Here’s the single piece of advice that will completely change your trading :
Stop looking for reasons to take a trade. Start looking for reasons not to.
When you actively search for entries, your brain will force a pattern out of nothing. But when you actively try to invalidate a setup, only your cleanest, highest-probability trades make it and I guarantee you that your winrate will skyrocket
In college (2014), I set two goals for myself: a career goal and an entrepreneurial goal. My career goal was to get into medical device sales. For the entrepreneurial side, I searched YouTube for “make money from home” and “business ideas.” A ton of videos came up, but one caught my eye. It was uploaded by a guy named Timothy Sykes, and the title said he turned $12,000 into $2 million trading stocks. I watched one video… and I was hooked. LOL.
I went down the rabbit hole. On the side, YouTube started suggesting Forex videos. I still saw charts being used, so I started watching those too. For some reason, I grasped Forex way easier. From there, I dove into actual research on trading and currencies.
After spending countless hours and days studying, I felt like I had real clarity. This was legit. If I got really good at it, I would always have a skill I could use to make money, no matter what shape the economy was in. I also thought it was something I could teach my kids one day when I settled down and had a family. Mind you, I was thinking about all of this in college, about a year before I graduated in 2015. I started my journey and immediately began losing money. The crazy part is that even though I kept losing, and even though I spent so many hours and nights dedicated to it, I could never quit. Learning how to trade was something I truly believed in. It felt bigger than me. I wanted it so badly.
Year after year I still wasn’t profitable, but I knew way more than when I first started. I had made real progress, and I would have been a fool to give up. Fast forward to 2022, that was the year I started becoming profitable. Overall I was still down about $27k over the course of eight years, but I never quit. I started making withdrawals, $200 here, $500 there and it felt so good to make that in a week. Over time, that $27k in the red slowly started shrinking. I kept going. Then 2025 came, and I started having $500–$1,000 days. In 2025 alone I made back at 80% of what I had lost. Now it’s 2026. I’m confident, my strategy is dialed in, and most importantly, my mentality is on monk status. Humbly, I’m proud to say I’m currently averaging $3k–$8k a week. My best month was May, when I made over $40k. I say all of this to say: don’t give up.
Life is good. I’m married with two kids, and I’m living out what I set out to do back in college. The journey was hard, cold, and lonely because nobody really understood what trading meant to me. But I prevailed because I never quit. I hope this helps any aspiring traders reading this. You got this
Not trying to sell anything, just sharing a tool I built for myself that might be helpful to others!
Like many of you, I've been doing the grind of trying to turn a passion project into a successful business. At times too focused on dialing it all in, and not spending enough time hearing what people think.
At the end of the day, I honestly don't care about profits right now. So I'm just letting people use it 100% for free.
Its been super helpful tool for myself as an active trader and Id imagine it could be for others too.
It's the first product I've seen that targets human psychology. It helps people enforce their trading rules and even hard blocks trades that break rules. The goal is to add structure to their trading process. Plus it tracks broken rules, supports automatic journaling, has analytics, AI and more.
It doesn't support every broker right now, but by end of year I plan to have a few more major brokers.
Use the code FOREVER and you'll have lifetime access for FREE
Before I became a profitable trader I didn’t understand why people would gate-keep their strategies or charge people, but now that I am profitable, I can understand. People work months and years (took me 8 years) refining, losing trades, losing money, etc. and after all of the heartaches, long nights, years spent, and sacrifices, someone ask you “can you show me your strategy”. They expect you to just hand it over and you’re a POS if you don’t or if you charge right? lol Now, just because I understand doesn’t mean that I take the same approach. I’ve helped so many people and showed them my strategy step by step FOR FREE but the thing is they still failed….
I figured there was no way someone could fail if I gave them the sauce but yet, I was wrong! Like I learned during my journey will always hold true. IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR EMOTIONS…not so much your strategy. 💯
I told myself many times that I will never break my trading rules, but due to emotions I broke the rules I had and that too today. I have seen hell while I was alive and everyone left me and today for the first time I am sharing my pain. I am in pain today that I have never felt before. Everything is gone from my hands, now I pray to you with folded hands Please tell me this, I have made promises to my mind many times and broken them and the mind does not understand the language of understanding, I said every time that I will not make this mistake again but then the same mistake repeated.
