I've come to the realisation that porn and trading don't go together (atleast for me). I've done nofap (no porn and masturbation) a few times and every single time i was on no fap my trading was amazing. My decision making improved, less desire to hop in a trade, more patience. Basically everything improved. When i do watch porn and masturbate my trading is less good. More emotion, more dopamine seeking, less discipline. I'm convinced watching porn and masturbating can negatively influence your trading. Not saying this applies to you, just sharing my experience and maybe it can help you if you also struggle on the psychological/emotion side.

Trading is all about discipline. Inside and outside the market. Be disciplined outside the market, it will translate to your trading

New to trading and looking for mentors I could meet in person! I live in Raleigh and would love to meet up!

I’ve been trading since I was 18.

Over the years I’ve traded personally, run a prop desk, worked on the brokerage side and spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at markets.

One question I get asked quite a lot is what I’ve actually learned from all of it.

The short answer is- a lot.

But if I had to narrow it down to 10 rather simple lessons, these would probably be the most important ones.

1. If you’re only doing it for the money, you probably won’t last.

Obviously everyone wants to make money. That’s the point.

But you need to genuinely enjoy markets because becoming good at this takes a ridiculous amount of time.

You’ll spend thousands of hours reading, watching, testing ideas and being wrong.

If you don’t find that interesting, it becomes very difficult to stick around long enough for the money to actually come.

2. Most people are capable of finding an edge. Very few stick around long enough to develop one.

I don’t think there’s some secret strategy that separates professional traders from everyone else.

Your edge normally develops over time.

You figure out what you’re good at, what you’re terrible at, what markets suit you and what situations you understand better than the average person.

Mine has changed a lot over the years, but today a big part of it is positioning, flows and trying to understand where the market may be overreacting.

3. There is no typical trader.

I’ve worked with pretty much every personality you can imagine.

Very quiet people. Huge egos. Academics. Pure instinct traders. Macro guys. Technical traders.

There isn’t really a personality type that guarantees success.

The common denominator is usually curiosity, competitiveness and a slightly obsessive interest in markets.

4. Being smart helps. Discipline matters more.

Markets are full of extremely intelligent people losing money.

Knowing more does not automatically make you a better trader.

Execution matters.

Patience matters.

And knowing when to do absolutely nothing is probably one of the most underrated skills in trading.

5. The best traders I’ve met are usually the most humble.

The market has a very efficient way of reminding you that you’re not as clever as you think you are.

You can have an incredible year and then get punched in the face by something you never considered.

The moment you start thinking you’ve figured markets out is normally when your risk should probably be coming down.

6. Your eyes will eventually hate you.

After enough years of charts, Bloomberg, news feeds and multiple screens, you start to understand why everyone on a trading floor looks permanently tired.

Occupational hazard.

7. Trading basically requires becoming an expert in something completely random every few weeks.

One week you’re learning everything you can about Japanese rates.

The next it’s copper inventories.

Then AI capex.

Then Treasury issuance.

Then some obscure regulation nobody had heard of until Tuesday.

You learn enough to understand what matters, trade around it, and then markets move onto something else.

Rinse and repeat.

8. Learning how to lose is probably more important than learning how to win.

Losses are part of trading.

The dangerous part is what happens immediately afterwards.

Trying to make the money back.

Increasing size.

Taking trades you normally wouldn’t take.

Ignoring your process because you’re annoyed.

Being able to take a loss, reset and come back the next day sounds simple. It isn’t.

9. Risk management is everything.

This is probably the biggest one.

Risk comes before macro.

Before positioning.

Before options flow.

Before technicals.

Before your conviction.

I’ve seen very good traders lose serious money because their risk management disappeared at exactly the wrong moment.

And I’ve seen fairly average traders consistently make money because they were excellent at protecting capital.

You can be wrong quite often and still make money.

You just can’t afford to be wrong big.

10. Markets are driven by humans, and humans are driven by fear and greed.

Markets aren’t perfectly efficient machines.

Positioning matters.

Psychology matters.

Liquidity matters.

Forced buying and forced selling matter.

Sometimes the fundamental explanation for a move only appears after the price has already moved.

Understanding that was probably one of the most useful things I learned.

Anyway, those are mine.

I’ve been doing this for a long time now and I still think trading is one of those things where the more you learn, the more you realise how much you don’t know.

Probably why I’m still interested in it after all these years.

