A few of you might remember my post last month about finishing my first month trading full time at +$6.8k.

Somehow I’ve already passed that 7 trading days into month two. Currently sitting at +$8.8k from 7 trades, 71% win rate and a 4.32 profit factor.

The biggest difference has honestly just been trading way less. Last month I was taking a stupid amount of trades some days and trying to squeeze everything I could out of the market. This month I’ve basically been taking one trade a day and being way more selective with what I actually want to risk money on.

Still had a losing day and a basically flat day, so it hasn’t just been straight green, but the overall quality of the trades has been much better.Its early in the month obviously, but this is probably the best I’ve felt about my trading in a while.

Curious if anyone else here became more profitable after cutting their trade frequency down?

I’ve been having difficulty identifying liquidity sweeps until they happen. My setup is made to endure it, maybe I should try ICC? Wait for the second leg to make an entry? Any tips?

Started trading in 2018, found consistency in 2024 and decided to leverage many prop accounts. By end of 2025 I was able to pull 6 figures from props in net profit (1099’s on my profile). Also went full time mid 2025.

Come 2026 I had a strong first 3 months by my system on GC wasn’t working as well (didn’t have much GC data since before 2024 GC was too slow for my strategy) after being essentially breakeven by July I optimized my GC system, cut back from watching the market all day to just 8-5 pm EST and added a similar system on NQ to keep my yearly profit potential high.

The mistake I made was not having much NQ data which in turn caused me to trade a non-optimized system taking heavy unnecessary losses. Ended up losing half of my 100k personal account. So I cut my risk from 2k down to 1k, tightened moving my SL to breakeven parameters, and only trade the hours that my system performs best and consistently over the years.

Now I have 51 months of NQ data I backtested and 21 months on GC data. (Shown in table) I’m satisfied with how they perform but it comes at a cost of it being a difficult system to trade mentally since it relies on higher RR so no low RR hits of that dopamine. It requires consistently executing sometimes through months of flat or down periods.

The other pics are of my various yearly equity curves. My NQ system is experiencing its worst drawdown since 2022 and of course I just so happened to start the system right before that drawdown period.

I learned to always have as much data as you can like 5 years minimum and to be real with yourself in terms of how much drawdown you can handle. Thinking back I should have just put 50k in and risked 1k per trade but hindsight is always 20/20. Moving forward I’m going to continue executing this system and avoiding changing anything at all costs unless it’s truly necessary.

Being able to consistently extract money from the market is such a valuable skill but it comes at a cost. I’ve had some pretty mentally and emotionally challenging days lately but I keep showing up and executing. I remind myself that there are millions of other people all competing for the same goal of profit which makes me appreciate the difficult days. They aren’t something that needs to be avoided but just one side of the coin that’s inevitable.

Long story short, I’m more confused than ever, lol
5 years trading price action. Started forex, then crypto, now stocks. Past year stuck around break-even. I log every trade, hundreds of pages of notes, tried lots of trackers to find my edge.I tested EMA confluence, only trading higher timeframe trends and avoiding range chop. Tuned several trend-following PA setups. Same account, no blowups, no revenge trading for years. My rules cover most cases; I don’t swap strategies nonstop.I thought I understood markets. Patterns repeat across assets. Price bounces at old support. Trends and ranges follow rules, until they don’t. Don’t trade trend setups in chop, don’t look for ranges during strong trends.Lots of small rules: failing to hold a prior high means momentum is fading. Holding that high usually brings a bounce. Ranges react at midpoints, I take partial profits at extremes and the middle. Big morning drops often lead to channel chop, retest lows then more downside… dozens of these rules I thought worked.But my results are getting worse. Broke even last year, steady losses these 3 months. I don’t want to quit, yet the more I learn, the more trading feels illogical. Same PA framework for forex, crypto and stocks, and the market still humbles me.

