Anyone else here day trade futures or stocks using pivot points? What’s ur experience with them and how well have they worked for you?

I've seen a lot of Ross Cameron posts in recent months, with plenty of debate around whether he's legitimate or not, if he's a pump-and-dumper, or this and that. As someone who's watched him for just under a decade, I wanted to make a post to finally settle things for everyone. To be clear - what I am about to say is not speculation; it's based on observation and independent verification that I've done for myself over that decade, so you'll be hard-pressed to argue against me, though you're welcome to try. I'd love to be proven wrong.

First, to get the big thing out of the way - yes, he is legitimate. He makes actual money from the actual trades he shows.

Second, no, he is not a pump-and-dumper - at least not technically, and I'll get to that in a second.

Lastly, yes his strategy *can* work if you're really skilled and disciplined. The strategy itself is standard momentum scalping. He targets low-float stocks with huge pre-market catalysts, looking for quick breakouts on small time frames. He proved the model works early on when he built his account up from a few hundred bucks before he had any kind of following. If you trade with small size, like 1,000 shares, the strategy is perfectly viable. The best of us should expect ~50-55% win rate with 1:1.5 to 1:2 risk, again, *if you're really good*.

What you and I *can't realistically* (or reliably and over the long term) do, however, is trade with his size, nor can we expect to get anything like his 70%+ win rate. Why is that, you ask?

Queue SpongeBob rainbow hands: *The Audience*

The secret sauce that allows him to post ridiculous gains and maintain multi-month green-day streaks is the audience. You might think you know where I'm going with this, and I know what you're thinking: "A guy with a chatroom full of people doesn't have enough liquidity to move markets," and normally you'd be right! I recently commented on this, and I'm just going to copy my response to that here:  Ross doesn't trade under normal circumstances. Most of his trading is well before traditional market opening, meaning market maker algos and other traders in general are far less active, leaving any given price point on the level 2 with far less available stock, often just in the hundreds or thousands for any given price point. So. When you have a few thousand people all buying at the same time, it doesn't take much, especially on a low-float stock, for several price levels to be taken out in a matter of milliseconds.

Yes, the stocks he trades often do millions in volume *eventually*, but he's usually only trading the first one or two pumps of the initial move, meaning he's in early, allowing him to benefit most from the flood of volume that is *boosted largely by his audience after he announces his trade, before much of the rest of the market has woken up to see what's happening.*

So what does this mean? It means that his trades are more likely to work through sheer brute force due to his audience of thousands adding buying pressure, saving what might have otherwise been a failed breakout. It's as simple as that.

If we had to estimate, we can imagine conservatively that his audience gives him an increase of about 10%-15% to his win rate, which doesn't sound like much, but is huge if you're already skilled. It can mean the difference between a profitable day and a flat or red day, and is the main reason why you'll never see him trade without an audience these days.

This last bit is about scalability. You and I will not be able to reliably trade 20,000-30,000 shares on the same stocks he trades. The amount of slippage we would get on these would mean immense losses in the long run, even if it works sometimes and you manage your adds and reductions with discipline. Intentionally or not, his audience is supplying a large amount of his exit liquidity, as they are often still buying when he begins to sell - it's the inevitable nature of a delayed stream (and, to his credit, largely why he says not to follow his trades, but people do it anyway).

And that's pretty much what I have to say. Just to add - his videos on how to trade, market structure, patterns, how to trade them, etc., are all good and standard momentum trading stuff. You can learn from him and watch him, and you may even succeed having done so - just keep your expectations in check, and understand that you will likely never see the profits or win rate he posts. Not with this strategy, anyway.

TLDR; Ross Cameron is legitimate. His strategy works for the most part as long as you are disciplined and skilled, with the realistic expectation of a 50-55% win rate. His audience likely contributes ~10-15% to his win rate, as well as providing exit liquidity for his large share size, which can't be done reliably without the audience.

