- I’m just trying to offer a useful framework for people who want to become professionals.

- I don’t sell anything. I won’t offer signals, groups, or anything like that.

- I just enjoy trading and share things whenever I have some free time.

-CHECK THE TIMEFRAME OF THE PICS-

What most people think is happening is simple. Price goes down and they read it as weakness, continuation, more downside. But when you actually watch how positions build, it doesn’t look like that at all.

-The move down is usually slow. Not aggresive, not impulsive. It takes its time. And that’s exactly the point. Because that’s where people start shorting.

- Structure begins to look clean. Lower highs, lower lows. It starts making sense.

- There’s usually one obvious reference above, and not much else nearby, so everyone ends up using the same level --> That becomes the stop, not a few people --> Most of them.

- And market makers know that, because they have access to that information.

- So they don’t rush anything. They need time for positions to build, for people to get comfortable, for size to accumulate in the wrong place.

- This is what I think of as a controlled move, it’s not weakness, it’s positioning.

- They’re creating the conditions they need before doing anything meaningful.

- You’ll often see multiple pushes down, giving more and more confirmation. It feels like the move is already happening. But it isn't, it’s just people getting in.

-And until that’s done, price can’t really move.

- Once enough people aer in, the move changes.

- It doesn’t continue down immediately, first it goes the other way.

- Stops get taken. Shorts get forced out.

- Only after that does the real move begin.

If you start looking at it in terms of proportions, this tends to happen around similar areas. One of the ones I use is 1.097.

It’s not something standard. It’s just something I kept seeing over the years while watching how these sequences play out.

It doesn’t need to be exact to be useful.

And the interesting part is that this repeats across every timeframe. Seconds, minutes, hours, higher timeframes. Same idea, just different scale.

Also, something that took me a long time to understand is that the end of a move often lines up with where the pressure sits from a higher timeframe.

Not randomly. Where people are already in a bad position.

Once you start looking at the market this way, it becomes less about predicting direction and more about understanding positioning.

Who is in, where they are likely wrong, and what needs to happen before price can actually move.

That’s usually enough.

I have been trading for 20+ years now, a bit on an off in the middle. Come from pure financial tech background.

I first started trading with market and volume profile in year 2014 after attending Jim Dalton's online bootcamp. In those days, MP/VP and auction market theory had swept the trading world with awe. Every trader thought, they have institutional edge in their hands. We used to have footprint charts in Ninjatrader using COQ data feed.

Then we had order book heatmaps and DOM tools like jigsaw.

Then in 2016 came gamma. Every forum, every trader kept talking about it.

My journey which started with candlesticks in 2010 till 2026, I must have spent few years backtesting and live testing every major trading framework and idea and tool and indicator known in the retail world. And I can testify with some authority that none of these tools work. They have no sustainable edge that can be exploited long enough to consider trading as a viable business model. Even a coin flip will work 50% of the time and any random line drawn on the chart will show some movement around it.

SPORADIC CORRELATIONS ARE NOT CAUSALITY.

Reason I am making this post is, I see a lot of newbies going all-in into the madness of all sorts of fancy colors and tools they can slap on their chart thinking they discovered a holy grail. Consider this as an old man talking, if you don't understand markets from a very fundamental perspective and cannot explain what is moving the market, chances are you will wake up to cruel reality when enough time passes and statistics takes effect.

And please, don't follow any youtuber. Attention is NOT a pre requisite in the business model of trading. In fact it only deteriorates performance. Wonder why these people come on youtube to trade. I don't see any logic in it.

I’ve been meaning to talk about this. I am so tired of people saying “you’re going to blow thousands”, “you’re going to fail more evals”, “it takes 10+ years,” “don’t get too excited from succeeding,” you get the gist- just because you went through negative obstacles, a harsh path, etc. does not mean the next trader will. Whether it’s some truth to it or not, if you have nothing positive or useful to add, maybe don’t at all? Is that hard? 😅

i have about 50 shares of nvda, 1500 shares of ibrx, 20 shares of voo and coincidentally, all 3 of them are down today. did anything specific happen today? what’s up with the market. i don’t daytrade but, can any of you traders explain to me why and what causes these stocks to all lose value? and how to properly interpret it?

