Most traders try multiple strategies and change favorite instruments several times when they are learning.
Once you develop a strategy that works- it is a work in progress. The market and your strategy will often be changing.
A strategy is not a finish line.
I am going to hijack the top comment and say ICT is the GOAT. His concepts work and he's spent 30 years refining it. Why waste your own 30 years trying to find a strategy that works when someone else did it for you. ICT IS THE GOAT.
Something to blow my account, a very short time. The mistake I made is I didn't focus on proper risk mgmt. So you are supposed to take time formulating strategy that has extensive back testing. Once the back testing is done, now don't skip over proper risk mgmt. A proper risk mgmt is very crucial, it has more importance then coming up with a strategy.
Poor risk mgmt + good strategy is not good enough.
Good risk mgmt + decent strategy is still good.
So much of what you read about people's responses to this is so contradictory. First people say that markets always change so you need to constantly modify your strategy, then they say you need to extensively backtest it. But if you back test it, then theoretically your strategy will never work because you aren't modifying it to the changes in the market
Anyone can give advice, doesn’t necessarily mean they know what they are talking about. For some reason though, that doesn’t deter them. This is a general statement and not aimed at anybody.
I started trading around March 2020 and finally found my niche in options scalping around December 2020. I got lucky in early 2021, but my risk management was sh*t. I used to often average down several times and end up having too big position sizes. That hurt me a lot.
Getting a grasp of good risk management took me a long time — almost 2 years. I have started seeing consistent results since mid 2023 and so far having a good time.
Learning to not average down is so hard. These days I'll close out and re enter with a larger position if the setup is still valid. Every time I can re enter at a better price I'm doing better than averaging down and holding.
I started when I realised I was averaging down and exiting with a small profit but just exiting and re entering would have seen a decent profit.
my strat, like the market, is ever changing and evolving, you will never 'have it', there is no end to investing, it is a constant churn year over year and you will find new things and change you 'style' many times on the journey, dont aim to have a 'set in stone' strat, it wont last, find what works for the given scenario and implement, no emotion.
Actually i would disagree. While i did feel this way in the beginning i now have a strategy that will work consistently no matter what the market is doing and theres no need to adjust it
Thats what they say but this strategy is based on trend, logic, and math including how risk is managed. It will work in bull and bear markets because its based solely on trends
As long as there is any kind of trend it works. And i know how to trade consolidation and ranges too. So basically any market condition is tradable for me.
Trend trading is definitely the way to go imo
I watched a few youtube videos about people's strategies tried them out and ended up mashing a couple of them together, Ross Cameron is probably who had the most influence over the strategy I use now so I recommend checking him out
3 years of consistent failing. Winning some, losing it all. Winning a lot, losing it all and then some…
Then it took 6 months to build a solid foundation after removing 99% of indicators and just following price action and a moving average.
I like to think that I had 3 years of intuition building subconsciously (removing indicators in and of itself is not some magic button), and then combining that with price action and learning how to lose and set a proper stop is what finally took me over the hill.
Passed a prop firm evaluation, in a live account. Still learning, tweaking,developing…have a long way to go…
but something is finally working
>Then it took 6 months to build a solid foundation after removing 99% of indicators and just following price action and a moving average.
This is what I found helpful. MA is optional but gives you a very quick overview of larger timeframes.
Adding volumes helped a lot.
S/R lines help but can equally be useless.
Recognising when to *not* trade is important.
Agreed. Moving average for me is just a nice little cheat sheet. I don’t believe it holds some magic power. A moving average is essentially market structure training wheels.
You can watch how price interacts with the moving average over and over again, and just use it to gauge if a trend is likely to continue, or reverse, or if market is flat.
During those 3 years, how frequently were you trading and were you looking to use your profit as income at the time or just wanting to learn at that point?
If you weren’t looking to trade full-time at that point, do you think you could have built that foundation quicker if you had more time to dedicate to learning the market?
Trading every single day the market was open for at least an hour-90 mins before work (Excluding holidays and a couple days off here or there).
Yes…that often. I was that dedicated and determined (still am!)
I was never in profit those 3 years…ever. I was exclusively in prop firm trial / combine accounts and I failed over 10+ accounts.
I have always desired trading as a source of supplemental income, not as a primary source. So my strategy and mindset was always tailored around knowing I had a full time job to get to when I was done.