EDIT: There is no way to realistically quantify his audience edge, but given what we know about pre-market mechanics, the win rates that career momentum traders report (around 50-55%), and Ross's own reported win rate of ~70%, we can conservatively, and reasonably, estimate that his audience provides that 10-15% boost.

Statistically, it's more likely that the difference between a 55% win rate and a 70% win rate isn't about making better trades; it's about how many marginal or failing trades get saved.

Example: If Ross takes 100 trades, statistical baselines dictate that roughly 45 of them should fail based on organic market structure and what we know about breakout failure rates. However, because his audience introduces a concentrated wave of buying power the moments after he enter,s a portion of those 45 failing trades are artificially forced upward just enough for him to escape with a small profit or a break-even fill.

To bridge a 15% gap in a 100-trade sample, the audience only needs to "rescue" 10 to 15 trades that would have otherwise hit his stop-loss. Given that thousands of people are viewing his stream and reacting to his alerts, a 10% to 15% rescue rate seems a highly conservative estimate of the crowd's impact on a thin order book

To address the FTC settlement: the crux of that FTC suit is not that he was a fraud; it's that his advertising was misleading, making trading seem easy when, in fact, most of his customers lost money. The suit does not address whether his system did or didn't work - only that the marketing didn't properly disclose the real risk, which is why every one of his videos now has a disclaimer.

The one study that always comes up when this topic does is a Brazilian futures study. Of the people who kept day trading for 300+ days, 97% lost money, and only about 1% earned more than minimum wage. These weren't people who quit after a month. They persisted.

What I can't figure out from the paper is what the few who made it did differently. Edge, risk control? Just not blowing up after a loss?

For those of you who have been trading for a while: what do you think actually separates profitable traders, and what do you do to catch yourself during a bad session rather than in the review afterwards?

Only about 1% to 3% of day traders successfully beat the market and remain consistently profitable over time, so why do you guys day trade?

Anyone else feel the rush? Just logging into charts daily, placing orders, and walking away with profit? Real money that gets sent to your bank account, and you withdraw and can do whatever you want with it

It's awesome being able to do this and just living a life of trading and making money

My struggles aren't with my strategy or psychology anymore, I know how this all works.

My problem is that I only get good setups not even twice a week. This makes progress so slow since i show up to the charts every day and get nearly nothing.

I've been paper trading for ages and yet despite being in profit i haven't been able to make enough to pass a single eval across several months.

I barely ever get 20 point moves which secure me 500$. I barely even get a win worth $300 (10pt move). Maybe once or twice a week this happens. But I get losses as well which wipes it all out. My R:R is around 1:1 most times.

Its so slow and so demotivating. I don't know what to do to fix it, but ES has been weird recently during NY session, so perhaps i need to trade other sessions?

The issue with that is I only have limited time to trade every day, and the mental drain is insane. I still need to work and go to my lectures and read for hours a day so trading diff sessions might be impractical for me.

I really want to make this work but despite being profitable on paper, it feels like i'm not actually making progress.

Furthermore if I had the capital I'd just size up and be even pickier with my setups. Then my profits would count. But somehow trading 8MES just doesn't get me far enough. I usually let 6 contracts go for 10pts and the other 2 contracts for 20pts.

What can I do to make my 2 hours per NY session per day actually count? And how can I see the results I want to see, when my setup comes only once a week. I expend so much mental energy on trading and even if i'm capable I'm starting to feel like I might not be capable enough.

Maybe a “strange” question, but it’s actually just something I was wondering about earlier.

On average, how much money does a trader lose during their first 4–5 years?
I’ll go first: I started trading 5 years ago, I’ve been profitable for just under a year, and during my first 4 years I lost exactly 4,200€. This amount also includes the money I spent on trading courses/mentorships, which comes to around 1,500€.

I have to say, 4,200€ always seemed like an insanely high amount to me. I genuinely thought I was one of the worst traders out there. But recently I’ve been browsing some forums and I’ve read about people who managed to blow through 10k in just a few months, and others who will be paying off trading-related debts for years because of the stupid mistakes they made.