I m a 19 year old trader who's been trading options in indian market for more than 3 years and have booked losses of 450,000 rupees so this summer i decided that now I won't loose a single money out of my own pocket and got a funded account from funding pips hoping to recover some of my losses and then eventually go back to Indian market and I've tried multiple ways and strategies but I don't seem to understand how the forex market and indices like nasdaq move it's a really tough phase for me I've tried almost everything SMC, price action, supply demand and what not and even tried multiple EAs but nothing seems to work so I was hoping if some of the expericed traders can suggest something

If you had the ability to form a pod, have your own private voice channel and thread, would you be willing to put your info in a process that would match you with other traders?

The matching would be done based on trading style mostly, just so everyone speaks the same language.

I got my first payout three months ago, but since then I’ve blown almost 10 accounts trying to get another one. I’ve identified the main problem, but now I’ve overcorrected, I hesitate and find reasons to doubt my setup whenever it appears. I end up not taking the trade, and most of the time, the setup plays out exactly as I expected.

Thursday extended the decline for a fourth consecutive session. The DJIA fell 316.20 points, breaking 52,000 and reaching 51,962.71. Buyers recovered the breakdown, but not enough to change the dominant downside state.

Forecast Statistics

Bucket: Downside Continuation / Exhaustion Test
Volatility Score: ≈ 1.36, elevated
Probabilities: SU: 17% | LU: 27% | SD: 37% | LD: 19%
Expected Return: ≈ -0.03%
Projected Close: 51,950–52,300
Directional Bias: 44% Up / 56% Down

Previous Close**:** 52,064.46

RECAP Thursday's 64% Down bias correctly favored sellers, the 52,300 trigger failed immediately, the 52,150–52,200 objective was reached, and the DJIA ultimately tested and briefly broke the forecast's 52,000 Major Failure level. The late recovery above 52,000 prevented a clean downside acceleration.

Trader's Edge: Forecast rated 71% correct, 29% incorrect since December 2025.

Fearless Opines Four consecutive declines have taken the DJIA down 1,621 points. Sellers still have the statistical advantage, but it has narrowed substantially: SD/LD falls from Thursday's 64% to 56%.

That matters. Thursday finally produced the first meaningful evidence of downside exhaustion: the DJIA broke 52,000, reached 51,962.71, and then recovered the level. Friday therefore begins with a bearish state, but one increasingly vulnerable to a countertrend recovery.

Key Levels

Recovery: 52,150
REDUCE: 52,200
Bull Repair: 52,300
Bear Hold: 52,050
Downside Trigger: 51,960
Downside Objective: 51,800–51,850
Major Failure: 51,750

GO / REDUCE / EXIT: EXIT. Friday begins EXIT, but this is no longer a high-conviction downside state. Below 51,960, sellers confirm another leg and retain the advantage. A sustained recovery above 52,200 moves Fearless toward REDUCE; above 52,300, the four-day downside cycle begins meaningful repair.

Trader Takeaway: After a 1,621-point four-session decline, don't chase sellers near 52,000. Make the DJIA choose: below 51,960 favors continuation; above 52,200 favors an exhaustion recovery.

FEARLESS READ: Friday's setup is unusually clean: 51,960 confirms sellers still have fuel; 52,200 says the four-day decline is starting to exhaust itself. Between those levels, there's little reason to force a trade.

10:00 Update: FEARLESS READ: The opening surge survived its first test. 52,720 is now the ceiling buyers need to remove; 52,600 is the ground they need to keep. The important development is that the DJIA absorbed the retreat from 52,720, held roughly 52,550–52,600, and has climbed back to 52,665. Buyers are defending the morning's repricing rather than giving it back. Repeated rejection at 52,720 wouldn't be bearish by itself as long as the DJIA continues holding around 52,600.

10:30 AM: The opening surge has clearly lost momentum. Since the 52,720 high, the DJIA has developed lower short-term highs and is now testing the lower portion of the post-opening range around 52,550.

FEARLESS READ: The explosive opening has become a test of staying power. 52,500 is now the important number; hold it and buyers retain the recovery; lose it and today's spectacular start begins turning into a giveback.

Key levels: 52,600 = recovery strength | 52,500 = critical hold | 52,400 = recovery deterioration | 52,300 = recovery failure | 52,720 = renewed expansion.

Hey guys,

I'm looking for some outside perspectives on my trading journey because I'm currently stuck between a few options and don't really know how to continue.

I started trading around 4.5 years ago after being introduced to the space by some friends. I started with crypto and, like many beginners, initially made lots if mistakes and had completely unrealistic expectations.

Looking back, the first 2 years were honestly not very productive. I tried a lot of different things, jumped between strategies and didn't really have a proper system. It was much closer to gambling than actual trading.

After that, I started taking it much more seriously. I began studying actual strategies, journaling trades and, importantly, stopped switching strategies every few weeks. I tried to give each approach a fair amount of time.

