So what do people do to sharpen their skills when the markets are closed? I'm looking for any suggestions people have: specific books, videos, podcasts, etc that I can consume on Saturday and Sunday.
Hi, I'm a freshman in college right now in a health-allied program so my schedule is really tight, hence why swing trading. I've been looking for the past year or so in what skills I could learn while still being relatively young and is helpful in life. I stumbled across trading, swing trading, prop firms, etc.
I've been studying some trading stuff and mindset and been trying to avoid trading gurus since it feels like pollution in my brain everytime i see a guru say this, say that, and I don't think its good for my learning. I plan to polish my strategy (institutional order flow, volume, still incomplete but thats the main premise so far) and do a paper/demo trading journal of 30 trades before starting to see how my strategy holds up on the market.
My questions for advice are:
- In my stage of life, is FTMO's 10k 2-step challenge enough?
I know there are cheaper and bigger accounts in other prop firms but so far, I can see FTMO being the most trustworthy one, even if it's more expensive.
- How much would I realistically earn in a month if I passed?
I know consistency and discipline is more important, but profits and loss is still a big part of trading and I need to understand how much I could earn on a 10k account. Most likely a 1:3 RRR, 0.5 or 1% risk per trade, and maybe 1-2 trades a week, no winrate % yet but a ballpark estimation would be appreciated, it helps a lil bit with the motivation too.
- How would you recommend I backtest my strategy once I have it completed/polished?
I have no background in coding so the 30 trade journal is basically like the only way I can test my strategy.
- Am I being too ambitious getting into this field?
I do have my doubts whether I'm too optimistic about all this. I know trading isn't a get rich quick scheme and I genuinely do want to learn this skill. I just wonder whether I have the wits to push through into all this.
That's about all I have to ask, any more advice would also be appreciated. Please do help this newbie make the right decisions moving forward 🙏
I just started prop trading a few weeks ago. I make around a 100% positional gain per day (200% return on capital per day). The thing is the people on the discord are constantly calling out entries and exits and they seem to be making much more than me. But they also seem to go thru account after account, though I am not compelety sure all of them are blowing out accounts. If I continue on my rate of return I will end the year up around 52,000% before taxes (my eval only cost $500 for a 100k account). That is barely enough to do anything with. My win rate is close to 90% with a 1:3 RR over a few hundred trades. I just can't see how I can improve it to be competitive with the other traders.
How long did it take you to find a working strategy that could make consistent returns and if you did how long did it work?
I’m trying to get a reference of how long and deep I need to be looking and trying to develop something that can work.
Hey ! I really want to learn how to trade options. I have no trading knowledge whatever. I have a paper trading account on trading view . But I think I’m moving too fast even with that .
Where do I start?! Any good free resources. Do you think paying for a class or mentor could help or is that a waste ?
Thanks !
In my honest experience when I hit my max loss I have an overwhelming urge to continue trading. Unsure if it's due to the pain of being wrong or lack of discipline.
I have tried various different approaches, meditating, journaling and even hard limits that I cannot override. Only the hard limits have genuinely worked."
Curious what everyone else genuinely does, not what you plan to do.
Reply with your number, and what actually works for you (if anything).
Any longterm trading veterans(15-20years) have any insight/ advice etc what to do? I usually do bar by bar with my stop loss, and its like where do you put it?! Wicks are 0verlapping even in trend(up or down) has made it beyond difficult - never seen anything like this.
i dont know A B C of trading i just know u invest and it goes up or down but with techniques and stuff one can get more so guide me if anyone wants like which type should i go for and where should i learn
Stupid question: I am paper trading now with 100 dollar budget but when I trade I only get deals like +1,09 dollars. How can I make more deals like +10,00 ?
I want to start with trading and I am starting to read the books recommend by most on the Sub. And I see a lot of posts that we need to constantly learn the market , understand the market etc etc.
I am a software engineer, I am trying to objectively identify strategies , Backtest them and trying to find out if they are profitable.
I do not understand what exactly I have to learn ?
Do I stare at charts all day ? Nobody shares a working strategy because they will lose the edge , fair enough.
But can anyone who's retired or wants to help , tell exactly how to find strategies? Do I use mathematical formulas ? Stare at charts ? Analyze market sentiment?
Can someone please give me objective ways to learn to build strategies.
Slow weekend, so I'll run some backtests for people. Reply with your entry and exit rules, a US stock or ETF, and the bar size, and I'll test it back to mid-2023 and reply with what it made vs holding the stock over the same dates.
The rules need to be specific enough to code, like "buy SPY when RSI(2) closes under 10 on the daily, sell when it closes over 70". Stocks and ETFs only, no futures, forex or crypto.
I started trading with a $100 account, and things were going pretty well at first. I made around $20 in profit during the first few days, but then I started getting greedy and increasing my lot size way too much.
At one point, I lost $64 on a single trade. I started revenge trading and managed to make back around $40. Over the following days, my balance recovered to about $85, but then I made another stupid trade and lost $70.
Once again, I revenge traded and got my balance back up to $75, only to lose another $55 because of greed.
