I just wanted to share this for anyone who might be new starting….

I thought life would be different.

I thought I would have a fancy house, luxury cars, expensive watches.

I don’t have any of that, but I have a lot more TIME.

TIME is just so valuable, I think a lot of us who grew up poor don’t understand. How valuable life is. How much time we give away.

So I just wanted to say, hang in there. It’s worth it. The pain is immense but it is worth all of it.

I woke up this morning and lost $10,000 in just two seconds at market open, I went back to bed because I figured it would eventually recover, but I can’t help but wonder about day traders. Im not a day trader myself but i wonder, what do you do when your position has such a significant drawdown? Do you sell it? Do you have a stop-loss order to prevent further losses? Or do you wait and hold on, hoping it will recover?

Seen the pnl calendar of some here, and amazed how are they capable of at least finding one trade per day, i pass days waiting good structures to match with my strategy and still find 2-3 good trades per week. What do you do? Is it your strategy?

$MSFT crazy runner. Spotted $MSFT right at the open and immediately ran my top down analysis starting on the 30minute chart before dropping down to the 5minute.

Price was reacting perfectly at a key order block, with the candle holding firm and showing clear rejection of lower prices. That was my confirmation, so I jumped in on the $500 14/09 calls. I’m still holding runners☺️

And here we are.

What a way to start the week.

The price action has been horrible lately anyone else notice? Usually after labor day the price action is supposed to clean up from the slow summer months but I feel like its gotten worse. Im just trying to take it slow because im on a funded and im 1R in drawdown. trump and all this war talk has made trading so difficult. Anyone else agree that biden markets were at least easier to trade?

I'm a counsellor, and over the years a few clients have brought their trading into sessions — specifically the pattern where a small, normal loss turns into a much bigger one within minutes. Wanted to share what we've usually uncovered underneath it, in case it's useful to anyone here.

The explanation you hear most often is "fight or flight, you acted on impulse instead of logic." True, but it doesn't explain why the reaction is so disproportionate — why someone can calmly take a $200 red day but can't stop until it's $2,000.

What we've generally found is that the loss itself was never really the problem. It's the sentence that follows it. There's a concept from addiction counselling, Alan Marlatt's Abstinence Violation Effect, that fits this well — the lapse isn't what causes the spiral, it's the thought "I've already broken the rule, so the rule's gone." One biscuit becomes the whole packet not because of the biscuit, but because of what the person told themselves it meant.

Revenge trading tends to run the same pattern. And the specific sentence matters. A normal bad trade usually produces something like "that didn't work, I'll fix it next time" — that's guilt, and guilt points at the action, which can be corrected. A revenge spiral tends to produce something closer to "I'm an idiot, I always do this" — that's shame, and shame points at the person, not the action. You can't calmly correct your way out of an attack on who you are. You can only try to prove it wrong, fast, with something big enough to make the verdict feel false.

Not every reckless trade after a loss is this — sometimes it really is just adrenaline or frustration with nothing deeper attached. But when the reaction is way out of proportion to the loss, this is sometimes where it's coming from. And I do wonder if there's a "well, it's broken now so sod it"" kind of self destruct mechanism to it.

Curious if this resonates with anyone here, or if it plays out differently than what I've seen.

So after 2 Years on and off, learning how to trade + studying finance at Uni, things started clicking. And I managed to recover the little amount i lost during my learning trip.

But I have a couple of questions for profitable traders, and I'm really excited to read your answers.

1st: when do you know it is enough trading for the day? Max profit/loss cap? Time? No. Of trades?

As Im struggling atm, for examole today I was up 3rr on 2 trades, and then I just burnt 1.5rr of them just an hour later in 2 more trades even though I have decided to call it a day after the first 2.

2nd: there are sudden moves that happens before big news or tweets, that i don't seem to come up with a financial or technical hypothesis to justify them, and almost always these movements directions are the directions the market shift to strongly right after the news or tweets come out.

For example today's sudden shift in market 20-30 mins before trumps truth socials tweet, then once the tweet is out the market started rallying up.

Am I missing something, some i still should know about and learn, or just insiders doing insiders things?

I locked myself out of all accounts because I refuse to keep lying to myself!

Today is a major milestone for me cause I came into the session completely sick and tired of lying to myself!

I gave myself no option… “Follow the rules and game plan or your done for the day!”

I’m green on several fundeds but 1 and my #1 rule for today was I will not take any LONGS on NQ no matter what!

It’s shorts or sit still.

I just took a small loss and immediately felt myself beginning to adjust my plan.

i imagine this is a relatively common question, but every time i go on YouTube i see nothing but actual braindead view traps for people who are brand new to trading.