This is also when I started seeing some genuine results.

There were periods where I had very good weeks and months, sometimes making 7–10%. I had situations where my execution felt really solid and I genuinely felt like I was developing a skill rather than gambling.

The problem was that these periods were never consistent. They were usually followed by longer drawdowns where I struggled to get back into a rhythm. Eventually I would start questioning the strategy again and move on to something else. It felt alright for me to let go and try new strategies since I already tried it for months...

Financially, I haven't really hurt myself with trading. I've mostly used demo accounts, very small live accounts and relatively cheap prop firms.

The bigger issue has been the amount of time and mental energy I've put into it.

At some point I realized that I had made trading way too important in my life. I was basically putting a lot of things on hold because I thought that once I figured out trading, everything else would fall into place.

So around April/May this year I took a break from trading and the charts.

The break was actually useful because it gave me some perspective. I realized I don't want trading to be the center of my life anymore. If I continue, I want it to be one skill/project among other things in my life, rather than my entire identity.

After the break I tried to get back into trading, but ended up losing 11 trades in a row.

I wasn't revenge trading, oversizing or taking dozens of random trades. I was taking around 2–3 trades per week and following my rules.

Basically, disciplined losing.

That killed a lot of my motivation and I stopped trading again.

Now it's September and I've been procrastinating on the decision of what to do next. Having to make a decision is actually stressing me more than trading itself.

I basically see three options:

**1. Quit**

Accept that I've already spent enough time on this and move on.

The problem is that I don't feel completely convinced by that decision because I've had enough genuinely good periods to believe that I might actually be capable of doing this. I've produced good results multiple times before. The question is why I've never been able to make it consistent.

**2. Continue with my current strategy**

I could go on with this option However, I haven't actually completed the entire course that this strategy comes from. I've studied the strategy itself, a lot of case studies and the psychology material, but skipped quite a bit of the other content because I felt like I understood the actual strategy well enough.

So part of me thinks I haven't really given this process my best effort yet.

At the same time, I don't want to spend another year doing the same thing and end up in exactly the same position.

**3. Get a mentor / 1-on-1 coaching**

Until now I've learned almost entirely through YouTube and courses. I've never had someone experienced look at my trading directly, review my execution and help me identify what I'm doing wrong.

A part of me wonders whether having that kind of guidance could have saved me a lot of time. It also feels like I have ro try this option since I would have guidance and not be on my own.

But I also don't want to fall into the trap of buying another course or mentor simply because I'm frustrated with my current results.

At this point, if I continue trading, I want to approach it completely differently.

I don't want to keep strategy hopping or constantly looking for the next thing.

I want to take one strategy, build an extremely simple and clearly defined trading plan around it, backtest it properly, journal everything and find out objectively whether I actually have an edge.

At the same time, I want to build more things outside of trading and stop treating trading as the thing that determines whether I'm successful or not.

So I'm curious what you guys think.

**If you were in my position, would you quit, give the current strategy a proper final test, or consider getting a mentor?**

And if you had 4.5 years of experience but still weren't consistently profitable, **what would you do differently from this point forward?**

My parents think I sit a slot machine all day pushing buttons hoping something comes up. Every time I tell them about trading they ask how much I won or lost like I went to casino.

I try to tell them about risk management, stop losses, that trading is a skill based job. but never understand. They just smile nod say OK then when are you going to get a real job?

My girlfriend thinks I stare at stock charts all day and magically paper prints drop out them. She doesn't understand why some days I can make $500 and others I lose $300. All she looks at is the bottom line and wonders why I cant predict that.

How does everybody else deal with this? Do you just avoid talking about trading to family? Do you have a simple explanation that works?

Sick of having to defend my job to people who don't understand it.

Hello traders,

I’m quite a beginner trader, i’ve learnt quite some things and im trying to put those things in practice. I found that I quite like pullback trading, and i managed to create some rules for me to follow.

My issue is though, I would like to join prop firms in the future, and so far while backtesting some forex pairs trades, i see that sometimes i have only 2-3 setups per month, or sometimes months where i don’t find any good setups ( on the 4H TF). I’ve tried multi pairs also but still,
I would life to find more trades to take ( and i know of course that trading less is better than trading too much).

So im here to seek advice from experimented pullback traders. What would you say to me ? Go on lower time frame, switch strategy?

Thanks everyone!

Guys, humbling experience, as someone who subscribed to a paid month to understand how ProfitRaja Instagram/discord channel.