I’ve finally realized that my biggest problem isn’t necessarily my price action knowledge, but my risk management and emotions. I’ve stopped going crazy with my lot sizes, and I’ve managed to keep my balance relatively stable since then.
I’m still learning price action, and I know I have a lot to improve on.
For those of you who have been through something similar, what advice would you give me? How did you learn to control your emotions, stop revenge trading, and stick to proper risk management while learning?
So as ive said before ive been enjoying my return to social media after my little hiatus. One of the things i wanted to speak that kills alot of traders early doors. Is the use of smaller accounts.
Now let me first say im am a huge advocator for PAs. Mostly due to the fact that its your funds so theres no added mental pressure on trading clients or borrowed capital. Im not for or against prop firms ive seen very mixed reviews about them. Also your risk becomes so much more flexible with a PA.
Now with this being said a mojor issue ive seen with beginners to the markets wich ive seen online, also with family and even friends is that they expect to X their money by trading. This is a major issue cause trading should always be seen as capital gain for example 5% a month is a very good figure to average but people comming to this space see that as no return and want to either 10x or 50x their accounts. That in the long run isnt possible or sustainable in my opinion. If you could sustain a average of 5% on a green month and built a trck record with that you would have no issues getting investors or capital to trade. Now i know when entering this space as with myself we do not have 100k to start of with. Your likely starting with a few hundred dollars. Now there are also people who would start with under 100 dollars and try and get that to a few thousand wich when you look at the return on that is a few good thousand percent.
Now my point here being that so many traders could be profitable but because of larger risk appetite than they should have they end up blowing accounts and stunting their growth or leabing trading as a whole. Ive always seen risk managment as a core pillar of trading probabilitys are random anything is possible event with a 80% winrate you could lose 20 trades in a row or even 50 depending on sample size now the wuestion is can your account handle that.
Now ive been in the same situation as you where you dont have the money and you start with a very small acoount and end up blowing it cause you either risk too much or scale your risk as the account grows.
Now my advice to you as a trader facing this issue is firstly what ever you can afford to lose and not feel attached to deposit break that down into 20 trades if it cannot be broken down into 20 trades save up SIMPLE. After depositing excute your edge and keep the risk fixed and slowly grow the account. Do not chase larger returns cause simply proving to yourself you can be consistent on a real account over a large period of time will prove more beneficial to you that netting a huge return. Also if your struggling with bills etc your best option is not 100xing your saving or your last bit of money.
I blew accounts almost every other week. Revenge trades, FOMO, fear, greed, closing winners too early, over and over.
Then I decided I’d only keep trading if I followed my own rules, and if it still didn’t work, I’d quit. The minute I made that call, things changed. The market didn’t change, I did.
Biggest lesson: rules only work if you never bend them, not even once. Most of my losses came from emotions, not strategy.
I’m still learning every day. What rules or habits helped you stay disciplined?
So i have a general understanding of options and have had a couple winning trades although, my account size is under $500 my losses are greater since I'm trading almost my entire account on ETFS (qqq, spy) which I know is risky. So wanted to take a step back to see if im going about this type of trading all wrong.
For a small account what's the sweet spot for expiration dates? 0DTE, 7 days, 14 days, a month? How do you figure out when to enter? Do you look at the charts on certain time frames or is it completely ignored and the main focus is the specific option strike price?
Before I was trying to "scalp" trade as if I'm trading NQ trying to catch short intraday moves but before i get to far into that style of trading I wanted to see if there is a better approach for options starting with a small account. I appreciate any insight and help!
I’ve been using order blocks as a key part of my day trading for 3 years. I see them as a crucial indicator to include in any chart set up. I just wish that more novice traders would pay more attention to them and understand how important they are when observing what what institutions are doing.
Was inspired to ask this question after listening to one trader on a podcast. He talked about a specific pattern of lot entries that occurred regularly at a certain part of the day that he was able to exploit, that ended up completely disappearing once the Ukraine-Russia war began.
So I have tried a few AI models. I set up their their desk. They get live tick data from my broker. Fine tuned some of them with lots of resources (not all tho only the ones with frontier level reasoning) And I hand them 100 paper dollars and give them full autonomy to trade as they see fit. Only goal is they hand me 10 bucks every 24 hours (Its ok if they can’t, its just a scale I set to test them). Some of the AI start of really good genuinely impressive setups. Numbers add up, timing adds up so getting the data to them on time isn’t an issue. But the issue is almost all of them become really passive after a while (remind you these are set up to be scalpers and aggressive) some straight up refuse to trade. Some manipulate data to justify their passiveness and some straight up lie. This seems to be common for all of the models after a while. Any suggestions?
I've been talking to Gemini about various trading related topics and it got me wondering. Of all the AI agents out there, which one do you feel is smartest, most knowledgeable and most helpful for answering questions pertaining to trading, breaking down strategies and assisting in using trading tools and things of that nature? I've been hearing lots of good things about Claude, but have never used it. So which one do you like better...Gemini? Claude? OpenAI? GROK, etc...?
hey guys beginner trader here, i have trading for 5 months now and yes am profitable.
i use MT5 and wanted to ask what do the different timeframe e.g M1 M5 M15 etc, cause am confused and how does it affect the market, can someone please assist
thank you.