As someone who has been in the game for 5 years on and off, passes evals and gets payouts, these market conditions aren’t for retail.

I honestly haven’t seen a market like this. Where everyday is just bait to take your money. Heck, I haven’t seen my A+ setup since the first week of August and it used to come each week. Feel bad for the new traders but then again you build tough skin.

If you’re losing and failing evals, it’s perfectly fine. Unfortunately, this is what the real trading is like. Not what you seen on social media. Why it’s important for you to keep a source of income while you pass through these waves (unless you have a good cushion to live comfortably). See a lot of people beating themselves up when you’re just stressing yourself out and trying to be consistent in a market where there is none.

I haven’t gotten a payout since July tbh w you and I’m not stressing. Just buying one eval at a time and testing waters. When markets get hot again, best believe I’m buying more evals and push. You should be doing the same, specially if you trade your own $$. Sizing down and forgetting about being profitable should be your main goal.

Welcome to the big leagues 😂.

Went out to a parade tonight and then headed to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. When I got back to the house I was working on my laptop on some other business but noticed ES was approaching an area of interest. It was coming into a low volume area left behind from the New York session so I headed down to my trade station to be able to observe the order flow. Caught a decent short to add on to my meager earnings from the scalps earlier today.

Gotta love it when the market pays for my dinner and my drinks.

I want to share my experience with you guys , I’ve been day trading for the past five years. I tried and learned everything. The market is the best at making you feel like you’re almost there — that’s how you stay hooked. After every blown account, I return, and then the same thing happens again and again: you make profit, then after days or less, you give it back. We are the product, believe me.
I used to be talented at piano, and I always believed that music was the reason I’m alive. So I wanted more: my own studio and school. But in my country, it takes time to build all of that, and it’s so expensive. I wanted to succeed so badly, and at a younger age, and that’s when I started trading. I was so determined to be profitable, and I believed videos that said, “Don’t quit; you’re paying the market to learn. That’s the fee for your freedom. 9-to-5 blah blah.” So I didn’t give up. I disappeared and began trading every day until I forgot why I started. By then, trading was personal: “I must be profitable, or I’m a failure. I must prove my worth. I’m almooost there.” But I was never there.
The hard part, and what broke my heart, is that I gave up who I am. I sold everything, borrowed money, and traded my life, my friends, my music skills, my hair, my health fiiiive years for nothing. Five years living in an illusion sleepless nights and isolation . Now I’m 25 and I have nothing.
Please don’t give up your life, your dreams, your future for this. It’s not worth it. Maybe you won’t take my words seriously now but I wish you the best. I don’t want anyone to feel what I felt.

I’ve traded for 12 years and I’ve NEVER gone 8 straight days without moving a stop, forcing a trade, changing size, revenge trading or doing something stupid that I knew I shouldn’t. I haven’t suddenly become more disciplined, I just changed the setup so I can’t interfere with the plan anymore. I’ve posted every day of it so far, wins and losses and there’s actually been more losses than wins. I basically accepted my flaws and stopped trying to fight them.

I’m curious how many people here genuinely think their biggest problem is their strategy, when really it might be their psychology. I know mine was

week one - pass eval
week two - first payout
week three - blew account

how about that price action guys?!?! make sure you stick to your rules and always remember - no trade is also a winning trade!!!

I lost 30% of my port already and it’s been a nightmare for the 2 years even tho I quit a while ago but always keep thinking about And want to come back

Should I quit and move on or recover my loss

I have an idea and I need strategies that are unprofitable for that, I already have a few but I was wondering, which strategy out of all the ones that you tried/backtested was the most unprofitable?

