u/iamnottravis

Genuine question, not trying to be a jerk about it.

I keep seeing people take a setup just because someone they follow posted a chart with a nice-looking pattern on it. And it works out sometimes, sure. But nobody ever seems to ask the obvious thing first: has this pattern actually worked before? Like how often, over how many occurrences, and did it still make money after the losers?

That part is almost never in the post. It's just a clean chart, an arrow, and a confident voice. And somehow that's enough for people to put real money on it.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. But for me a pattern with no numbers behind it is basically a nice drawing. I want the win rate, the sample size, and whether the edge survives once you subtract slippage and fees. If a setup can't clear that, I don't really care how clean the chart looks.

I'm not saying influencers are scamming anyone. Most probably believe their own stuff. I'm saying the format rewards a confident story way more than an honest track record, and those two are not the same thing.

So genuinely, am I missing something? Do you actually check whether the patterns you see have an edge before you trade them, or is it more of a "looks good, take it" thing? Curious how people here decide what to trust.

Okay, mild confession - I spent last Saturday doing something kind of nerdy instead of touching grass. Haha.

I had this nagging feeling that half the filters on my charts were just there to make me feel thorough. So instead of trusting the vibe, I actually tested it: took each filter I use and checked how the setups it flagged had historically performed. Win rate, and more importantly profit factor, one filter at a time.

Humbling results. Trend? Barely moved the needle. it's on everything anyway. Volume? A little. "Clean structure"? Turns out "clean" mostly lives in my head!

The one that actually flipped things was relative strength : just "is this name already outperforming the index going into the setup." Same breakout, same base, same volume pop: in a leader it had a real edge, in a laggard it was basically a coin flip. Side by side, it wasn't even close.

Bit annoying to realize my "system" was one real filter and a bunch of comfort blankets, haha.

Genuine question for the people who've done this longer - have you actually tested which of your filters carries the edge, vs which ones just feel rigorous? Does relative strength turn out to be the quiet MVP for you too, or is it something else?

if you trade around a day job like i do, your premarket focus is the whole budget. and manual scanning burns it in the worst possible order.

for years my routine was: sit down before the open, scroll forty plus charts one by one, hunting the setup i already knew i wanted. half of them had zero chance of qualifying. so by the time i reached the 6 that mattered, my head was fried from rejecting the billion that didn't, and i was making the real calls tired, in the ten minutes i had before work.

the dumb part is i knew exactly what i was looking for. i could write the criteria down. so why was i re-scanning the whole universe by eye every morning? if you can write it down precisely, the first pass isn't judgment, it's filtering, and that's the one thing you should never do with your eyes.

it's a lot better now. i stopped doing the first pass by hand and set the filtering to run overnight, so i wake up to the short list already cut and get to the open with a fresh head. i can hold the job and still trade like i mean it.

so, for the people who also trade around a full-time job: how do you handle prep when premarket is your only window? night before, wake up early, run a filter, or just accept you'll miss setups on the busy mornings?

This might be contrarian and I’d like to hear from people who use prop firms.

I don’t understand what people get out from such platforms. If it’s practice- use paper money. If it’s practice with real money (I understand that for a lot of people real psychology and discipline comes in play with real money), but then you can start with $2k - and make sure you take small bets.

Prop firms make money when you lose, isn’t?

been thinking about why so much trading content feels off to me even when the person talking is clearly knowledgeable.

i think it's the incentive mismatch. a creator needs you to keep watching. that means cliffhangers, drama, the "i'll reveal my top pick at the end" stuff. that's not how good trading decisions get made.

the things that actually improve my trading are boring. consistent process, defined setups, knowing when not to trade. none of that is engaging content.

anyone else feel this? curious if there's trading content people here actually find useful that doesn't fall into this trap.

was going through my watchlist last session and clocked myself - 38 minutes to get through 42 tickers. by the time i was done the open was 8 minutes away and i was already mentally tired.

the thing i realised is i was doing the filtering manually that i could probably be automating. like i know what setup i'm looking for. why am i looking at charts that couldn't possibly meet those criteria?

shifted to setting filters the night before so by the time i wake up the 42 is already down to 6 or 8 that actually pass. then i spend my actual attention on those. takes about 10-12 minutes now.

curious if other people have figured out a similar system or if you're still doing it chart by chart. what does your premarket actually look like?

Took me some time to get this: you can't judge a setup off five trades. A breakout that wins 55% of the time at 1.5R can still hand you 3 losers out of 5 and look dead. Two things that fixed it for me: stop grading trades by P&L (a loss from a properly sized, stop-defined trade is a good trade that just caught variance), and be the house not the gambler (your edge shows up across hundreds of trades, not the next one)

How many trades do you give a setup before you call it broken?