So, looking at it from that perspective, I guess I wasn’t doing quite as badly as I thought

What about you guys? How much money have you lost so far?

Hi guys,

can anyone recommend a proper and solid trading education? One where you really learn to understand the markets and are able to create a profitable strategy afterwards.

There are soooo many trading educations and trading gurus out there and most of them are just scams.

So, if anyone bought a trading education which really made sense and maybe even made him profitable, please let me know.

It really is a jungle out there and I have no idea how to find anything really good.

Thanks!! 🙏

I hope this gets pinned or something because I’m tired of all the “I’m completely new, teach me” or “why are my ICT strategies not working” type of posts

If you feel I missed something please feel free to comment. If you have questions, ask away. I want this to be somewhere new traders can look to get a kickstart so we don’t keep getting flooded with silly posts about not knowing where to start.

I won’t get into derivatives, as new traders shouldn’t even be trading those anyways.

First off, check out ImanTrading on YouTube. Literally making a YouTube career off exposing fakes like ICT, TJR, DJ Trades, and a whole slew of other scam artists (if you can even call it artistry)…

Here are basics on what to learn:

Types of trading, types of markets, brokers, order types/functions, risk management, developing a strategy, and last but not least, actual successful traders to learn from. I dive into each a bit below.

Types of trading:

Discretionary trading - you buy and sell, using discretion and experience to execute.
Algo trading - coded rules where computer automation handles execution.
Intraday trading - buy/sell same day. Could be a <60s hold or hours before selling.
Swing trading - holding overnight, either for a day or even months.
Long bias - buy to open, sell to close. Want asset to go up.
Short bias - sell to open, buy to close. Borrow shares to sell on the market, buy to return to owner. Want asset to go down.
Long-term investing - VOO/SPY and chill

You’ll gravitate towards a style based on personality and risk tolerance. For example, I’m a discretionary long-bias intraday trader. Some people are algo short-bias swing traders. It boils down to personality, availability, and natural aptitudes.

Types of markets:

Equities (actual companies), crypto (digital assets), forex (currency), futures (commodities), options, swaps, forwards, prediction markets (straight gambling), and more. Futures, options, forwards, swaps, these are all derivatives (the asset value is derived from an underlying asset) and they are extremely complex in how the derivatives value is calculated. Don’t trade derivatives as a newbie. AND DON’T USE LEVERAGE AS A NEWBIE… Trade with your own capital and trade the underlying assets directly until you have experience.

Brokers:

WeBull, Schwab (ThinkOrSwim platform), IBKR, Lightspeed, Centerpoint, CMEG, Ocean One, and more. Some are commission, some commission-free. I’d venture to say with all the commission free brokers out there that ones like Robinhood shouldn’t be considered for serious intraday traders. Maybe it’s ok for swing traders or those that hold longer timeframes, but lacks lots of tools for faster traders.

Order types/functions:

Limit orders, market orders, stop loss, take profit, trailing stops, OCO, fill or kill, and more. Market orders and SL/TP only work in market hours due to thinner liquidity and brokers not wanting you pissed about slippage during extended hours. Look them up, this takes 10-20 minutes to understand order types and functions. Paper trading will help you understand all the order types your broker offers and the basics of how they work.

Risk management:

General rule of thumb is to risk 1% of your account per trade. It’s about survival. If I have a $10k account, I may take a $1k position and risk a $100 drawdown before closing the position. $100 is 1% of $10k. Position size does not equal risk amount, unless you’re gonna stare at it going to $0. Have a daily max loss, weekly max loss, know how many losses in a row before walking away. Know how much profit you’re willing to give back before ending the day. Overnight introduces gap risk (gapping above/below your risk tolerance while you’re asleep) and geopolitical BS risk. Earnings do one of three things; shift momentum to the downside, the upside, or no effect on current trend. Small caps are illiquid as fuck unless there’s a news catalyst; don’t hold small caps as they’re notoriously shitty companies that dilute all the time making your shares worth less. Someone replied to my comment, “date them, don’t marry them” and I think that’s a great analogy. Holding and hoping isn’t risk management, it’s a dream followed by a prayer.