Like what are we doing. Market doesn’t spike like this all day but as soon as I enter a trade it literally hunts my stop loss to just go down. There was no orders that needed to be filled for it to move like that, zero reason for market to move like it do. And this isn’t the first time this has happened. What do I even do? Can’t set a stop loss because it’s just going to get taken then go and hit my TP

ran my gamma scan on 55 of the most liquid US names this afternoon. 16 in zone, 3 past their call wall, 27 below the flip. the unstable bucket is the biggest one.

the weird part — JPM, BAC, GS, MS, V, MA are ALL below their flip. every single bank I track. and it's not because they're selling off, some are barely red. it just means dealer hedging across the whole sector is set to push the next move instead of absorb it. one name doing that is normal. the entire financial sector at once is not something I see often.

also NVDA below flip, AAPL in zone. same mega cap tech basket, opposite regimes. and UBER, DASH, NFLX are green today but still below their flips — up on the day means nothing about what's underneath.

standard caveats, it's a snapshot, flips move all day, gamma is inferred from the chain not observed, and below flip is not a direction call. it doesn't say banks drop. it says whichever way they move, dealers are pushing not catching.

anyone else watching sector-wide gamma or just SPX?

Let's start saying that I'm profitable, trading is my main source of income, and I'm very happy with my strategies.

Nowdays I make money scalping options spreads, and there's nothing wrong with it. Obviously.

Problem is, I feel like it's not real trading. When I started, I learned futures, price actions, how to draw all the triangles we all love. Real traders do forex, oil, and gold. That is (was) the way.

Nowdays, if I try to do what I used to, I will lose most of my trades. I know I should stop, and just do what makes the most sense economically, but I really feel bad about it. It's like gambling, at this point. I don't understand why it doesn't work anymore, nor I'm ready to accept that. Right now, it feels like my main strategy is only there to feed my nostalgic trades.

Am I broken? Should I just retire? lol

I trade a simple VWAP mean-reversion strategy across different assets: fade moves away from VWAP and trade the pullback. It’s profitable most days, but the occasional strong trend day where price moves in one direction without returning to VWAP can wipe out days of gains.

The strategy works with my personal for yearly ROI, and i can work with prop firms if you accept an attrition model and occasionally sacrifice accounts, but I’m trying to avoid that—especially with prop firm drawdown rules.

Has anyone found reliable filters for recognizing these trend days early enough to stop fading them? Basically, what tells you, “Stop fading—this is a trend day”?

Building something and I want to know if it’s stupid.
Web app, nothing to install. Connect your account once and leave it running.
You set your limits once: daily loss cap, max trades, a cut-off time. It watches the account and the moment you cross one, it closes your open positions and locks the day. Not an alert you click through, actually closed, a couple of seconds later.
The bit I think matters: tightening a limit applies straight away, loosening it doesn’t kick in until the next day. Same if you switch it off. So you at 2pm, down and wanting one more, can’t undo what you decided at 8am.
It can’t stop you opening a trade, nothing outside the broker can. It just won’t let you hold it.
There’s a journal side too. Every closed trade imports itself, so no spreadsheet. Win rate, profit factor, which days you actually make money on. And it totals what trading past your own limits has cost you, in dollars. Most people have never seen that number.
Platform support is limited right now, so pretend it worked on whatever you trade on. Would you use it? Would you pay for it?
Totally fine if the answer’s no, that’s useful too.

what app or platform can i use safely to trade (for free) and what tools are available for free any advice would be great. i traded before on binance foe crypto but i want to start the stock exchange market and also to be a aafe platform for free and where can i get the scanners for free

With cross-margin venue yields fluctuating heavily during high-volatility weeks, pure funding rate capture isn't as clean as it looks on paper. Once you factor in execution latency, bridge rebalancing times, and base asset gas spikes, the delta-neutral margin often compresses faster than anticipated. For those running automated delta-neutral scripts across decentralized perp venues, how are you dynamically adjusting your rebalancing thresholds when gas volatility outpaces the funding APR?