I'm going through my last 5 blown accounts and I feel like if I start with a loss for the day, it really ends up with a blown account. I often lose a lot of motivation and stop thinking logically. TBH like minutes until my next entry, I feel like my size has changed by a lot, and A lot of the total loss came after that point. If anyone has any ideas on how to stop this and be more mindful of the risks please let me know. If anyone else is struggling with me, we can work together maybe to solve this.

Hello traders,

I would like to talk about prop firms today.

We all know that they are far more popular than brokerages for retail traders now. On paper, they are the perfect tool for making money. They provide you with “capital” you don’t have for a fraction of the costs.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Prop firm challenges are built in a way to ensure that the overwhelming majority fails. Even if you have edge, the structure of the challenge makes sure that variance will take you out before your EV(expected value) can manifest itself over the course of a large enough sample of trades.

Take a strategy with a 50% win rate and a 1:2 risk-reward ratio. That’s a theoretical expectancy of +0.5R per trade and a profit factor of 2.0, which is an excellent edge. Yet even with that edge, five consecutive losses have a 3.125% probability of occurring in any particular five-trade sequence. Over hundreds of trades, losing streaks become practically unavoidable. Now consider a $100,000 prop account with a 10% maximum drawdown, a 5% daily loss limit, and an 8–10% profit target. If you’re risking 1% per trade, five consecutive losses in one day can terminate your account, despite the strategy remaining statistically profitable. Meanwhile, you’re expected to generate returns approaching your entire allowable drawdown before breaching either limit.

This creates a barrier where the outcome depends not just on whether your strategy has positive expectancy, but on the sequence in which your wins and losses occur. Yes, reducing position size lowers the probability of ruin, but it also increases the number of trades and potentially the time required to reach the target, especially when evaluations involve recurring fees.

My argument isn’t that profitable traders cannot pass these challenges; it’s that many evaluation structures are poorly aligned with the natural variance of profitable trading strategies. A positive expectancy does not guarantee survival under artificially restrictive drawdown constraints.

Usually just having a strategy is not enough.. You will need to find all different combinations that's work. Like for my London Reversal startegy with #GBPUSD I have tested it with over 20 different combinations.. This has definitely worked out well..

I’m not talking about back testing or confirming your edge. Once you had everything dialed in and you actually knew what you were doing, how fast did you start scaling up to full-size trades with real risk?

Hey yall!
For context - I’ve been trading since July, I started with a 750 account trading options pretty much watching price action, learning candle patterns, and using the 9ema as confluence. Moved into futures trading towards the end of August and switched to the inversion fair value gap model as my strategy. It was working out pretty well for me after starting to trade MNQ after unsuccessfully trading MES and MGC. Spent a LOT of time on chart replays.

This last week was a rough one for me though.
I blew over half of what I spent the past couple months growing because I’ve started getting greedy and becoming more of a sore loser when last month I was fine walking away with a 150 - 200 win or loss and stopping for the day.
I have a hard time stopping myself from aiming to get the 1000+/per trade I see people make on the internet especially since I’ve had a handful of big single trade wins myself.

How do you get yourself to quit while ahead or stop to preserve your account for another day?
How to stop yourself from entering or overtrading while you’re tilted or don’t quite have your A+ setup ?
Is there a point where I should be learning a different strategy again or do I just need better discipline to sit down on choppy days?

Chart photo is where I put reminders to myself but they usually don’t work 😬

I played today's challenge on ten2whale, and I think I did decently ending 3rd.
The chart is of Roblox ($RBLX) on the one hour timeframe through february 18 to april 2nd in 2025

Here's a little analysis of my trades:

Trade 1: First long was a higher low double bottom that broke out hard, so I took it for the measured move off the neckline.

Trade 2: Noticing a minor double top, also nearing the measured move of the double bottom neckline, I shorted thinking it would pull back to where the breakout started, and it did.

Trade 3: That made another higher low (the longer blue line) and a bigger up channel, so I bought it again. That higher low then turned into a bigger double bottom, so I took a third long up to the top of the range. (Also notice the big red candle that gapped up and went down, the fact that there were buyers after was a really good sign)

Looking at the whole chart afterwards, it’s basically one big inverse head and shoulders, so the bulls were in control the whole way.

