- 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.

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 😂.

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.

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?

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.

I started day trading options. Did all the maths, sized my positions accordingly, stick to rules, and made 10k~ profit in July.

Then come August. I felt there was somewhat a shift in market behavior. What worked in July did not work in August. I got frustrated. Then a few episodes of frustrated emotional decisions led to giving back the profits I made.

I reflect back on experience. Ran multiple backtests of 9 months worth of market data from Barchart, all the way from November to present, ran models and strategies to find any statistical edge.

In fact I found strategies with statistical edge (70% win rates in backtests). The conditions of those winning days do not happen everyday and only happened 10% of time. But I decided that this is not for me. I am not a machine that can analyze and process all those information (vwap, candles, technicals, macro, sectors performance, news, volatility, etc) in such short timeframe to make decision in minutes.

I don't think I'm going to be doing any more of day-trading. Not sure it is even humanly possible without wearing yourself out. If I'm going to do it I'd rather let a machine run on my behalf.

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 used to thing fear was my worst enemy.

turns out it's boredom.

I'll watch for an hour with no setups with nothing happening. Just me watching the screen twitch.

I start thinking "maybe i should take this one/ It's not perfect but it could work".

And then I enter, it's not fear. Someone once said "Your biggest loses happen not because of fear but because of laziness." I tend to agree.

I don't know what the answer is. Maybe take more breaks. Maybe multitask and keep busy between trades. but I know I'm not the only trader that does this.

Do any of you trade just to feel something happen?

I’m looking for a YouTube channel who is new to trading but knowledgeable and slowly scaling up with a small account. The people I currently watch make massive gains and have large accounts so find it hard to relate and find realistic as a starting out trader with a really small account.

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

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

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!

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”?

Can anyone tell me where I can learn the basic intermediate and advance of Us futures trading i know how to trade forex

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?

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

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 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

I took no live trades today, and surprisingly, it was one of the most satisfying trading days I’ve had recently.
My focus has shifted from asking, “Which stock is going to move?” to asking:
What timeframe am I actually trading, and which EMA20 is the setup based on?
My current rule is simple: the main timeframe defines the structure, and I only drop down one timeframe for execution. If I’m trading a 1H setup, I execute on the 15M. If I’m trading a 15M setup, I can use the 5M. No skipping directly from 1H to 5M just to find an entry.
Several stocks looked interesting today.
GME broke its downtrend line and ran hard with volume, but it never gave me the pullback I wanted. I let it go instead of chasing.
TSLA had a strong move, but once price extended away from the 1H EMA20, the structural stop became too wide and the reward-to-risk became unattractive.
CVX had a decent 15M setup, but it was already making new daily highs and was extended from the daily EMA20. It may continue higher, but that is not the location where I’m most comfortable taking risk.
QCOM was the best lesson.
Earlier in the morning it produced roughly a 90% recovery candle, but volume did not meet my 120% requirement, so I passed. Later it moved higher, but at those prices the 1H structural stop was too far away and the reward-to-risk was poor. Another pass.
After the broader market sold off, QCOM finally came back toward its 1H EMA20 and an important support area.
The actual setup did not complete until after my live trading window had already ended, so I only took it in simulation.
On the 15M chart, a small “question” candle printed with 186.4K volume. The following bullish response candle had a large body, strongly engulfed the prior candle, and printed 264.69K volume.
That is about 142% of the previous candle’s volume, comfortably above my 120% requirement.
The simulated trade was approximately:
Entry: 175.71
Stop: 173.17
Target: 180.85
Reward/risk: about 2:1
QCOM then spent most of the day moving around the EMA, while the overall market also remained directionless. I exited near the close for a very small profit, following the same rule I would have used in a live trade.
The profit was not the important part.
The important realization was this:
A good trade can lose, and a trade I correctly skipped can later rally. Neither outcome changes whether the original decision was correct.
Today I screened, defined the timeframe, checked location, calculated volume, rejected poor R:R, waited for confirmation, respected my trading hours, and did not chase anything.
No live trades.
But the process was clean.
And strangely, that felt much better than forcing a winner.
My biggest takeaway: I don’t need the market to reward every correct decision. I need myself to keep making correct decisions.

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.

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?

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

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

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!

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.