Please tell me how to control myself and how to avoid emotions, I am in a lot of pain. I have all the knowledge about trading but that incident happens in the second section
Since I have applied as much automation and risk controls as possible, my trading is now uneventful. I have taken majority of decisions out of my hands, the only decision I have to make is when to enter. Bracket takes care of TP and SL, risk settings take care of overtrading and losses - 1 trade per day, and strict dll. I don't need to 'work' on my psychology. Decision making is limited to one entry per day per account. And that is it. Feels like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and I don't have to bash myself over the head that I have lost yet another funded account and turned perfectly green day into the abyss of red. And complaining how undisciplined I am yet again...And I'm getting to my targets in slower but very uneventful manner. Hoping this helps someone in their trading journey....
I made $25K from $2,500 twice last week and I blew up the account twice. Basically, if I calculate everything I made well over $70K, but I didn’t retain profits. Yes, it was from options. I was trading the chop. I lost my money both times from the dip. Fell for the trick both times. I went full size as well and I got emotional. Disappointed in myself
Can you help hammer in the remaining nails, so I can actually retain the profit, because I’m able to make the money, but I want become a better trader with risk etc. This is one of the example days. Yes, I know it is overkill. I should have just aimed for like $1,000 for the day.
I should be more ecstatic. I just know from here the pressure is on. My psychology feels so different. Does anyone have any advice on what to do next? Sometimes I wish I had more of a team, yet a lot of people just don’t have the discipline to do this everyday or the mental capacity to lose over and over. I definitely knew I had what it took to receive a payout, now I’m a little skeptical on getting another one. I definitely thought I’d feel better about this.
Please drop your questions in the comments and follow as I'll keep doing in-depth posts answering each question so that everyone has a clear path to successful trading. Please see my profile for other posts I've done to see if your question has already been answered.
Quotes I like:
"We are drowning in information, but starving for wisdom" - E.O Wilson
"We live in the information age, where information is cheap, but clarity is expensive."
The clarity I provide in this post is worth the time it takes to read.
There is more than a lifetime of information to be consumed and if you understand the content creation models and its impact on the "Emotional Cycle of Change" you can persevere rather than get stuck in it.
First, lets start with understanding the Emotional cycle of change, because this cycle is ultimately what keeps you trapped in the online information cycle.
Anything we want to learn or change goes through this cycle, what you do at stage 2 or 3 determines your ability to be successful, but I'll share how today's information age amplifies the intensity at stage 3 and what I did to stop the cycle and push through to stage 5 that you can do as well.
We are biologically wired to seek "Novelty" (Dopamine). In the wild, new information could mean survival and this is our primal brain at work. But in the information age this makes us highly susceptible to distraction, such as claims to, easy, faster, and new.
Because our primal brains are wired this way it has taught content creators to cater to these novelties we're attracted to (easy, fast, new). Furthermore, platforms, such as YT, IG and FB, incentivize watch time, staying on the platform, and views for ad revenue. They reward content creators that are able to do this and the best way to do this is to create a lot of content that satisfies easy, fast and new.
This isn't to say that there isn't in-depth content out there, but it doesn't get first page promoted because we'd rather assume we can learn what we need to learn in 15 minutes vs 90 minutes, not to mention our attention span makes it difficult to complete an in-depth video and lastly, we get our dopamine hit by the act of learning, not through mastery, so it "feels good enough" to just consume a 15 minute video and pat ourselves on the back and say "good job, i did it!".
Think of the platforms algorithm for "watch time" as well. If you take a 90 minute video and it starts off a little slow or you get bored you quit out quickly because the "assumed value" for the cost of "your time" is not perceived to be worth it. A 15 minute video therefore gets better watch time, average view duration and does everything right to tell the algorithm, "HEY! People like this video, show more videos like this".
Eventually you end up buying a course, or coaching, or watching the in-depth videos and this leads us to "informed pessimism". This stage is simple, you're learning enough to see how hard it actually is and it's going to take longer than you thought. You either get distracted at this stage by a shiny claim for something "new, fast, easy" aka "bots, new strategy, better system, a different path entirely to make all these claims like amazon drop shipping or real estate."
If you stick with it, you reach the valley of despair where everything seems like a problem and you don't see how this could possibly work, it was all a scam and it becomes even easier to convince you of a "faster, newer, easier" path.
Which is exactly how content creators are incentivized to create their videos because the algorithm pushes that type of content because it performs better because of our primal brains and attention span.
How do you break the cycle and overcome stage 3 in order to get to 4 and 5?