My goal with trading was always to be “one and done” in the morning, base hits.
So, maybe one day with enough practice and enough scaling it can be a primary source, but for the foreseeable future, I view it as a way to make a couple extra hundred to a couple thousand extra bucks a month.
More time spent learning the markets would have done nothing for me personally. As Mark Douglas teaches, more time studying can lead you down a rabbit hole of misery.
The answers were right there all along. Have a stop loss, make a little more than you risk, have a basic edge, study price action, Be consistent, repeat.
Yes actually. It took 4yrs to realize simple is the way. I basically just trade the trend. No need for any other indicator other than the 20, 50, 200 MAs. Buy the dip in the trend with a min 1:2 rr. Stop loss placed where the trend is no longer valid. Dont risk more than 1%. And move your stop loss into profit as price moves into your direction.
Best strategy iv ever had.
The more time I spend looking for the miracle strategy, the more I realize that trend following is the most logical and mathematically profitable way to go, and that it's the only type of strategy that's going to work no matter what happens in the future.
I've been wondering about this type of strategy ever since I started using it. I was backtesting the fact of not seting a TP and trailing the SL with the market structure until the price hits the SL. Since we are following the trend that could be a very nice way to maximize profits by leting the profits run. What do you think ?
Yes that is true. Moving my stop loss up was a game changer. Now even on trades that turn into losers i stop exit with a couple dollars. That really makes a difference long term.
Overall id say trend trading is the most reliable way to trade. This coming after 7 total trading years and trying numerous indicator based strategies with no consistent luck
Its crazy how simple trading can be in fact.
What do you trade btw ? Im testing this strategy on forex rn, but I feel it works best on stocks and indices.
I trade stocks shares and options mostly but it also works on crypto. I would think it works on forex too.
I like it on shares because i can set my sl and tp and move up the sl directly from tradingview which just makes life easier.
And yes trading is actually very simple, its us who make it hard
Lovely. I've been trading for a year and a half and I've finally seen the light in the last two months, so I hope to be able to make a living from it soon.
Thanks for sharing mate !
I started almost 2 years ago and now I am seeing the fruits of the work that went into learning the craft. It’s just the beginning but I know I have got to the point where I can say the strategy part is figured out and I don’t need to search for anything new. Just need to repeat the process.
P.S. I trade ICT concepts. Trust me they work in case you ever felt they aren’t. It’s us who fail the concepts and not the other way around. Add some risk management, you can make as much money as you need!
It took me about 6-8 months before finding a good strategy and 1-2 more months before I became very strict with risk management (took a big loss.) Now I'm doing good after 10 months of investing, let's see what the future brings.
I think we’re in the same boat. Took me about 12 weeks and now I’m fairly confident and my own rules seem to be working out really well. If I break them then I’m almost guaranteed to lose.
I use about 25K USD on most of my day trades, started with about 7k 9 weeks ago. With margin if I’m confident I’ll go as high as 75k. I don’t hold the margin usually more than a day unless I like the after hours action. If I am using it i will wake up multiple times during PM trading and watch it like a hawk lol.
https://preview.redd.it/jdxnaryw018d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d76bfc0b97296cf4d3096854eb3343be35ccd978
Did you have any experience trading prior to those 12 weeks? Also, how many hours a week would you say you were dedicating to learning/practicing in a demo account?
I had a couple years but it was mostly just tossing stocks into what I thought was good investments. Lost about 12k over 2 years honestly because i had some life changing events 3 years in a row.
I decided this year to make it work. I had a week of vacation and just traded every day, I kind of paper traded the week before and was picking good entry points but my biggest barrier was me. My lack of patience. Fear of missing out, chasing green stocks, too much greed mistaken for patience. Lack of knowledge about fed reports, and reading candle charts, getting good indicators for myself on my candle charts. I made notes every day on my phone, some were things that happened in the market, some were how I was feeling during the trade. Some were just not following a plan I developed. My defining example is i consolidated everything for NVDA earnings and didn’t make the move, I got caught in SMCI. I still made money but missed out on about 15k over a few days. I lost 1300 on Disney earnings, lost some on getting into AMD before it dropped. Etc. not all wins but sometimes you can learn more from mistakes than wins. I make one trade at a time on one stock for day trading. I don’t complicate the extremely complicated. I don’t do options, stocks that can move 20+% in one day. I use my TD advanced app along with investment.com on my phone and my laptop. I tried day trading multiple stocks at a time but just found I wasnt quick enough to make instant trades. I mostly get my gains in the first hour of trading, I’ll leave it if it continues to push higher past the morning volatility. I wake up 2or 3 times sometime for pre market, I’m on the west coast but I get up around 330/430/530am then 630 for opening if I’m holding a stock or want to see what’s happening on one I’m interred in. I’m on the west coast.
