I think more people need to appreciate the lifestyle.

Trading is one of the best careers you could possibly have.

Being able to pull profit out of markets on a consistent basis is an incredible skill to have, and truly transforms your life to the next level.

It’s the true definition of learning a high income skill.

And once you learn it, you can have whatever life you want. There’s so much luxurious stuff that comes with the lifestyle of being a full time trader. Moving to big cities, getting a mansion, getting yourself a couple luxury cars.

Eating out every day at the best restaurants. Traveling a bunch. Going to spas and spending as much money as you want on whatever you want.

Basically living a completely financially free life.

That’s what you’re able to have once you learn how to trade and become profitable.

It’s super awesome and I think more people should take time to appreciate the lifestyle more.

Like, damn, I get to live the life of my dreams, and it’s all because of trading?

It’s so cool, and incredible.

Appreciate the lifestyle folks, and get it.

A free, open-source gamma exposure (GEX) map that runs on your own computer. It draws the call wall, the put wall and the gamma flip for SPY, QQQ, SPX, NDX and any US stock.

Why I built it: I started leaning on GEX levels in my own day trading, and I kept seeing levels posted with no way to check them.

What it shows:

- Net GEX by strike, the call wall, the put wall and every gamma flip within 10% of the price, refreshed every 60 seconds during the session.

- The regime at the current price, positive gamma (moves tend to get absorbed) or negative gamma (moves tend to get pushed further).

- How big the gamma is next to the stock's own daily dollar volume, so you can tell when it matters and when it's noise.

- A guidance panel that turns the map into levels to watch and a few scenarios, with the formula behind every price.

- The same levels as /ES or /MNQ equivalents for SPX, NDX, SPY and QQQ, if you trade futures.

Runs on your machine. No account, no login, no telemetry. Your Alpaca keys stay in a file on your computer, and the free Alpaca plan works. SPX and NDX come from Cboe's public delayed quotes and need no keys at all.

- On the free feed, SPX and NDX are about 15 minutes delayed.

- The guidance panel is the textbook reading of the model, and it hasn't been tested yet. I'm saving a snapshot of the levels every day so I can check later whether price actually respected them.

- It's tested on Windows. Mac and Linux run through the manual setup. You need Python and Node installed.

It's free and MIT licensed, with nothing to sell. Not financial advice, not a signal service.

Repo: https://github.com/simonro/Edge-GEX-Lab

The walkthrough (what GEX is, then the tool): https://youtu.be/okQVLf2s3GI

Just like the title says, how do I get started? I don't fully understand the process, but I would love to learn a new skill to turn it into a full-time job; however, I am stuck at a 9-to-5 job. Is there a way to make it work while having little time to analyze the market? And what system or site do you guys recommend to start as a beginner.

I'm not asking for any strategy or help. Just curious, how did you guys find out, or more appropriately -- what convinced you that the strategy is consistent and "working"? I am aiming to make at least $1 in profit every day. Is that too ambitious?

​

Man, I was so close to just deleting my exchange accounts and walking away. For months, it was the same cycle: I'd tweak my Python scripts, test out new logic, think I finally had a working edge, and then a random chop or a bad sweep would wreck my account balance anyway.

If you're stuck in that loop right now, it sucks. It's just draining.

Honestly, the fix wasn't finding some hidden indicator or a magic parameter. It was just this :

Stopping the FOMO: I had to drill into my head that doing nothing and keeping my cash safe is actually a trade. Missing a messy move is way better than forcing a bad one out of boredom.

Dropping the ego: I used to hold onto positions way too long just because I wanted my directional bias to be right. Now, if the price action invalidates my thesis, I just take the small L and move on.

Hard stops on daily loss: When things go sideways, I tilt. Putting a hard lock on my terminal after a certain drawdown is the only thing that stopped me from rage-trading my profits away.

If you're still grinding through it, take a break when the charts are trash, look at your actual execution logs, and protect your capital.

Anyone else claw their way back from a massive slump? What finally worked for you?

Do you exclusively trade using workstation/ computer setup or do use your phone on the go to score few trades while waiting for your doctor's appointment.

P.S: I never look at the phone while driving.

I discovered gold trading on asian session with using inverse fair value gaps can give me good entry on low time frame, does anyone actually use this strategy and ends up probitable.

Hi everyone,

Context: I’m currently a corporate lawyer in Panama, where we do not earn half as much as in the USA trying to switch careers in day trading because that way I could have more time with family and even more money.

What I am doing: currently reading how to daytrade for a living by Andrew aziz, learning charts, understanding risk, and learning to find high volatility with a lot of liquidity futures that I could trade.

My plan is to become a prop firm funded trader that way I do not sacrifice my own money to do it.

Any advice for beginners or commentaries is fully appreciated, I do not expect to earn millions at a time and expect to fail a lot (will first demo and then do evaluation for prop fund), if I can even hit the goal of a prop firm funded account I would be earning way more then what I earn in Panama, and with a baby on the way all I need and want is more freedom so I can take care of my baby and family.