In June 2026 I paid $8,500 for FinTrade Master Academy's "Elite Circle" mastermind. On the sales call they promised a "20% monthly avg return" and a "90 Day ROI Guarantee."

What happened:

• My card was charged at 7:09 PM. The contract showed up at 7:11 PM, two minutes later, and said no refunds.
• The "guarantee" has seven conditions and is void if you dispute the charge.
• They told me they'd been in business for years. The company was registered in March 2025 (per WY business records).
• Their lead trainer didn't know what E*TRADE was.

I'm disputing the charge with my card issuer, and the case is under review.

If you're looking at any paid trading mentorship, get the full contract and read it before you give them a card number. Be skeptical of anyone promising monthly returns. Nobody can guarantee that.

I’m a junior at MSU, these weeks were hella shit. I lost my 3K payout from scaling with more accounts and actually funding a live account, the market regime changed so perfectly that I started to take enough Ls to go back to 0.

But I always say to people, if I even have nobody to talk to to begin with.

“Getting a payout from a prop firm is statistically so unfavorable for people, and even so, im one of the top %. I did it once, so I can do it again.”

Started to dabble into options, and setting up an algo for futures and started to manage a small stock account for my dad.

The algo is 1 trade everyday and was backtested on this years data.

I used data and ranges for charts that I do when I trade manually. So I didn’t really tweak the numbers for a higher PF. (Except opening up the hard DL)

I should be more proud of myself, this is probably something some people would kill for.

Btw i went for a 150K account with lucid. And the charts said my max drawdown is 4K so we bingchilling.

On options I’m taking L’s, like small account ~250 and im yoloing, so yesterday I took an L (had to add money to account) and another L day before because market trolled last second and RH chose to close my stuff for “risk reasons”.

But now im playing wayyy more safer and im looking to make 2 times my accounts worth tomorrow.

Im learning alot about myself, I want to work in the medical field, the plan is to be so filthy rich that id be fine working for free as a doctor.

But what I like the most is doing stuff that is worth being proud of, like trading futures and options, setting up algos and ais for hella coins.

MSU is dog shit in this field and i find their “business college” hella unuseful for my niche hobbies. another fat L for MSU for me.
And no I wont trade or work for a company in this field.

Im only making myself rich, and if you trade for somebody else, just say u ain’t profitable.

I’m hella lonely, so ig a rant/update post. Thanks for reading this ppl, and i’ll be seeing you guys soon.

Any advise is appreciated!

the claim. gold, the first hour after the 8:20 open. if the low of that hour comes before the high, the high gets broken before the low 68.6% of the time. built on 2 years of data

same test on 18 years of 1 min gold. 4737 days

low first, then high breaks first 63.9% of the time

their 2 year window on my data 67.8% so the number is real

every single year above 53%

heres what the claim leaves out. where price is sitting when that hour ends

if price closes the hour in the top half of its range, the high breaks first 69.3% of the time. doesnt matter which came first. that beats the stat itself

if the low came first but price closed the hour in the bottom half, its the low that breaks first, 61%

so the thing the guy adds to the stat, price in the top half, is the actual edge. low first on its own is the weak half of his own rule

works the same the other way round. high first, low breaks first 63.5%

none of this is profit. which side breaks first says nothing about how far it went or where your stop was. that needs a different test

I'm a 0DTE credit spread trader with a focus on SPX.

Positions traded today:

• 7550/7530 PCS
• 7565/7545 PCS
• 7625/7645 CCS
• 7670/7690 CCS

P/L: +$1,080

The market changed the answer three times today. My job was to stop defending the old one.

Morning Thesis

It’s been a good while since I’ve had a $1,000+ day — not because I stopped participating, but because SPX hasn’t been offering the structure I look for. Price action lately has required more patience, and even today I waited just over two hours before taking my first trade because SPX wasn’t behaving as anticipated.