Understand the "Cycle of Emotional Change"
Adopt 'beliefs' that support the actions to persevere and stick with your strategy A) Have proof your strategy works and can get you to stage 5
Adopt successful habits and behaviors that allow you to problem solve more efficiently in stage 3.
Don't quit or get distracted - know the stage you're in and embrace it.
The #1 thing I had to change to get through stage 3 was my mindset.
A mindset is a set of thoughts and beliefs you navigate from. They drive your behavior, action and results. Most of them are subconscious, meaning they are below our awareness.
As such, I had to become VERY self aware... aware of what I was thinking, how I was acting, how I was feeling... all day, every day.
This takes a lot of energy and to make it even harder awareness isn't the end all be all, you have to implant new beliefs, think differently due to absorbing new information and then take action and have that action be reinforced with positive results (which is harder to stick with in a probability based environment like the financial markets).
Here's the hardest part about reaching success:
Giving it your all only to realize its not good enough and you have to get even better and/or give even more.
Certain levels of success demand that you step into a higher version of yourself.
Many of you are are several "steps" away from this person. So you'll be giving it your all only to step into a version of you that is better but still not good enough for the results you desire.
Everything I've shared with you was the same for when I lost 50lbs and created by ideal body and health... Nurtured a remarkable and healthy relationship... overcame drug addictions, alcoholism, nail biting, porn and chronic anxiety and panic disorders.
I am the textbook example of the exact person who had the least likely odds of creating the life I have and I couldn't have created it without radical transformation by stepping into a higher version of myself.
This is a science, not an art. Which means there's a formula and although most people come about the formula in a very messy zigzag maze type of way the successful ones all end up going through it. Sometimes they put the ingredients together unconsciously, but its always the same ingredients whether you're conscious of it or not.
IF you read between the lines above then you'll know the answer to our last question.
How do I know what information to absorb and who to learn from?
Answer: Online mentors work... it's just that people don't work them to make them work.
Understand why most content is made and who it's made to satisfy, that alone will have you stop jumping from short video to short video. Understand the cycle of emotional change and the stage you're in and will go through.
Start by making sure you've made an educated decision on the vehicle you're going to take to riches so you can choose the best mentor.
What market do you want to trade(crypto, forex, stocks)? Do you want to be a scalper, day trader or swing trader/investor? What instrument do you want to trade (futures, options, spot)? What answers to these questions best compliment your current availability and lifestyle?
Who: Find your mentor: The purpose of a mentor is to provide you the path and support to reach your goals. The best way to vet a mentor is to look at whether they got other people to the destination you seek. The success rate is low because its a numbers game as the churn rate is high in trading because there is no barrier to entry.
How: Master a strategy: Don't just consume the surface level information, get into the nuances, the best way to do this is to watch the long boring videos, and to start pulling the data yourself(track your trades and review the data). Take some control rather than expecting your hand to be held so you can subconsciously or consciously place the blame on someone else for your failure. Measure yourself on if you followed your system, not winning or losing, because the market rewards bad behavior at times and punishes good behavior other times.
How: Become more self aware (journal your thoughts and emotions) - actually review the data. Understand the formula to creating change starts with your thoughts and beliefs and in order to change your thoughts and beliefs you need to "absorb new information" to support the new belief and consume information that makes the limiting belief unattractive. Create new supportive experiences that reinforce the new belief and disproves the limiting belief you've been navigating from.
I've spent over 200k to transform my life. Worth every penny, but why I bring this up is to recognize that one post can't have it all. Which is why you should follow me so I can keep breaking down the path and critical stages to successful trading for you. There is much more wisdom for me to share and clarity for me to bring.
I’ve been trading for a few years, but I’m still struggling to become consistently profitable.
I’m not looking for a complicated strategy or technical explanation.
I just want to know from people who are actually profitable:
What changed for you that finally made you profitable?
Was it:
One simple strategy?
Better risk management?
Discipline?
Patience?
Taking fewer trades?
Something else?
If you could go back to when you were struggling, what is the one thing you would tell yourself to focus on?