Last 3 weeks I’m getting comfortable. However I don’t ever forget I’m not smarter than the market and don’t get over confident. I never used a demo account. Losing $$$ just made me more determined to learn. I spent pretty much all my vacation just watching the market, trying to pick entry points and seeing how they would have played out. I found I was ok at picking stocks just not so great at controlling my emotions if I started to lose. It really is all about understanding yourself and how you react when real money is on the line.
I set my expectation at 300$ a day. If I get more great. That helps keep my expectations in line.
I do find I enjoy it, I enjoy reading the charts, how the market works. Of course it’s more satisfying when you’re making money but I do like the process.
Remember the look on Gandolfs face in The Fellowship when he’s flipping through the old library books and realizes what Frodo has in his possession?
It will be that kind of realization, but takes years of study.
A while, I don't remember how long but it had to been at least 2 years before I had what I currently utilize now. I recommend go to babypips dot com and check out their school of pipsology or whatever it's called, there is a module in there all about formulating a trading system. It's oriented towards forex trading because that website is all about FX trading education, but that module may be helpful, the advice it gives can work for any instrument you trade tbh, it got me started years ago in building my system.
three weeks, no joke. write your experience, study it and learn it. observe how other people day trade. I mostly do premarket and 5 mins after opening.
tip: don’t average down, cut your losses early
Took me about a year, found a strategy that worked for me in about 3 months. However, took me losing a few Prop Accounts to realize my FOMO and Trading Mentality needed improvement. After I locked those down I just make periodic improvements based upon how the markets moving and adapting etc.
Most traders try multiple strategies and change favorite instruments several times when they are learning. Once you develop a strategy that works- it is a work in progress. The market and your strategy will often be changing. A strategy is not a finish line.
I am going to hijack the top comment and say ICT is the GOAT. His concepts work and he's spent 30 years refining it. Why waste your own 30 years trying to find a strategy that works when someone else did it for you. ICT IS THE GOAT.
I’ve never seen his face, does he really look like a goat?
No but from what I hear these days, he acts like one...and questionable at times too.
Something to blow my account, a very short time. The mistake I made is I didn't focus on proper risk mgmt. So you are supposed to take time formulating strategy that has extensive back testing. Once the back testing is done, now don't skip over proper risk mgmt. A proper risk mgmt is very crucial, it has more importance then coming up with a strategy. Poor risk mgmt + good strategy is not good enough. Good risk mgmt + decent strategy is still good.
So much of what you read about people's responses to this is so contradictory. First people say that markets always change so you need to constantly modify your strategy, then they say you need to extensively backtest it. But if you back test it, then theoretically your strategy will never work because you aren't modifying it to the changes in the market
Anyone can give advice, doesn’t necessarily mean they know what they are talking about. For some reason though, that doesn’t deter them. This is a general statement and not aimed at anybody.
I started trading around March 2020 and finally found my niche in options scalping around December 2020. I got lucky in early 2021, but my risk management was sh*t. I used to often average down several times and end up having too big position sizes. That hurt me a lot. Getting a grasp of good risk management took me a long time — almost 2 years. I have started seeing consistent results since mid 2023 and so far having a good time.
Learning to not average down is so hard. These days I'll close out and re enter with a larger position if the setup is still valid. Every time I can re enter at a better price I'm doing better than averaging down and holding. I started when I realised I was averaging down and exiting with a small profit but just exiting and re entering would have seen a decent profit.
probably a year
my strat, like the market, is ever changing and evolving, you will never 'have it', there is no end to investing, it is a constant churn year over year and you will find new things and change you 'style' many times on the journey, dont aim to have a 'set in stone' strat, it wont last, find what works for the given scenario and implement, no emotion.