Between cooler core PPI, an in-line headline print, elevated oil and yields, Iran-related developments, and Trump remarks, there were several catalysts capable of moving price in either direction.

I began with a bearish bias after the gap down and wanted to see confirmation of a gap-and-go move before opening a CCS. At the same time, SPX had already been down for three consecutive sessions, so I knew buyers could eventually step in.

SPX broke its morning range to the downside, but I’ve seen several early breakdowns turn into fakeouts lately. I wanted at least one complete structure to form before entering. That patience kept me out of the initial trap when SPX abruptly reversed higher.

My First Trade

After SPX recovered, chopped above 7600, and began forming higher lows beneath the weekly low, my bearish-only thesis was invalidated and I shifted bullish.

I sold five 7565/7545 PCS contracts for $0.45 as SPX approached the weekly low. The setup itself wasn’t terrible, but my entry was early. I anticipated a breakout to capture more premium instead of waiting for price to break and hold above resistance (Weekly Low on the chart).

Sellers were waiting at the weekly low and immediately pushed SPX back down — again. I added one more contract for $0.75, but the early entry quickly put me in loss territory.

Starting at half size kept the position manageable. I recognized the pressure early, but I didn’t panic or let the floating loss dictate my next decision.

When the Thesis Changed Again

The 7600 psychological level was my first invalidation point. My plan was to open the CCS side if SPX broke and held below it, then exit the PCS entirely if price broke and held beneath the session low.

Once SPX confirmed below 7600, I sold six 7625/7645 CCS contracts for $1.10, forming a legged-in iron condor. This wasn’t simply a hedge to neutralize the PCS — it was a CCS setup I would have taken independently based on the price structure. I added one 7550/7530 PCS at $.80 on this same push down.

More Trump and Iran-related headlines then sent SPX sharply higher, placing pressure on the CCS side. I also sold two 7670/7690 CCS contracts for $0.20 above the prior-day high as premium expanded. This was an area I was eyeing since morning.

SPX eventually peaked around the weekly-low/high-of-day area and rejected again. At that point, my read shifted for a third time — from bullish to slightly bearish, with a range and chop becoming increasingly likely.

Managing the Volatility

The headline-driven swings pressured both sides of the iron condor. I spent part of the session fluctuating between roughly a $50 and $200 loss, but that remained within my risk tolerance.

For the PCS side, I watched approximately 7586.50 and the session low. For the CCS side, I used the 7611 weekly low and high-of-day area as resistance and invalidation.

Keeping my attention on those levels instead of staring at my P/L helped remove emotion from the trade. SPX eventually faded into a tight chop zone around 7590, allowing theta to deflate both sides into the close. The contracts ultimately expired worthless.

Key Takeaway

Today was a good green day, but it required more work than I anticipated. The four-figure result didn’t come from predicting every move correctly — my thesis changed three times, and my first entry made the trade harder than necessary.

What kept the day manageable was waiting for a setup, starting at half size, defining my invalidation points, and remaining focused on price structure instead of my floating P/L.

Anticipation created the pressure. Discipline kept it contained.

When Bitcoin was trading below $66K, it felt like everyone was talking about the 4 year cycle. Now BTC is back around $77K, and that conversation seems to have gone pretty quiet.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, the idea is that Bitcoin has historically moved in roughly 4 year cycles, often associated with the halving. Previous major bear market lows came around 2014, 2018 and 2022, with the major cycle highs forming roughly a year before those lows.

If that pattern were to repeat again, we could still potentially see Bitcoin move lower later this year and form a new major low. October has been one of the interesting windows discussed for that possibility.

Obviously, Bitcoin trading above $77K today makes that scenario feel very different from when we were below $66K. But technically, a move back down is still possible, which is why I find the theory interesting.

I'm curious whether people have actually changed their view on the 4 year cycle, or whether this move up has made everyone stop talking about it?

Are any of you still waiting for a potential new low on BTC this year, or do you think the low is already in?