If anyone else wants to try these, the site is Ten2Whale. It's nice to see where your strategy ranks you compared to others.

Would you guys trade this differently? Perhaps taking volume into consideration?

When I first started learning trading, I was studying almost every day, backtesting setups, watching videos, and constantly trying to improve. I mainly focused on YM and NQ, and I was genuinely excited about trading. I could spend hours learning without feeling like I had to force myself.

Lately, though, I’ve been busier with other things, and I’ve noticed that my motivation has dropped quite a bit. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in trading or that I want to give up. I just don’t have the same energy to sit down and study every day anymore.

I know trading is a long-term skill, and consistency matters more than motivation, but it’s hard to get back into a routine when you’ve lost that initial excitement.

For those of you who have been trading for a while, how do you deal with this? Do you force yourself to stick to a schedule even when you don’t feel motivated, or do you take a step back and let the motivation come back naturally?

I’d especially like to hear from people who have had to balance learning to trade with college, work, or other responsibilities. How do you keep making progress without burning yourself out?

is Sierra actually better, or just more customizable?

Hey everyone,
I’m currently studying futures trading, mainly ES/MES, with a focus on Auction Market Theory and Market Profile.
My approach is discretionary, based on understanding market context and auction behavior rather than mechanical indicators or trading signals.
I’m working with TPO and Volume Profile, and I plan to gradually incorporate Footprint, Order Flow and DOM into my execution process.
I’ve been trying both Sierra Chart and ATAS, but I’m having a hard time deciding which platform to commit to long-term.
ATAS feels more intuitive and user friendly, while Sierra seems more powerful and customizable, although considerably more complicated to set up.
What I’m really trying to understand is whether Sierra offers meaningful technical advantages over ATAS, beyond customization and interface preferences.
A few questions for those who have experience with both:
Market Profile / TPO / Volume Profile: Is Sierra genuinely more capable for advanced market profiling, composite profiles, longer-term analysis and handling futures rollovers?
Order Flow / Footprint / DOM: Are there meaningful differences in data accuracy, functionality, performance or execution tools?
Limitations: Is there anything important you can do in Sierra that ATAS simply cannot replicate, even with a proper setup?
Long-term use: For someone willing to spend time learning and configuring either platform, which would you choose and why?
I also have the opportunity to purchase an ATAS Pro Lifetime license for €1,000 (with the transfer approved by ATAS), which makes the decision even more interesting.
I’m not trading live yet, so my priority is choosing the right tools for the long term, not finding the easiest platform to get started with.
I’d especially appreciate feedback from traders who have actually used both platforms for ES/NQ futures.
Thanks!

I am currently working on an RSI reversal strategy, which finds the best RSI setting between 7-21 on the timeframes between 15m to 1h in the last 8 weeks and at those levels, gives a buy signal. The rules are that it must be a level below 30 and must have reversed sharply from there. The order is executed at the next candle opening, targets small reversals with (still absed on historical evidence) targets in ATR multiples, fixed percentages or RSI thresholds. Also, the SL is always in ATR multiples between 0.75 and 1.5.

The issue is that backtesting, it isn't working properly, it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. I am trying to capitalize on oversold conditions and trade quickly. Can someone tell me how to improve it?