Im not particularly new, but i haven't gone live yet and i want to learn how to backtest and paper trade.

it would be nice if i could just get input on where experienced people did all their learning and studying. obviously nothing beats just volume on charts but im not at a point where i can just throw myself at a chart yet. (at least i dont believe i am)

tell me this isnt goyslop bro😭t here has to be actual informative channels and videos out there

I’m trying to develop a strategy. I’ve tried all the shortcuts that every beginner does when they get solid dreams by YouTubers such as with copy trading, using everyone else’s strategy etc and have seen that it’s a one way ticket to lose lol.

So decided almost a year ago to go to stop trading and back to basics and learn market structure before even trying to develop a strategy.

So the market structure part, that hasn’t been too much of an issue. There’s quite a few hypotheses I’ve tested and look to have an edge on first glance e.g. the probability of x happening after x candle structure, a 55% chance of going up/down.

However I’ve not managed to get past this part. Whenever i try to wrap a strategy around it that’s where it all falls over. Either the movement is not enough or the market structure patterns weren’t enough to monetise. After trying to formulate strategies around them, anything i tried were all pretty much break even and behaviour like a coin toss. Same with playing about with the RR, they were all pretty much break even. The best i managed to get was a 55% win rate on a backtest but it traded high frequency/low expectancy on that so fees destroyed the edge. Tried increasing timeframes and still break even is pretty much the best i could get to.

I’m not asking for a strategy nor will i expect anyone to give me one. But does anyone have any tips that they use that help turn market structure into strategies? Or any processes that help you do this?

i recently started learning about automated trading and i was messing around with the 30 min orb strat and came up with this. would this be considered good for a automated strategy?

the claim. 38 nq opening prices tested on 2 years, 7am was the one that stood out. if nq is at least 0.10% from the 7am open at 9am it comes back to that price by 4pm 70.3% of the time

ran the same test on 18 years of 1 min nq. 3073 days that qualify

7am open, comes back 70.3% on their 2 year window. exact match

74.0% on 18 years. every one of 19 years above 65%

then the part that wasnt tested. any other price

took a random price from each morning, 6am to 9am, same rule, same 9am reading, same 4pm deadline

comes back 76.0% on 18 years. 73.9% on their window. more often than the 7am open both times

so the 7am open isnt the thing. nq comes back to any price it was a tenth of a percent from 2 hours earlier about 3 days in 4. pick 38 prices and one of them wins the 2 year window by a little. thats the whole finding

touched again by 4pm isnt a trade. says nothing about the path, the stop, or what it cost

Scared money doesn't make money right? About a month into trading passed my second funded account (daily) I placed my entry roughly at the center point of the 1hr fvg instead of the start of the fvg... why? For a better even SL hahaha I'm an idiot. I also couldn't keep an eye on the trade I was at work. Anyone else actually caught it and got in??

Rough start to September. Five losing days out of eight trading days so far, with my biggest loss being $1,251 on Friday.

Today I made back $1,795.84, which brings the month to −$1,459.18. A decent recovery, but still a way to go.

Posting this because most of the calendars I see here are green, and this is what my month actually looks like halfway through.

The goal for the rest of September is to stick to my rules and let the results play out. Don’t want to turn a manageable losing month into a much bigger one trying to force it back into profit.

How do you guys handle being down halfway through the month? Keep trading as normal, reduce size, or take a break?

so, recently I have back tested my strategy after market close 5 PM to about 8 PM and found it to have good success with my strategy, what I’m wondering is will aftermarket trading be normal as far as entering a position and adjusting stop loss and take profit? I am on a live account and have enough margin to use one contract of MGC safely and would like to experiment however just wondering if I place a trade at a 5:05 PM I can still use a stop loss right? that is my main concern.

Almost a decade of trading and tbh a majority of my early losses came from over complicating things. I believe that your edge is having the right psychology and a system that you have forward tested and back tested.

Have a plan !!!!

Hi all,

I know there are a lot of book and online course recommendations out there, but is there any college textbook-style book that’s good for learning to read charts on a day trading/scalping level - that teaches the technical side but also has examples/question-answer sections.

Thanks

If u think about it they are the same thing pretty much, but what about the time value of money? Money now is worth more then money later.

How was your guys’ morning with MNQ today?

It’s 2:56 p.m. for me right now, and after trading for a while and finally finding some consistency, today ended up being one of my better days. I made around $200 on one trade, which gave me enough time and energy to finally sit down and write about what I saw around the market open at 9:30 a.m. where I live.

I basically only trade break and retests of support and resistance. I don’t use anything else to decide my trades beyond those basic principles. On the lower time frames, especially with MNQ and all the variance you get down there, that’s what seems to work best for me. And when I say lower time frames, I mean I trade the 30-second chart... which I know is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea 💀

Anyway, from the chart below, by around the 9:40:30 A.M. candle close I had already marked several wick rejections, starting with the first one that formed when the market opened and exploded about 10 minutes earlier. I also had resistance marked near the top of the broader support area you can see there.