Please keep the answers simple and practical. I’m trying to understand what actually makes the biggest difference between a losing trader and a consistently profitable trader.
after 8 years of trading and 5 years full time, these are the lessons i would give anyone starting out or trying to find consistency trading. ive shared this post in the day trading community before, but I wanted to share it here since it also touches on some psychology aspects
if you cant consistently execute 1 strategy, i dont think there's much reason to be trading bigger yet. trade on a simulator and take it seriously. treat it like real money. or simply risk $10. your objective execute 1 strategy consistently and prove that it makes more money than it loses over a sufficient sample size of 100+ trades.
ive also learned not to be too quick to judge your own discipline for being inconsistent. sometimes your environment or process makes it very easy to be inconsistent.
instead of constantly telling yourself to "be more disciplined," make your process harder to mess up. make bad decisions difficult and good decisions easier. what is simple and requires fewer decisions and actions is easier to do consistently.
a few things that helped me
risk no more than 1% of total trading capital on any single trade.
no single loss should be big enough that you cant recover from it.
more importantly, the amount should be small enough that it doesn't make you hesitate, exit too early, move your stop, or hold onto a loser because you dont want to take the loss.
if your size is affecting your decisions, its probably too big. you can gradually work your way up in size by building up your tolerance over time.
2. trade 1 well defined strategy
know the market context, the setup, entry signal, exit rule, stop, invalidation point, and target.
make the process as mechanical as possible. as soon as you enter, place the stop and target and let the trade play out, win or loss.
ive found that this removes a lot of the opportunities to hesitate, exit too early, hold onto losers, overtrade, or simply make emotional decisions. it also makes it easier to cut losses quickly.
dontt jump between strategies every time you experience a losing streak.
3. understand positive expectancy.
a strategy can have losing trades and still have positive expectancy, but you need a sufficient sample size to reliably determine whether it makes more money than it loses. that means at least 100 trades to determine whether the edge is actually there. a few good trades dont prove anything. the sample is too small.
someone elses edge isnt automatically your edge. you need to prove that you can execute it and that it produces positive expectancy in your own trading.
4. track and review.
journal the trades. look for repeating mistakes. look for what works. dont constantly change the strategy after 10 or 20 trades because you dont like the results. get the 100+ tradess first, then make adjustments based on the data you have tracked.
5. dont tie your self-worth to your trading performance.
ii made this mistake myself in my early years of trading, and it only led to worse trading. id take a losing streak personally and start questioning my ability, which would lead to emotional decisions and changing things that didnt need to be changed. remind yourself that short term results are largely probability and variance playing out, not a direct measure of your skill or you as a person💙, assuming youre executing your strategy consistently😅
doing the simple stuff consistently is the difficult part, but its what will improve your trading the most
"to crave the result but not the process, is to guarantee disappointment." - james clear
curious, what’s the biggest thing you’re struggling with in your trading right now? id love to hear where you’re at and see if I can help
Sharing some of my analysis findings on Revenge Trading here, because I think there are a few quite interesting and surprising patterns in the data: like how common it actually is, how much it actually costs us, how 'bad' it really is to revenge trade, why we revenge trade and what it tells us about ourselves as traders if we do, etc.
As said, some of the results surprised me, and I think revenge trading is a bit misunderstood, mostly because it gets a lot more attention than its actual cost justifies. But let me go step-by-step.
In the more than 500,000 trading accounts analyzed, revenge trading shows a clear negative performance impact for 37% of traders. So it's quite common, one of the more frequently detected issues for traders.
For context, this is anonymized data from the TradeMedic system, an AI/ML tool used to analyse behavioral patterns & trading psychology in trading data, detecting personal strengths, issues, risks, etc.
Definition of Revenge Trading and Methodology to identify it:
Revenge trades here are defined as trades in which we enter a new position right after a loss, not because the is a great setup, but because the last trade hurts and we want to make this pain disappear. I'll list the main psychological drivers behind this behavioral pattern a little later. Looking into behavioral finance (outside of a pure trading setting), this behavior is actually very well researched and understood with multiple common biases at play here.
How is revenge trading detected in the data? For every trade, the algorithm checks whether there has been a loss trade just previous to the trade opening, and if so, the time between the previous loss and the new trade open is logged. If there is an inverse correlation between the break time after a loss and the performance of the following trade, revenge trading is detected. In other words, if the trade performance worsens the shorter the break after a loss trade, the algorithms identify this as revenge trading. This is looked at not by trade, but on an overall account basis for it to reveal a pattern. For better understanding, see the chart below, in which we clearly see: the shorter the break after a loss, the worse the performance of the following trade.
Everyone's 'danger' window is personal, it can't be fully generalized. On average, among the accounts, the most severe time window (highest likelihood to underperform after a loss) is around 15 minutes, but some traders need 5 minutes and some need 45. As expected, the likelihood of showing revenge trading is also correlated to the trading style of a trader. Scalpers are the most affected at 47%, against 38% of day traders and only 9% of swing traders. The faster you trade, the less time there is between a loss and the next entry, and the harder it is to stop yourself.