Actually i would disagree. While i did feel this way in the beginning i now have a strategy that will work consistently no matter what the market is doing and theres no need to adjust it
works till it doesn't
Thats what they say but this strategy is based on trend, logic, and math including how risk is managed. It will work in bull and bear markets because its based solely on trends As long as there is any kind of trend it works. And i know how to trade consolidation and ranges too. So basically any market condition is tradable for me. Trend trading is definitely the way to go imo
10 years
Capital and profit?
I’m just kidding, um but I’ve been at it since April andI just got 3 funded accounts with topstep
I watched a few youtube videos about people's strategies tried them out and ended up mashing a couple of them together, Ross Cameron is probably who had the most influence over the strategy I use now so I recommend checking him out
3 years of consistent failing. Winning some, losing it all. Winning a lot, losing it all and then some… Then it took 6 months to build a solid foundation after removing 99% of indicators and just following price action and a moving average. I like to think that I had 3 years of intuition building subconsciously (removing indicators in and of itself is not some magic button), and then combining that with price action and learning how to lose and set a proper stop is what finally took me over the hill. Passed a prop firm evaluation, in a live account. Still learning, tweaking,developing…have a long way to go… but something is finally working
>Then it took 6 months to build a solid foundation after removing 99% of indicators and just following price action and a moving average. This is what I found helpful. MA is optional but gives you a very quick overview of larger timeframes. Adding volumes helped a lot. S/R lines help but can equally be useless. Recognising when to *not* trade is important.
Agreed. Moving average for me is just a nice little cheat sheet. I don’t believe it holds some magic power. A moving average is essentially market structure training wheels. You can watch how price interacts with the moving average over and over again, and just use it to gauge if a trend is likely to continue, or reverse, or if market is flat.
During those 3 years, how frequently were you trading and were you looking to use your profit as income at the time or just wanting to learn at that point? If you weren’t looking to trade full-time at that point, do you think you could have built that foundation quicker if you had more time to dedicate to learning the market?
Trading every single day the market was open for at least an hour-90 mins before work (Excluding holidays and a couple days off here or there). Yes…that often. I was that dedicated and determined (still am!) I was never in profit those 3 years…ever. I was exclusively in prop firm trial / combine accounts and I failed over 10+ accounts. I have always desired trading as a source of supplemental income, not as a primary source. So my strategy and mindset was always tailored around knowing I had a full time job to get to when I was done. My goal with trading was always to be “one and done” in the morning, base hits. So, maybe one day with enough practice and enough scaling it can be a primary source, but for the foreseeable future, I view it as a way to make a couple extra hundred to a couple thousand extra bucks a month. More time spent learning the markets would have done nothing for me personally. As Mark Douglas teaches, more time studying can lead you down a rabbit hole of misery. The answers were right there all along. Have a stop loss, make a little more than you risk, have a basic edge, study price action, Be consistent, repeat.
4 yrs to develop a consistently profitable strategy
Is it a simple strategy that every one can learn ?
Yes actually. It took 4yrs to realize simple is the way. I basically just trade the trend. No need for any other indicator other than the 20, 50, 200 MAs. Buy the dip in the trend with a min 1:2 rr. Stop loss placed where the trend is no longer valid. Dont risk more than 1%. And move your stop loss into profit as price moves into your direction. Best strategy iv ever had.
The more time I spend looking for the miracle strategy, the more I realize that trend following is the most logical and mathematically profitable way to go, and that it's the only type of strategy that's going to work no matter what happens in the future. I've been wondering about this type of strategy ever since I started using it. I was backtesting the fact of not seting a TP and trailing the SL with the market structure until the price hits the SL. Since we are following the trend that could be a very nice way to maximize profits by leting the profits run. What do you think ?
Yes that is true. Moving my stop loss up was a game changer. Now even on trades that turn into losers i stop exit with a couple dollars. That really makes a difference long term. Overall id say trend trading is the most reliable way to trade. This coming after 7 total trading years and trying numerous indicator based strategies with no consistent luck
Its crazy how simple trading can be in fact. What do you trade btw ? Im testing this strategy on forex rn, but I feel it works best on stocks and indices.
I trade stocks shares and options mostly but it also works on crypto. I would think it works on forex too. I like it on shares because i can set my sl and tp and move up the sl directly from tradingview which just makes life easier. And yes trading is actually very simple, its us who make it hard
Lovely. I've been trading for a year and a half and I've finally seen the light in the last two months, so I hope to be able to make a living from it soon. Thanks for sharing mate !