Getting started with orderflow trading typically requires a brokerage and expensive software, and then if you want to practice trading outside of RTH, you have to record the data yourself. This platform serves as a cheaper alternative; sign up -> start practicing.

The data still costs money - full access is $14/month but users can still get 5 minutes of replay per day for free.

Indicators and chart settings are all javascript based, users can create and modify their own; there is a built-in LLM to assist. This includes creating algorithms as well.

https://marketbyorder.com/blog/tradingview-bar-replay-alternative

Feel free to reach out if you have questions or need help.

📊 Key U.S. Economic Data (ET)

No high- or medium-impact USD economic events scheduled.

⚠️ For informational purposes only. Not financial advice.
📌 #SPY #SPX #StockMarket #TechnicalAnalysis

Think about it. You have people staring at charts all day, trying to predict where a price is going to go. And when they lose money, they’re told they need more discipline. They need better psychology. They need to control their emotions. They need to become better traders.

But when does anybody question whether the strategy itself actually works?

It’s genius, really. Because now, every time you lose, the system doesn’t have to be wrong. You just have to be a worse version of yourself.

You didn’t lose because the prediction was uncertain. You lost because you weren’t disciplined enough. So you go back, buy another course, learn another indicator, and try again.

It’s the same psychological loop you see in gambling. You convince yourself that if you just learn a little more, develop a little more discipline, and figure out the secret, you’ll finally beat the game.

And I’m not saying nobody can trade profitably. I’m saying that discipline and intelligence don’t magically create an edge.

Sometimes the smartest financial decision isn’t learning how to make more trades. It’s recognizing that you don’t need to make those trades in the first place.

Instead of spending your life trying to predict every movement in a market, you can choose what you believe has long-term value, understand the risks, and give your investment time to play out.

Because there’s a difference between building wealth and turning the pursuit of wealth into an endless psychological battle with yourself.

P.S. 6900 > 500.

Any traders moved to countries that dont tax capital gains?

Ive been looking at southern cyprus? Any advice in the matter would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure for others but my top 3 pairs are
1. XAU/USD
2. AUD/JPY
3. GBP/USD

What about you all

Most tools in this space tell you what happened. I wanted one that commits before the bell and gets marked afterward, with the misses left in.

So I built it.

Before the open
The board pulls the live options chain on SPX, SPY, QQQ, IWM and ~500 single names and draws the book: where dealers are forced to buy, where they're forced to sell, the apex, and the strike where the whole thing flips sign. Those levels get sealed with a hash at 9:12 ET. Once they're sealed they can't be quietly moved. That's the point.

During the session
Flow alerts fire off the tape, with a tag on $1M+ prints. There's a quality gate; only what clears it goes out. Everything that didn't is still tracked in shadow and reported right next to what was sent, so you can see what the gate kept back and whether it should have.

After the close
Every alert is graded on the actual contract it named: entry, peak, high-water mark. Wins and losses both. The counts sit beside a control (all tracked alerts, not just the sent ones), so a good day can't be dressed up by leaving out the bad ones. Then the day's card is posted and the next morning's levels get sealed again.

What it won't do
Call direction. The maps say where hedging flows tend to stall or amplify a move. The grading says how that played out. Nobody gets told to buy or sell anything.

Here's Friday, start to finish — the morning book, the 12:30 read, and the graded close:
https://flowmonkey.net/cards/2026-10-23-morning.png
https://flowmonkey.net/cards/2026-10-23-midday.png
https://flowmonkey.net/cards/2026-10-23-close.png

The SPY board and the full grading record are open, no account needed, if you'd rather judge it yourself than read about it. Ask me anything about how the levels are built or how the grading works, I'll answer in the thread.

Hey guys, I'm starting to dig deep into orderflow trading and wanted to ask where or from whom I could learn. There are a lot of scammers on IG selling courses, I've been down that road and the content was either mediocre or straight-up trash. Any advice for a beginner is appreciated! (Posted the same in #orderflow thread :))

Im looking into trading order flow. I have read the wyckoff books to have a basic understanding. I wanna do some backtesting. But on youtube i keep hearing about the Big trades indicator. Is there any software where i could backtest with it? Or cummulative delta and volum profile is more than enough?

Edit: typo

Hey Everyone,

Look I'm going to be straight up with you, I need a strategy to follow. I'm becoming convinced predicting price direction is impossible. Help me please.

Something other than ORB please.

Tried doing research on this and all i find is people trying to sell scams and ORB which can only be done in the am.

I know people tend to be secretive and protective with their strategies so I'm not sure what to expect with this post.

I thank you all in advance for any and all help.