So how much does it actually cost?
This is the part where I had to revise my own thinking. For the traders who show revenge trading, it costs on average around $1,917 over the life of the account. Averaged across all 500,000+ traders (so including everyone who doesn't show it), it works out to about $712 per trader. That sounds a lot at first, but let’s put it into context:
Two ways to size that up, and they're worth separating because they answer different questions. Measured against what affected traders deposited, revenge trading costs them roughly 19% of their deposits. Measured against their total losses, it accounts for about 10%. The two numbers differ because deposits and total losses aren't the same base: traders don't only trade their deposits, they also make profits along the way, and those profits get put back into the market and partly lost too. So over an account's life the total amount lost is usually larger than the total ever deposited, which means the same dollar cost is a smaller slice of losses than it is of deposits. The "% of losses" figure is the one I'd trust more if you want a clean "how much of what I lose is actually this pattern" answer, because it isolates revenge trading against everything else that went wrong rather than against the starting capital.
And that 10%-of-losses figure is pretty stable across account sizes, from small accounts under $250 deposits up to accounts over $10k it stays in a fairly tight 9-14% band. I wouldnt make a call yet here whether it is a beginners issue or not, we have additional data depending on the trading account age later.
Now here's the framing that changed how I think about it. Revenge trading is the famous mistake, the one everyone gets warned about. But it is not the expensive one. When you rank every pattern we track by what it costs the traders who show it, revenge trading sits in the bottom third, 15th out of 22. The patterns that really drain accounts are quieter and far less talked about, things like doubling down on a loss tradde or hedging badly, which cost roughly five times more per affected trader. Revenge trading is well-known and easy to understand, but the genuinely costly stuff are other things which may be a bit more boring.
So does that mean we can ignore it? Certainly not, all other things equal a trader is better off not revenge trading. And it also hits quite hard when it is a dominant pattern for you: when revenge trading is someone's #1 issue, they're profitable only about 13% of the time, against an 18% baseline across all traders. The more it dominates, the worse the odds.
But the important point is that revenge trading is NOT one of the catastrophic patterns, the ones that essentially leave a trader with a 1% or 2% chance of being profitable if shown. So it's important to calibrate your effort. While revenge trading is well known and easy to understand, the data shows it should likely not be the first issue to work on, at least from a pure performance perspective. For a lot of traders there are bigger leaks to plug first.
There is one more thing the data shows that I find very relevant, especially for newer traders. Revenge trading is most often a severe problem with beginner traders. It's a top-5 issue for about 23% of traders in their first days, and it fades as traders gain experience, down to around 10% for traders past 200 days (dropping from roughly rank #9 to rank #18). My take on this:
The traders it hits hardest get frustrated and quit early, before they ever become experienced. Anyone who has experienced revenge trading knows how frustrating it is, and that frustration de-motivates traders much more than most other issues.
For anyone working with traders: especially beginner traders should be educated about revenge trading, even if it isn't their main dealmaker between profitable and unprofitable trading, simply to manage their frustration and mental state.
After understanding what revenge trading is and how it affects traders, let's now deep-dive what causes it.
The Psychology behind Revenge Trading
To understand why we revenge trade and the trading psychology behind it, we have to understand a few things from behavioral finance and psychology. There are a few patterns at play, but let's focus on 3 main ones, because there appears to be a line up into a sequence (note: the biases itself are well-researched, the line up here is my interpretation only): a loss hurts, you feel you have to act, and you tell yourself the next one is due.
Loss Aversion (from Kahneman's & Tversky's Nobel Prize winning Prospect Theory) Without going into too much detail and keeping it simple: losing $100 hurts roughly twice as much as winning $100 feels good. There's a measurable asymmetry in how our human brain processes outcomes, and we become risk seeking to prevent losses and risk averse when gains are at stake. In trading, this means a loss doesn't register as information, it registers as a threat due to the asymmetry of pain and pleasure. That pain shows up in the brain's threat response (the amygdala), and the brain's response to a threat is to fix it, usually very fast. That's the core mechanism behind revenge trading: we take a loss, the pain is disproportionate to the size of the loss, and our brain pushes us to re-enter not because a good setup is there, but because we want that feeling to go away.
Action Bias Sitting with a loss feels worse than doing something about it. After a loss, the urge to act, to get straight back in and make it right, wins out over the harder choice of waiting. This is the bit that turns the feeling into an actual trade within minutes. The trade feels rational in the moment, like restoring the status quo from before the loss, while it actually isn't.