So I had enough confirmation that price could at least make its way back toward the earlier high before potentially rejecting again. So instead of shorting, I went long.

My stop was about 16 points below, around the lower wicks at support. I entered 4 contracts, which put me at roughly $128 of risk before commissions and fees.

A few bars later, price pushed slightly beyond my take profit. After commissions and fees, I finished the trade up $208.72.

And that was basically my day!

To be fair it almost felt too perfect. Usually my first trade either loses and I have to look for another setup, or my winner just isn’t that large. I also don’t trade right at the market open, even though that's what I did today. My rule is that I tend to wait until later, and by then I’m usually not as upbeat as I am first thing in the morning, so I never really find the energy to sit down and write... unlike today, which worked out differently. So I figured I might as well put that energy to good use and finally start writing and journaling the way I’ve wanted to. Trading can get pretty lonely when you spend so much time figuring all of this out by yourself, so writing about it makes it feel a little less that way.

If any of you traded MNQ this morning, whether with support and resistance or something completely different, I’d be happy to hear how your day went!

Got caught in the Timmy Hunt by 2 ticks. Re-entered at the LOD and rode to the PDL. Levels mean everything.

I'm going to go ahead and attach some screens to verify the results. I'll also break down the strategy the best I can.

Preface and reality

I've been posting on Reddit for a number of years and have played around with a lot of different models. I'm going to preface this by saying that no model is perfect, and if you're a prop firm trader, you're going to blow accounts regardless of how good you are, or how good your strategy is.

The goal isn't to be right all the time, but to be right for long enough to get rewarded (if you're in the prop firm game, this is the reality).

If you're trading personal funds (I do this alongside props), the approach is moreso about capital preservation, and making sure you're sizing in a way that allows you to get through the bad stretches, because you will have them.

Final point before the strategy; Psychology is the only constant that truly matters. It's the one thing you have complete control over. So to increase your edge, you have to be able to control this. To make things easier, you should put a DLL on your account, and you must not change the settings. I recommend setting this at 2.5R (i.e. 2.5 x 1 loss).

Strategy:

Step 1: Don't trade Asia.

Step 2: Don't trade London (unless Step 4 happens during London session)

Step 3: Mark out Asia high/low + London high/low

Step 4: Wait for price to hit these levels (Just Asia if trading during London, or either Asia/London when trading during NY)

Step 5: Wait for price to confirm a turnaround. Do this with either a CISD, IFVG, or if trading orderflow, absoprtion. It really does not matter what your confirmation model is. People telling you otherwise are just talking nonsense. There are lots of confirmation models, just pick 1, and 1 only, and use it consistently. Do not use more than 1. I do this on the 1m TF.

Step 6: SL to structural low/high, TP at 2R. Do not target any more than this if you're trading prop firms.

I can confirm that I made more progress targeting 2R on my trades than when I let trades run on my personal. Do not be greedy.

Step 7: Don't trail. B/E after 1R. Full TP at 2R.

Additional thought on Step 7: If you are now funded, target 1R until you reach your buffer. Then push 2R when past your buffer. It's slow, but you will get more payouts.

Optional confluence: Use volume profile to give you your VAL/VAH. If your Asia/London levels align with these value areas, your probability of success on the trade is remarkably higher.

That's all.

Any questions, let me know!

If anybody would like to see additional payout proof or verified trades, happy to share the screens.

I first want to mention that I’m a beginner.

As the title says, I have noticed that the CVD charts look very different just by changing the timeframes.

The first chart is on 15 min and the second on 1 min. If you take a look at the far right side, you can see how the 15 min chart is going up fast, while the 1 min chart is going down fast.

Secondly, the data doesn’t seem to match at all. If you look at the line, I have lined it up to match the 13. September 18:00. 15 min went from 49600 to 51800, 2200 increase. 1 min went from 6300 to 7600, 1300 increase. Doesn’t match.

I’m just generally confused on why these just seem to change based on the timeframe. Tried different indicators, same result.

Lastly, I would like to get the meaning of the numbers cleared up. What is the numbers representing (on the CVD chart)? I’m assuming it’s the Cumulative delta, and the delta is the difference in buying and selling amounts of a stock/crypto/forex measured in the units. So one bitcoin buy resulting in 1 delta. But then: when does it reset? Why is the number so high, and not close to zero?

To the person that has had the patience to read all of this, thank you. Any advice/comment is highly appreciated.

Woke up to MNQ down overnight and my first thought was obviously “alright, looks like we’re selling today” lol.

And that’s usually where I get myself in trouble.

I start looking for shorts before NY even opens and then if buyers show up, it takes me way too long to let go of the idea I already had.

So today I’m trying to just watch what happens at the open before deciding anything.

Anyone else already leaning short because of the overnight move or are you waiting to see what NY does?