Looking for honest advice from consistently profitable traders .... 5 years in Forex, still not profitable
I've been trading Forex for about **5 years**. The first 2 years I mostly traded signals/copied others. For the last 3 years, I've focused heavily on **ICT/SMC**, starting with studying ICT directly.
I've watched countless ICT videos, backtested extensively, and have a specific entry model based on liquidity sweeps, displacement, 15m CISD, session/1H/daily highs and lows, etc.
My biggest problem is **DAILY BIAS**. Since ICT is discretionary, I often get the bias wrong, even during backtesting. I understand the concepts, but I still can't consistently turn them into profitable decisions.
Seeing people online claiming payouts after 6–12 months makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong. I've also joined a well-known ICT Discord where the trader had multiple payouts, but during the 2 months I followed him, he had no profitable month. His journal also shows only a few profitable months since 2025. It made me realize that social media results don't necessarily tell the whole story.
So I'm looking for advice from people who **actually withdraw consistently from the market**, not another ICT theory lesson.
If you've been in a similar situation:
* How did you solve your daily bias problem? * Did you make your strategy improve your discretion? * How did you know your strategy actually had an edge? * If you were 5 years in and still not profitable, what would you change? * Would you simplify ICT, continue with it, or completely start over?
**What was the one thing that finally made you profitable?**
I'm genuinely looking for honest advice from experienced, consistently profitable traders. Please don't tell me to watch more ICT videos—I think I've watched enough.