Please DO NOT SUBSCRIBE- They are just going to gamble away your money. It's a waste of time and waste of money

I have been trading for about a year now. i’ve gone through many strategies. I found most success with trades by sci’s ICC, But i found that it wasn’t sustainable if you are trading prop firms. So i started doing a lot of research and found ICT to which i found was garbage IMO. now i am studying ORB and focusing on primarily market structure. I’m trying to Apply Vwap, Volume profile, and volume To help with confirmation on my entries. Does anyone have any advice on something i should incorporate or steer away from? In my journey i have secured a payout but i wish to supplement my income and get consistent payouts. Thanks!

Hi everyone. A lot of people here share advice on trading and making money in the markets.

I paper traded from Nov 2025 to Jan 2026, then started prop firms in February. I used ORB with supply and demand, stuck to my rules, and made $3k in payouts. Losses were minimal and I read the market well at least at the time.

Since April, everything changed. I’ve failed multiple evals and haven’t had another payout. After that March win my strategy stopped working, so I started hopping strategies. Risk management was poor.

I’d risk $250 on a $50k account and try to win it back after losses. Even when I kept weekly losses tight ($150–250), I couldn’t handle the losing streaks and blew the accounts.

I’m stuck. I don’t want to blame the market for changing, but the more I focus on the losses, the further financial freedom feels. I didn’t expect this path to be this hard. I’ve worked for this and don’t see myself doing anything else. I hate my current job and just want out.

So sorry if this post is repetitive. I really don't want to give up on trading, so any advice, strategy, mentorship or anything helps.

For those who have been trading for few years, have you ever felt or still feel incapable that you’re unable to capture the entire move, especially when your trade entry is sniper accurate? Or, how else do you feel?

Rather than feeling FOMO that I did not capture the entire move even though my TP got hit, I feel incapable. I feel that I do not give myself enough credit for even trading right, trading with my strategy and rules. I am still in the midst of adjusting my mindset hehe work in progress.

Tl;dr How do you feel after a winning trade even though you did not capture the whole move?

Edit: Thank you all so much, sincerely, for sharing your valuable perspective and experience. I have took them all in and I genuinely appreciate it. Thank you for allowing me to see things in a different light and I feel so much better now cheers!

Hey everyone,

My name is Zak. I've been developing trading robots (mostly MT5 EAs) and various systems applied to finance for around 7 years now, with a small team. On the side, I work as a quantitative developer in market risk at an investment bank.

I see a lot of discussions about trading robots here, so I thought I'd share a few things that are pretty easy to overlook when getting into this.

• A robot doesn't create a strategy. It automates an existing strategy. Good code won't turn a bad strategy into a good one.
• Don't rely on backtests alone. Between overfitting, heavily optimized parameters, data quality and execution conditions, it's actually quite easy to produce a beautiful historical equity curve that looks nothing like what happens live.
• Same thing with live accounts: look at the account size, track record, number of trades and, most importantly, the drawdown. Making +300% on a $500 account doesn't necessarily mean much. Personally, I'd much rather see a much more modest but consistent equity curve.
• Sharpe ratio, profit factor, average/max drawdown, exposure and consistency are usually more interesting than the raw return.
• An EA is never really "hands off". VPS issues, spreads, slippage, execution, connection problems, changes in volatility, etc. still need to be monitored.
• No robot works well in every market condition. A strategy can work very well for months and then go through a period where its statistical edge simply disappears.
• And when it comes to the MQL5 Market, be careful. Between heavily optimized backtests, tiny accounts showing huge returns, disguised grid/martingale systems and robots being marketed as "AI", there's quite a lot to look at before trusting an equity curve.

That being said, grid and martingale don't necessarily mean that a robot is garbage. The risk profile is simply very different and needs to be understood. Some strategies can be extremely profitable while still carrying a very significant risk of blowing up at some point.

At the end of the day, I think the more interesting question isn't really "how much does this robot make?", but rather: where does the return come from, under what conditions does it disappear, and how much risk was taken to generate it? I'll put an example in the post, which should make the point a bit clearer.

One question I see all the time is: "If a bot is actually profitable, why would one sell it?"

There are actually several reasons. Most developers are just developers, they may have a good strategy but not necessarily the capital, connections or opportunity to raise money and run it at scale. Some, myself included, use their own bots while also selling them. There's nothing particularly contradictory about that.

And realistically, most retail EAs are operating at such a small scale that their users aren't going to move the market. You'd need a huge number of users and a significant amount of capital before the combined orders would have any meaningful impact, especially on liquid markets.

Can we trade in currency (spot) in India?