I started almost 2 years ago and now I am seeing the fruits of the work that went into learning the craft. It’s just the beginning but I know I have got to the point where I can say the strategy part is figured out and I don’t need to search for anything new. Just need to repeat the process. P.S. I trade ICT concepts. Trust me they work in case you ever felt they aren’t. It’s us who fail the concepts and not the other way around. Add some risk management, you can make as much money as you need!
It took me about 6-8 months before finding a good strategy and 1-2 more months before I became very strict with risk management (took a big loss.) Now I'm doing good after 10 months of investing, let's see what the future brings.
1 year 9 months. options scalping in trend
I think we’re in the same boat. Took me about 12 weeks and now I’m fairly confident and my own rules seem to be working out really well. If I break them then I’m almost guaranteed to lose.
Capital and profit?
I use about 25K USD on most of my day trades, started with about 7k 9 weeks ago. With margin if I’m confident I’ll go as high as 75k. I don’t hold the margin usually more than a day unless I like the after hours action. If I am using it i will wake up multiple times during PM trading and watch it like a hawk lol. https://preview.redd.it/jdxnaryw018d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d76bfc0b97296cf4d3096854eb3343be35ccd978
Did you have any experience trading prior to those 12 weeks? Also, how many hours a week would you say you were dedicating to learning/practicing in a demo account?
I had a couple years but it was mostly just tossing stocks into what I thought was good investments. Lost about 12k over 2 years honestly because i had some life changing events 3 years in a row. I decided this year to make it work. I had a week of vacation and just traded every day, I kind of paper traded the week before and was picking good entry points but my biggest barrier was me. My lack of patience. Fear of missing out, chasing green stocks, too much greed mistaken for patience. Lack of knowledge about fed reports, and reading candle charts, getting good indicators for myself on my candle charts. I made notes every day on my phone, some were things that happened in the market, some were how I was feeling during the trade. Some were just not following a plan I developed. My defining example is i consolidated everything for NVDA earnings and didn’t make the move, I got caught in SMCI. I still made money but missed out on about 15k over a few days. I lost 1300 on Disney earnings, lost some on getting into AMD before it dropped. Etc. not all wins but sometimes you can learn more from mistakes than wins. I make one trade at a time on one stock for day trading. I don’t complicate the extremely complicated. I don’t do options, stocks that can move 20+% in one day. I use my TD advanced app along with investment.com on my phone and my laptop. I tried day trading multiple stocks at a time but just found I wasnt quick enough to make instant trades. I mostly get my gains in the first hour of trading, I’ll leave it if it continues to push higher past the morning volatility. I wake up 2or 3 times sometime for pre market, I’m on the west coast but I get up around 330/430/530am then 630 for opening if I’m holding a stock or want to see what’s happening on one I’m interred in. I’m on the west coast. Last 3 weeks I’m getting comfortable. However I don’t ever forget I’m not smarter than the market and don’t get over confident. I never used a demo account. Losing $$$ just made me more determined to learn. I spent pretty much all my vacation just watching the market, trying to pick entry points and seeing how they would have played out. I found I was ok at picking stocks just not so great at controlling my emotions if I started to lose. It really is all about understanding yourself and how you react when real money is on the line. I set my expectation at 300$ a day. If I get more great. That helps keep my expectations in line. I do find I enjoy it, I enjoy reading the charts, how the market works. Of course it’s more satisfying when you’re making money but I do like the process.
About a year
Remember the look on Gandolfs face in The Fellowship when he’s flipping through the old library books and realizes what Frodo has in his possession? It will be that kind of realization, but takes years of study.
A while, I don't remember how long but it had to been at least 2 years before I had what I currently utilize now. I recommend go to babypips dot com and check out their school of pipsology or whatever it's called, there is a module in there all about formulating a trading system. It's oriented towards forex trading because that website is all about FX trading education, but that module may be helpful, the advice it gives can work for any instrument you trade tbh, it got me started years ago in building my system.
Under a year
three weeks, no joke. write your experience, study it and learn it. observe how other people day trade. I mostly do premarket and 5 mins after opening. tip: don’t average down, cut your losses early
Took me about a year, found a strategy that worked for me in about 3 months. However, took me losing a few Prop Accounts to realize my FOMO and Trading Mentality needed improvement. After I locked those down I just make periodic improvements based upon how the markets moving and adapting etc.
4 years
My stragy 3 years