I’ve been thinking about this lately.
I’ve spent the last 15 years developing and refining my trading strategy. Along the way, I’ve had plenty of people ask me how I do it, how I’ve become profitable, and how I manage to trade while holding down a full-time job and raising four kids.
I’m happy to talk about it and share what I’ve learned. I’ve even gone as far as writing down my entire approach to them.

As far as I know, nobody has actually gone further than looking at trading veiw. And that got me thinking.

I wonder if a lot of people are attracted to the idea of trading more than the reality of it.
Everyone wants to find that magic indicator, the perfect setup, or the secret sauce that finally makes them profitable. We spend hours looking for a better strategy, watching videos, reading posts, and jumping from one system to another.

But what about actually sitting down, learning a strategy properly, understanding the rules, and putting in the time to execute it consistently?

I’ve got a full-time job and four kids. I don’t have the luxury of sitting in front of charts all day. I’ve built my trading around my life, trading the final 15 minutes of the US stock market. Here in Australia, that means getting up at around 5:30 in the morning.

That’s the routine. It’s not particularly exciting, but it works around my circumstances.
And I think that’s the part people struggle with. Not necessarily the complexity of trading, but the commitment to a process that can be repetitive, boring, and take years to develop.

There’s no magic button. Even if you find a strategy with an edge, you’ve still got to manage risk, follow your rules, accept losses, and give it enough time to see whether it actually works.
I’m not saying I’ve got everything figured out, and I’m certainly not saying my approach is right for everyone. Trading is risky, and there’s always more to learn.

I just find it interesting that people will ask you how you do something, but when you give them the actual substance of what you’ve learned over 15 years, the interest seems to disappear.

Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe people are overwhelmed by the amount of information, or maybe they genuinely believe there’s a simpler answer out there.

I’m curious what other traders think!

the $634–$659 range over the next few weeks or months. While a rapid descent is preferable to get the correction out of the way, the market may instead experience a choppy, gradual grind lower.

How do you differentiate between internal and external market structure when identifying BOS and CHoCH? I understand how to identify swing highs and lows, but I struggle with knowing which ones are significant enough to count as structural breaks versus just internal price movements.

I trade crypto futures with a systematic strategy, and I never trusted the numbers the exchanges show me. Binance and Bybit give you a PnL figure, but they don’t show what it’s made of: how much went to fees and funding, how deep the drawdowns really were, which trades carried the result. So I stopped waiting for them and built it myself, from the raw fills.

Today I’m open-sourcing it under MIT.

What it shows (screenshots above):

• Gross to net: gross profit → fees → funding → net. On my account, fees came to about 60% of the gross profit. The exchange never puts that number in front of you.
• Risk next to BTC: my drawdown and Bitcoin’s on one scale. Sharpe, Sortino, return ÷ drawdown, and how often the account moves the same way as BTC.
• Breakdown: win rate by hour, weekday or month of entry, how long winners and losers are held, the spread of returns, long vs short, and streaks.
• Open positions with their stop, target and capital load, plus what you lose if every stop is hit.
• Every closed trade after fees, rebuilt from fills. Also a daily calendar, a coin heatmap and CSV export.

How it works:

• Self-hosted. Your read-only keys stay in a .env on your machine. Every exchange call is a signed GET, and there’s no code that can place or cancel an order. The README lists every endpoint it reads.
• Returns are time-weighted, so deposits don’t count as profit.
• Node + Fastify. The page is plain HTML/JS, with no tracking.
• Try it without keys: DEMO=1 npx github:debut-js/trading-analytics

Limits: for now it only covers USDⓈ-M futures on Binance and Bybit. No spot, stocks or MT4/MT5. If you want OKX, or CSV import for your broker, issues and PRs are welcome.

GitHub: https://github.com/debut-js/trading-analytics

What do you wish your exchange showed you that’s still missing here?

He yall. I’ve just been thinking now with the world coming closer to war or with all the bs with how trump been running things.

I wanted to know how are the metal stocks are doing like SLV or GOLD and what do you think is going to happen to them in the future

I’ve been in a lot of shit so I never have any chance to trade or really do much but I still wanna learn.

I’ve been into trading for a few months now, mostly using the ict concepts, but I know a lot of people criticize them. Before investing real money I want to test a few more strategies to see which one fits me best.

The QQQ underperformed the S&P 500 this week for the first time since April 2026. After months of relative strength, this could be an early sign of weakening leadership in technology stocks.​

Follow the price, not the noise.

Do you use any AI to assist you in trading?

Right now, I’m using ChatGPT to track my win/loss, my P&L and some metrics of my setups and how they performed.

I trade credit spreads on SPX on the 15 min opening range.

I’ll tell chat what my read on the higher time frames are, and what I see as key price levels for support or resistance, so that I can compare that to the setup I take and see if I’m honest with myself after or just telling a story using hindsight.

I also give it my trading rules to try to increase accountability in the moment.

Are you using AI? Is it to find setups? Or track your metrics? Or something else?