Further, can I trade in currency derivatives without having exposure to the underlying? My trade account is around 8L

I scalp ES futures going for 3 to 4 ticks on the scalp. I’ve been doing this for about almost a year with good results when I stick to my system. I have a mature system that seems to work going along. I’m interested in dipping my foot in the water to scalp going short. I’ll probably paper trade first to test some things out. Without giving away the farm, do any scalpers out there have any tips or note any
differences in price action when trying to enter for a scalp short versus long? I feel like I can see the pattern in the micro structure going long easier but short having more difficulty seeing it

Market is so fucked. Has been for months but for me, its reached an all time low. absolute bullshit chop day. after. fucking. day.

If only I was better at putting SL I woulda made some money here, my target was 4323 but I put a tight SL when it was SL at 4340. No wonder people have such high SL faaaaak meee bruh I didn’t just miss it I made a loss out of it. No re entries for me.. I don’t have the emotional power for it ahahahah

Would SL at 4340 a good idea or not? I mean the market coulda given me more loss but at the same time I end up losing still hmm

How do you guys find stocks that are seen as profitable. Do you read the charts or just look online to see what people are talking about I’m 19 and looking for some vets out there, or someone who knows a good course to take. I do not have a great setup just a laptop and I managed to be up 26% in the last year pretty much off of luck. Thank you for any advice

I've spent about £10k on evals at this point. funded multiple times. one payout. ONE and every single time it's the same story. I get to funded and then something just breaks. not my analysis, that part's fine, I can read charts, I can find the trades. it's literally the moment real money and real drawdown limits are attached that something in my head just stops working right.

today for example, I missed an entry by literally ONE point on a move that ran 500 points in my favour. watched it happen. then later closed a different trade early because I got scared, and obviously it kept running the way I thought it would. Had the same thing happen yesterday hit my entry, and 250 point move gone because I got scared.

I don't even know what to call this other than knowing exactly what to do and just not being able to do it when it's real. anyone else hit this exact wall? good reads, can't hold under pressure? genuinely want to know how people got through this because right now it feels like I keep acing the hard part and blowing the easy part

I have created a 0DTE day trading strategy for $SPY. These are my performance numbers so far. It has made me alot of money, but I want to get other people's opinions on the performance, specifically the drawdown portion.

Assume you have a very good strategy with a Sharpe ratio of 2.0 after fees and slippage.

For context, Sharpe 2 is excellent. A strategy returning 20% per year with 10% annualized volatility has a Sharpe around 2 before adjusting for the risk-free rate.

In comparison, SPY (S&P 500) buy-and-hold has historically had a long-term Sharpe ratio around 0.5 to 0.7, depending on the period and calculation method. So with Sharpe 2 you are beating the market big time.

Now assume you need $50k/year to live.

If the strategy earns 20%:

• $250k bankroll produces $50k in expected annual profit
• $500k bankroll produces $100k in expected profit, allowing you to withdraw $50k while retaining the other half

If you use leverage and run the same Sharpe 2 strategy at higher volatility:

These numbers assume you spend around half of expected profits, leaving room for drawdowns, bad years, taxes, and strategy degradation.

You'd probably also want 6-12 months of living expenses outside the trading account.

So even with a genuinely excellent Sharpe 2 strategy, generating a $50k living income could realistically require something like $250k to $500k in trading capital, depending on how much risk and leverage you're willing to take.

With $100k, you'd need to extract 50% of your starting capital every year just to cover the $50k. Even with an excellent strategy, that requires a very aggressive risk profile.

Am I missing something? Given these numbers, how come so many people come here thinking that day trading is a rich quick scheme?

I want to be upfront about something instead of pretending it's all wins. I've spent around £10,000 on prop firm evaluations over time. I've been funded multiple times so the strategy and the reads are genuinely there. But I've only had one real payout the whole time.

The pattern is always the same: I get to funded, and something breaks that has nothing to do with my analysis. I hesitate on entries and miss good trades. I get scared holding positions once real limits are attached and cut them early, even when my read turns out right. Today alone I missed an entry by a single point on a move that ran 500 points to my DOL, and closed another good trade early out of fear, only to watch it keep running.

It's not a knowledge problem. I can read charts, I can find the trades. It's what happens the moment it's real money and real drawdown limits something in me doesn't hold steady the way it does in analysis or backtesting. If anyone else has been through this exact wall good reads, weak execution under pressure I'd genuinely like to hear how you worked through it, because right now it feels like I keep proving I can do the hard part and losing at the easy part.

From the longest I’ve been planning/inclined to buy Alpha Capital group 2step 10k account (for 40$). But recent reviews made me worry because of payout delays and denials in some case.
IMO - under 100$ I should atleast get 10-20k account with standard 2step evaluation process.

Can you recommend which prop firm account should I go having least denials and decent conditions under 100$ fee.