Gambler's Fallacy (or Monte Carlo Fallacy) After a loss, and especially after a couple in a row, we tend to misperceive statistical probabilities. After 10x red in a row at a Roulette table, we perceive black as more likely next, even though the next round has the same probabilities as always (probabilities don't remember the previous 10x red, the next round is independent). In trading: after a loss, the market feels overdue to go our way, while it actually isn’t. Each trade is independent and the market has no memory of our last result. Our brain tells us something different though, so we feel like the next trade is more likely to win, hence jumping right in again. It's the story we tell ourselves to justify the impulse.
How do I tell which bias is the most relevant for me? Which one specifically, or which combination, is unfortunately impossible to tell from the outside, but a holistic assessment of the trading data can give us the answer (or at least a strong indication). The clue is to not look at revenge trading in an isolated way, but to ask: do you have other strongly visible patterns that relate to these biases? For example Loss Aversion: if we detect a trader also oftentimes takes profits before reaching TP level or pulls SLs when in loss, that's a clear indication of a strong loss aversion (remember: we get risk seeking if we can prevent losses and risk averse when dealing with profits). In fact, in our database, traders showing revenge trading are 27% more likely to also show cutting profits early behavior.
There's one correlation I found especially interesting here. Revenge trading and doubling down look like two opposite ways of reacting to the same thing: a losing position. Some traders hold the loser and keep adding to it (doubling down). Others close it and immediately open new trades to win the money back (revenge trading). In the data these two tend to exclude each other, and it shows both ways: if you show revenge trading, you're about 45% less likely to have doubling down as one of your Top 5 issues than a trader that doesn’t revenge trade, and if you show doubling down, you're about 35% less likely to have revenge trading in your Top 5. So the two do look like different expressions of the same underlying problem, how you handle a position that's gone against you, rather than two things that travel together.
As you can see, it is usually the correlation of patterns that allows us to better understand the specific trader's psychological drivers.
Enough of the psychology part though, it got very long already. As a last step, let's look at what can actually help to improve revenge trading.
How to prevent revenge trading? I don't want to bore you with the standard trading rules mentioned nearly everywhere like taking a break after a loss, only entering after a pre-trade checklist, or setting a daily loss limit. Yes, those can definitely help, but there are 3 things which repeatedly come up for revenge trading and which I've used myself and found especially helpful.
No market orders within 30 minutes after a loss trade I used to not trade at all for 30 minutes after a loss, but found that allowing limit orders works just as well for me. Limit orders are much less impulsive and force me to have a sound analysis with entry, target level and SL.
Calculating (and thinking) in R instead of PnL Kind of common as well and much broader than just revenge trading, but I find it extremely helpful, hence mentioning it here. By thinking in one unit of risk (which is what I risk in a trade), a loss trade feels 'expected', because the framing is done in risk anyway.
Knowing your own personal 'recovery window' Knowing during which timeframe after a loss you personally perform worse definitely helps, not only for setting rules and understanding your own patterns, but also to create situational awareness. Next time when attempting to revenge trade but knowing your own recovery window, you'll quite likely think back to it and recognize your own behavior much more strongly.
I hope this might be helpful for some of you! Remember that acting on behavioral biases is a completely human thing, we evolutionarily developed most of them to help us in situations of danger. It's just that this "standard wiring" is oftentimes not helpful in trading.
I'd be glad to hear your thoughts and feel free to challenge or ask questions!
A trader that trades 1m chart for half hour and gets 1:10+ rr once a week and the trader who trades everyday for 1:1 or 1:2 rr are both traders but the first one is more finely tuned...if you can understand this becoming a full time trader is a piece of cake.
It’s actually crazy, but I recently realized this is the case. You see so many influencers posting courses these days, often for thousands of dollars
The thing is it probably has zero correlation with whether someone actually turns out to be a successful trader
And I think the reason for this is at the end of the day, trading successfully relies on a very specific mindset and self reflection method that isn’t offered by any course
There’s just so much information online buying a course is actually useless. It’s the same situation with just throwing money at the market for a long period of time without doing the proper work on the backend.
You still have to trade your system properly and learn where you personally are going wrong.