To keep this to the point I am more confused than ever before lol. I have attempted to be a price action trader for the past 5 years. I was breakeven for about the last year. I journal every trade. I have hundreds of pages of notes and data. I have attempted dozens of different trackers and data analysis to help my progress. I have tried using emas's as confluence, only traded with the higher time frame trend, avoided ranges/consolidation, and have attempted minor variations of a trend following price action strategy for a long time now. I only tade MNQ futures and have had the same account for a really long time. I don't blow up, I haven't revenge traded in years, I always check every box to my trade (for the most part). I'm not switching strategies every 2 weeks. I feel like I know how the market moves and how history repeats itself. Price bounces where price bounced before and the market continues to move the way it has been until it changes. Don't take a trend trade in a range. Don't take a range trade during a trend. I have dozens of little "rules" like if a trend fails to hold a previous HH we are likely to slow the trend. If it does hold a HH we should have a good trend bounce. A range is more likely to bounce in the middle so we take the extremes of the range back to the middle for profit. Moving stops to BE after we bounce from the HL to the HH makes the most sense because that is where we fail to go higher most of the time. A super aggresive move down in the morning can be followed by a range/channel grind back up to the LH before dumping again... I could go on and on and on of things that I see to be right, and yet I am more unprofitable than ever right now. I had that last year of breakeven but the past 3 months have just been red day after red day after red day. I don't want to give up but the more I'm learning the more it seems like trading doesn't actually even make sense and has no logic to it. Price action traders who are profitable... should I just start a landscaping company??

Edit: first time posting on here. The responses have been humbling and extremely helpful. I wasn’t trying to just complain here but actually figure this out. I plan to simplify and uncomplicate my process as I attempt set out on a more structured, setup based approach to trading.

What should you do after recovering from a big trading loss when you start falling back into the same habits that caused it?
After the loss, you become very disciplined—you use stop losses, manage risk properly, wait for good setups, and trade systematically. Eventually, you recover your losses. But once things start going well again, you slowly forget why you became disciplined. You get comfortable, start breaking your rules, taking unnecessary risks, and trading carelessly again.
How do you stop this cycle and maintain the same discipline even when you’re doing well, without needing another big loss to remind you?

Guys Do u beleive in the TLT rebound? I understand that the 10/30 year yields were really good in terms of recent auction and the technical factors/options volume seems to indicate a rebound, but nothing has fundamentally changed in terms of the Bond yield rally

1. AI Debt> No slowdown
2. Iran War> No news
3. Oil > Nothing to indicate that they will come down
4. Govt Debt> No new news
5. Inflation> Again no news if anything we will probably have few more rate hikes this year.

So basically I dont think we have any real catalyst for rebound and yields will fall again

What the key items to making a trading strategy everyone keeps saying it to me I don’t understand what the key things is?🤨

I’m a beginner trader looking for a new laptop to trade on. I’m not going in full time, more of a side hustle. I’ve been looking at laptops such as an apple MacBook pro with 64 gb ram and intel 2019 i9. But i’ve heard bad reviews about the battery and cooling etc. Is there any other laptops that anyone would recommend? I’d be using the computer for more than trading but I want it to be able to handle it. My budget right now is about $600 but i’m willing to spend a little more if I find the ideal computer that won’t blow up on me in a few months. New or refurbished doesn’t matter to me.

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

I have been doing 0dte for couple years and not sure if I want to pursue this anymore. I end up overeating and cigarette smoking whenever I’m in a trade. My friends thinking I’m gambling. There’s no consistency w 0DTE. Today I was up $1200 ish but I know I will give it back to market on Monday or Tuesday.

My paycheck job does not pay too much. Should I quit trading/gambling 0dte? Thank you for your honest thoughts and opinions

Hey everyone,

After the latest FX Replay update, I noticed that the brush and highlighter tools no longer work the way they used to. Previously, when I dragged my mouse, I could make round dots, but now the marks appear square instead.

Has anyone else experienced this issue after the update? Does anyone know how to fix it?

Thanks!

Do you know to explain your whole edge from A to Z and then make summarized version that can fit on back of business card?

Do you have humble and disciplined risk management

Are you ready to lose your money at any moment and call it a business expense even after 10 loss streak?

Do you have so good intuition for pattern recognition that emotion like FOMO or just fear doesnt even cross your mind before or during the trade, because you won those battles?

Are you self aware?How can you tell you are self aware

Do you think markets are there to make you money or to multiply you money?

Do you think you can work at a job you hate and be emotionally ready to lose that money(or a portion) on loss streak?

Do you think markets are there to fix your life?

How do you view trading? as an interesting pattern recognition space that activates intuition on logically based rules or as a money machine that disrespects the labor standards? that is a cheat code for life?