PSA: if your position is big enough to make you sweat that means you’re sized too large. Boring trading is good trading. Edge only plays out over a large enough data set. Flipping a coin gives you 50/50 odds if you flip it 1,000+ times but your first five flips may all be tails.

Developing a strategy:

Pattern recognition. You can either spend hundreds or thousands of hours looking for those repeatable patterns, or you can pick up a strategy that’s already working from someone else and mold it for yourself. Not every strategy works in every market. Learn when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes. Developing your own strategy takes months or years; lots of trial and error. There’s dozens of already known strategies out there, you can find one and adapt it. ORB, capitulation, continuation, and more.

Traders to learn from:

Probably the section where all the new traders are gonna look at before even doing their own research, which is why I put it at the bottom (because you need to learn to swim before jumping in the deep end). There’s no singular key to success. It looks different for everybody. The Holy Grail of trading doesn’t exist.

Here is my list of verified profitable traders that are content creators;
- Lance Breitstein
- Kristjan Kullamagi
- Ross Cameron
- Tim Grittani
- Timothy Sykes

These are just about the only content creators that are truly verified. I’m a visual learner so these guys provided great insight for me. There are plenty of books and whatnot that can teach market fundamentals too. Any other content creator is essentially unverified, take it with a grain of salt and check if ImanTrading made a post about them to see if there’s known proof of scams/fraudulent behavior. Iman does his research, I’ll say that much.

How they’re verified: Ross has 3rd party audited broker statements on his website (strongest verification), Lance was verified by his proprietary firm (Trillium) and audited for the Market Wizards book, Kristjan was audited for Market Wizards book as well and his tax returns are public and live trading history documented on YT, Tim Grittani and Timothy Sykes are both verified through Profit.ly with some of Grittani’s trading history also publicly documented on YT. Sykes also has some audits/broker statements/tax returns he’s put out there.

This is hundreds if not thousands of hours of research for you to kickstart your journey. Losing $10k doesn’t teach you more than losing $1k, it just means you lost more. Learn from mistakes, adapt, and most importantly… survive…

It’s a career of survival. You can’t turn the corner to profit if you don’t have capital to trade in the first place.

Two books I’d suggest reading to understand the mental aspect of trading: “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit” by Annie Duke (professional poker player). Basically managing risk and making decisions with limited information. Great books.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Have a blessed day.

Just a rant. Watched SPX finally on a downward path, took a short entry (at the arrow), and voila, it is now going back again lol.

https://preview.redd.it/bbu59mp7c0uh1.png?width=1394&format=png&auto=webp&s=d625b3839a20588dd9e35ead8404bfc5c1c71042

I just below my 26th prop account. I keep making the same mistakes. Over trading and revenge trading. I told myself "follow the rules" but I keep getting stuck in the same trap.

How did you guys break your cycle ?

I've spent year paper trading and did well, but just cant do the same with props.

Thanks.

What have the profitable among you done to hone in the psychology side of trading? Any tips, books, etc? I ask because I drew down my account 25% paper handing spy/spx options 2 weeks ago today. Since then I've taken a $150k paper account to $310k. My win rate is sky high, I'm up over 100%, and it's like everything works out as planned. The only conclusion I can come to is it's my psychology and decision making under pressure that needs honing. I cant get those reps on paper because I don't feel the pressure with fake money. Frustrating to see how easy it can be.

Hello everyone.

As you may have eard, French interest rates neared 5% on Thursday, October 1, which is an all time high record.

Japanese investors are reassessing their exposure to French government bonds as concerns grow over France’s deteriorating fiscal outlook, political uncertainty and rising borrowing costs.

I live in France, and i see first hand, everyday, how this country is wasting way too much money, not in investment, but on day to day running cost.

I'm a total noob in the trading world, but i want to go in, betting on a financial crisis and a bankrupt of my country.

How should i do that,where do i should put my money ?

Thanks for your help