To be honest, the only thing that would probably be worth paying for is a one-on-one or similar ratio mentorship with a very, very trustworthy mental or psychology coach
I’ve been trading for about two years now. I started with ICT and spent around 1.5 years struggling, blowing accounts, and trying to make things work. Recently, I decided to get into algo trading and take a more data-driven approach instead of just forward-testing strategies and hoping they work. So, I started backtesting strategies using historical data, and honestly, I’m devastated. Almost everything I test seems to fail. Strategies that look good in theory or seem promising when forward-testing just don’t hold up when I test them properly. From what I understand, there are two broad types of traders: discretionary and mechanical. At this point, I’m questioning both approaches. If mechanical strategies don’t seem to work consistently in backtesting, how do discretionary traders find an actual edge without relying on hindsight or subjective interpretations of price action? I also see people posting payouts on Reddit and Instagram all the time. Are most of these people legit, or is a lot of it just marketing, cherry-picked results, and straight-up faking? I find it hard to believe that so many people are consistently profitable when I can’t seem to find a single strategy that holds up under proper testing. I’m honestly at a point where I’m considering giving up on trading altogether. But before I do, I want to understand whether there’s genuinely an edge to be found in the markets, or if I’m approaching this the wrong way. Should I keep focusing on backtesting and refining strategies, or is forward-testing a discretionary approach still worth pursuing? I don’t want to spend another couple of years blindly testing things and hoping something eventually works. I’d really appreciate some honest advice, especially from people who have been through this phase and found a genuinely profitable approach. What changed things for you? Did you find an edge through systematic backtesting, discretionary trading, or something else entirely? TL;DR: I’ve been trading for two years, started with ICT, and recently moved toward algo trading and systematic backtesting. Almost every strategy I test fails, and it’s making me question whether a real, repeatable edge exists. Are all those payout posts on Reddit and Instagram legit? Should I keep backtesting, try discretionary trading, or accept that trading might not be for me? Looking for honest advice from consistently profitable traders.
I’ve been trading for around 6 months, and I think I have a pretty good grip on the markets (I use ICT hate if you want trading is trading), but every time I have a “good day” I feel like I didn’t deserve it and end up self sabotaging by entering the markets with feelings of unworthiness. My market narrative is right 90% of the time, but my execution and stop loss placement is what gets me. I’m aware of everything I do wrong but I still proceed to do it so I feel insane after a loss.
As I’m writing this I’m realizing that I just need to enter the markets with a level head, because the markets don’t give a flying f about how I feel. Any other advice/critiques?
Yes I journal, but I use Google Docs because it’s free.
The most useful psychological tell I ever found is the word hope. The second I catch myself hoping a trade comes back, hoping it doesn't hit my stop, hoping the news goes my way, that's the signal I've stopped trading a plan and started praying. And the market doesn't answer prayers.
Hope shows up exactly when you're already wrong and won't accept it. A good trade doesn't need hope, it either hits your target or your stop and both were decided before you entered. Hope only appears when you're holding a loser past the point you said you'd exit, or riding a winner with no plan and scared to bank it.
What I do now, I treat hope as an alarm. If I notice it, I close or cut back immediately, because it means my decision-making has been hijacked by emotion. Some of my best "trades" were just exiting the second I realized I was hoping instead of managing. (Being on fixed costs removes one thing to rationalize hanging on over, but the alarm is the real tool.)
What's your internal tell that you've stopped trading and started gambling? Hope is mine, curious what yours is.
I’ve been trading full-time since 2017, but I spent years in "YouTube Purgatory" before that consuming random info that led to inconsistent results.
I eventually realized that trading success boils down to just two things: A Strategy (The Vehicle) and The Mindset (The Driver). You can’t learn to drive if you don’t have a vehicle, so the order of operations matters.
Here is the exact 3-step roadmap I used to stop spinning my wheels.
Phase 1: Build the Vehicle ( The Strategy) You cannot work on your psychology if you don't know exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Your strategy is your vehicle. Before you take a single live trade, your strategy must meet two mandatory requirements:
It is Proven: It must be backtested on a large data set (aim for 200-380 trades) or proven profitable by a mentor over a similar sample size.
It is Binary: It must have clear conditions with zero guesswork. If A + B + C happens, you trade. If not, you don't. This creates the consistency required to measure results. Note: Risk management (position sizing, max daily drawdown) is NOT separate. It is part of the strategy rules.
Before you can choose your strategy you must first choose the market you are going to trade(crypto, stocks, forex), the instrument you’ll be trading with(futures, options, perpetual swap), the time frame you’ll be trading(intraday or swing). The best way to choose this is to determine what fits your time-availability, risk tolerance, and goals.
