r/ICTTrading101

▲ 3 r/ICTTrading101+2 crossposts

Day 8/30 — I’m starting to understand why most trading bots fail

A week into this project and honestly…

I get it now 😭

From the outside, building a trading bot sounds simple:

“just define the strategy and automate it”

But once you actually start testing things in live conditions…

you realize markets are full of edge cases.

One candle behaves differently.

One session moves weirdly.

One fake breakout ruins the entire logic.

And suddenly your “clean strategy” becomes 50 different exceptions and conditions.

Today I spent a lot of time trying to simplify things again.

Because every time I add too many filters:

* the bot becomes slow

* logic becomes messy

* overfitting starts creeping in

But if I make it too simple…

it starts taking absolutely cursed trades 💀

So right now the biggest challenge is balance.

Trying to make the bot:

* structured enough to avoid nonsense

* but flexible enough to survive real market behavior

Honestly this whole process is teaching me more about trading psychology and execution than manual trading ever did.

The bot exposes every flaw instantly.

No excuses.

No “intuition”.

Just pure logic getting tested in real time.

Still learning every day.

Still debugging constantly.

But slowly starting to see where an actual edge *might* come from.

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u/Standard_Boot_8165 — 6 days ago
▲ 6 r/ICTTrading101+2 crossposts

Finally found a setup that actually makes sense of $SPY... 📈🙌

Yo! Just had to share this because it’s been a total game-changer for my trading lately.

I’ve been using this setup called the Predator Trio (it’s Hector’s Hunt + Crazy Hot Candles + Live Wires), and honestly, it’s the first time I’ve felt like I’m actually ahead of the move instead of chasing it.

The plays I’ve been making with this have been insane:

  • No more fakes: I used to get chopped up on the 1-minute chart, but these Crazy Hot Candles show me the 5-minute "heat" right on my entry screen. If the heat isn't there, I don't take the play. 🔵🔥
  • The "Unplug" is real: When the Live Wires unplug and the volume spikes, it’s like seeing the big money move before the candle even prints. 🔌
  • Scouts in the sky: Having the Ravens scanning the intel and the Dogs finding the liquidity walls makes me feel like I have a literal strike team working for me. 🐕🦅

I’m not a pro, but I’ve been making some of the best moves of my life since I started running this. It’s basically "Math on the Glass" and it just works.

u/Trade_Surgeon — 8 days ago

Feeling lost in trading / struggling / do I switch strategies

I have been trading ICT for nearly a year and a half now and have failed to find any success. I have traded a few ICT based stratgies, before I came onto Quarterly Theory about 8 months ago, learnt all about it, have a model, but just struggle with it. I don't know what to do now tbh. The current strategy/model just doesn't work for me, as it's way too discretional and lacks strict rules in a way, I know the person taht I learnt off is profitable with the model, but it just doesn't work for me. I just feel at a dead end and lost. I even tried fully switching away from ICT and trading EMAs and volume, but after alot of backtesting the results were just not good enough. I know people say don't keep switching stratgies, but I have failed at QT for over 8 months now and have failed to see any promising signs, so I don't know what to do. If I do decide to swicth stratgies, I know all of the ICT concepts and have knowldege based off ICT and Quarterely theory, but could someone just point me in the right direction as I need a fully developed stargy, that I can just backtest and backtest before taking it into live markets. Any help would be great.

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u/Appropriate-Bite-100 — 10 days ago