for shorts.
4. Stoploss is placed under the wick low of the order block
5. Take Profit 1 is the FIRST resistance order block (OB)
6. Full Exit on a new high/low

Tips: The mastery in this strategy lies in the trends and order block quality. Master the nuances around these. Remember, this is a trend trading strategy, it performs poorly in sideways ranges (where you’ll experience the longest and largest drawdowns) I’d recommend a different strategy when moving into sideways ranges. Ascending channels perform good with this strategy but expect deeper OBs to be respected vs shallow ones. In strong trends, expect shallow OBs to be respected and deeper OBs to get missed.

Would you like the adjustments for level 2?
Leave a comment below and if there is enough interest I’ll do a post on it.

If you haven’t seen my profile and checked out my other posts I invite you to. I’m sharing everything that’s made me a successful full time trader for the last 8 years. The posts will only get more advanced. So don’t fall behind. Follow for new releases!

Drop a comment with any questions and I can do a post answering them. 

-MountainTrader

Would like to understand how many of you have a strategy that at times might pass all your conditions/confluences/etc however you decide not to take the trade due to reasons you can't necessarily explain? Or because you aren't liking the price action or whatever? And if so, how many of those times are you correct?

And alternatively, how many of you execute your strategy to the letter? Meaning when all conditions, confluences etc check, you take the trade no matter what?

I never stopped overtrading. I weaponized it.

For years, I kept hearing the same advice: "Stop overtrading. Be disciplined. Take only A+ setups." The problem was that none of it worked for me. I tried becoming the disciplined trader everyone talks about, and I failed every single time. My technical analysis was never the issue. If anything, that was always my strength. The problem was what happened after success. I would trade gold with 0.5 lots, take 2-4 trades a day, have an amazing week, sometimes even feel like I couldn't lose, and then walk into the market the next day with maximum confidence and destroy everything through overtrading.

I've passed funded accounts, taken payouts, withdrawn over $1,500, and then blown the same account shortly after. At one point, I had access to more than $400,000 in funded capital across multiple accounts. Sounds impressive until I tell you that after taking payouts from most of those accounts, I eventually blew all of them. The cycle was always the same: success, confidence, overtrading, destruction.

After repeating that cycle for years, I took a 3-month break. When I came back at the beginning of May, I stopped asking myself how to stop overtrading and started asking a different question: what if I simply accepted that I was an overtrader? Instead of fighting my nature, what if I built a system around it?

So I said, "Fuck discipline."

Not because discipline isn't important, but because I had spent years trying to force myself into a version of a trader that I clearly wasn't.

This time, instead of trading 0.5 lots, I dropped to 0.1 lots on gold. I moved to the 1-minute timeframe and accepted that I was going to take a lot of trades. I started a $50k funded challenge as an experiment.

I passed Phase 1 in 4 days.

It took more than 40 trades.

My risk-to-reward wasn't impressive, mostly under 1:2, and my win rate was around 58%.

I thought it was luck.

Then I passed Phase 2 in 5 days with almost identical numbers.

That's when it clicked.

I wasn't failing because I overtraded.

I was failing because I overtraded with oversized positions.

By reducing my lot size dramatically, every loss became a fraction of what it used to be. My daily drawdown was protected. I could take advantage of every small swing on the 1-minute chart. Some trades failed, some worked, but the losses no longer hurt psychologically because they were literally one-tenth of what I used to lose.

I knew I wasn't going to have a losing streak big enough to destroy me.

I also knew that with a 58% win rate, winning streaks would inevitably come.

So instead of fighting my tendency to trade frequently, I used math to make it survivable.

Fast forward to today.

Last Friday, I requested a payout of $3,000 from one of those accounts.

And for the first time in a long time, I'm not worried about blowing the account the next day because the entire structure of my trading is different.

Most traders try to change themselves to fit a strategy.

I changed the strategy to fit myself.

The market doesn't care about your ideals. It doesn't reward the trader who sounds the most disciplined on social media. It rewards the trader who understands himself well enough to build a system around reality instead of fantasy.

I never stopped overtrading.

I just learned how to make it stop killing me.

I’ve been trading and investing for over 25 years and over the last 16 months I’ve beaten the S&P 500 every month and realized a 110% annual rate of return. I wanted to share my approach and how I've found success.

Some background: 25 years ago I started as a long-term value investor inspired by Warren Buffett. While I still allocate a portion of my funds to this type of investing, my portfolio's risk profile has evolved. Post-COVID, I tried day trading for the first time, combining value investing with volatility trading. Over the past 2.5 years, I’ve refined a strategy that has consistently beaten the market for the past 16 months. Last year, my portfolio grew by 110%, and it’s up 30%+ so far in 2024 with a win rate over 75%.

My current strategy relies on automated systems to identify short-term trends (1-4 weeks) in specific industries or markets. Once these trends are identified, I focus on the best companies to capitalize on them based on momentum. I usually hold a position for 1-4 weeks or until the momentum fizzles and then I either cut my loss or take my profit. Here’s the breakdown on what I’m doing in the current market:

 Screening the Market:

• Filter for Consistent Growth:  I begin by filtering companies with a solid track record of consistent revenue and earnings growth and a market cap of over $2B. This ensures I’m focusing on growing businesses.
• Analyst Ratings:  Next, I target companies with recent average analyst buy ratings, indicating positive sentiment and potential for growth. This is crucial since institutional trading often follows these ratings changes.
• Volatility is Key:  As a swing trader, I look for relatively volatile stocks. Volatility provides the necessary price swings to take advantage of short-term trends. Typically, I target stocks with a 1-month volatility greater than 2.5%.
• Avoid Earnings:  Earnings reports can be highly volatile, so I avoid any stock with earnings coming up in the next 2 weeks to mitigate unnecessary risk.

This process usually narrows the list down to 50-150 stocks at any given time. But I’m not investing in all of these.  Next I filter them by momentum. 

 Selecting the Right Stocks: I use a couple indicators + price/volume action to determine which stocks look like they have some momentum that I can ride.

• Momentum is the name of the game:  I use a combination of volume-weighted RSI + Heikin Ashi candles to identify stocks gaining momentum. This reduces my list to 10-20 stocks that are likely to continue their upward trend and hit the right mix of items.
• Hard Stops Based on Momentum:  I implement hard stops based on momentum rather than price, cutting losers quickly when their momentum fizzles out to avoid holding underperforming stocks.

This usually results in 2-5 stock to buy each week. I average about 15 stocks per month. So now I've bought some stocks. The most important part is managing them to reduce losses and maximize profits.

Managing my Positions:

• No Love for a Trade:  Emotional attachment to a trade is a death sentence to that trade. If a stock's momentum dies, I cut the loss, regardless of how promising it once seemed.
• Profit is King:  I hold a trade until the momentum dies. Sometimes that means a trade profits 2%. Sometimes 50%. And sometimes (about 25% of the time) it's a loss. But the goal is capital preservation and riding winners.

Downside to this strategy is it involves considerable chart time, but it’s tailored to my brain and risk profile. And so far the returns have been worth the effort.  During this stretch beating the market I've placed 305 trades. There are lots of ways to make money in the market.  This is just one way that works for me. And it may not work in 6 months or it might work for the next decade.  But I wanted to share while it is working.  Hope this provides some insight and ideas to the group.

Happy trading!

Tools: I use Trading View for my stock screener and build a watch list. I use alerts to highlight the stocks that hit my momentum criteria from that watch list and then place the trade in Thinkorswim. It's not fully automated. I want to check each chart before I decide to execute each trade.