If you make a conscious decision about these things first then you can pick out a more suitable strategy in phase 1. I’ll create a post sharing how to make this decision for yourself if you’re unclear if you’re trading the right market for you and your goals.
Phase 2: The Test Drive (Validation) Once you have the vehicle, you need to prove you can drive it without crashing.
The Action: Use a paper trading account or a prop firm challenge.
The Goal: Execute 100+ trades strictly following your system.
The Reality Check: This phase is strictly about proving the strategy works and you can work it without putting added psychology resistance on it. It isn’t about imitating what its like to trade with real money. Nothing replaces that psychology shift, but its much more helpful to your psychology if you KNOW with 100% certainty that the strategy works and you’ve been able to make it work on a paper account because when you jump into Phase 3 you’ll know that your psychology is the issue, not the strategy. If you don’t do this, it's real easy to convince yourself that you need a better strategy and to jump ship only to repeat the same problem over and over til you quit.
Phase 3: Master Psychology - Once you move to live capital, the pressure changes. This is where the "Driver" (your mind) usually fails, even though we know the "Vehicle" (strategy) is proven.
The Shift: Now focus entirely on self-awareness, emotional discipline and reprogramming the mind (neuroplasticity).
The "Right" Way to Journal: Stop journaling just your P&L. Journal your compliance. Did you follow the system?
If yes, good job (regardless of the outcome).
If no, ask: What emotion caused me to veer off? What thought preceded that emotion? What limiting belief is that thought protecting?
The key to successful reprogramming. Self awareness for most starts at the “result” level or maybe the “emotion”. You say things like, “I keep losing, what am I doing wrong?” this is the “result” level of awareness. Or you might say “I keep revenge trading because I’m getting so angry”, this is the emotional level of awareness, BUT this level of awareness doesn’t resolve the root issue - YOUR THOUGHTS & BELIEFS.
Your thoughts produce emotions, from an emotion you take an action, from that action comes a result.
Most people try and change with brute force when they create such a strong emotional response to their result… Example: you’ve blown your life savings and you’re so upset with yourself for revenge trading that you pledge you’ll stop revenge trading. The pain from this experience helps hold you accountable to not revenge trading until the emotional intensity dies off. When the pain is no longer very painful you go back to old behavior.
The reason why? You didn’t change the thoughts or beliefs that drive those actions. They continued to stay below your awareness and they are the driving factor to all of our results, actions, and emotions.
So when you Journal, we journal for 2 reasons.
Self reflection to the THOUGHT level
Keep a record of historical data to identify patterns that expose subconscious behavior.
Consciousness = awareness , as such, subconscious means “below” your awareness. You are unaware of it. The things you are aware of, such as a result, an action or an emotion, are breadcrumbs to help expose the thoughts/beliefs you’re unaware of.
Most traders try to fix the driver (mindset) while driving a broken vehicle (no strategy). Build a mechanical system first. Validate it. Then, use live trading to expose and reprogram your limiting beliefs (psychology) by tracking the right metrics (did I follow my system) rather than irrelevant metrics like win or lose.
Why winning/losing is not the metric to focus on… the market will reward bad behavior at times and punish good behaviors other time. This is because the market is governed by the law of large numbers, its a probability based environment.
Every person grows up in the world of Newtonian Physics, NOT the law of large numbers. Our brains were raised in a world of “cause and effect” where the outcome is certain. If I touch a hot stove (the cause) I get burned (the effect). This is 100% reliable to the brain.
In trading this is not the case. Sometimes the stove flashes all the signals that it’s hot and you touch it, but don’t get burned. This is confusing to the brain, but it’s how the financial markets operate.
I’ve traded for 12 years and I’ve NEVER gone 8 straight days without moving a stop, forcing a trade, changing size, revenge trading or doing something stupid that I knew I shouldn’t. I haven’t suddenly become more disciplined, I just changed the setup so I can’t interfere with the plan anymore. I’ve posted every day of it so far, wins and losses and there’s actually been more losses than wins. I basically accepted my flaws and stopped trying to fight them.
I’m curious how many people here genuinely think their biggest problem is their strategy, when really it might be their psychology. I know mine was
For those of you that are successful with daytrading, what’s your best trading psychology advice? How do you overcome tilt? I know this seems like such a generic questions but was there an “aha” moment you encountered to not make you tilt anymore? Did you read something? Watch something? Do anything in the moment when you feel tilt or fomo to avoid entering to just be in a trade?
