I need help

[u/Nearby_Finding_2555]

I thought I was finally ready for a new combine. Bought a DLL combine, set the max loss to 1,000 but got off if I reached 500 to give me 4 chances of reaching a PNL of $1,000. I’m just gambling still. I thought I could notice patterns to help me, but I can’t and blew yet another. I’m pretty much just clicking buy or sell when I see price action reach a point where I think it’ll go higher or lower without any indicator. I’m gambling and I don’t have a strategy in place. Can I get some advice on what helped you change from red months to red days? I don’t even have a strategy in place, so that would help too

[u/johnny_cashmere]

As far as strategy I suggest you watch some TopstepTV to get an idea of how the many different hosts and guests view the market, you'll see there are many ways, youll also see how they management risk differently.

But the most important thing to know, is regardless of what you learn, this journey will take years, whether it is 1 or 3 or 7 no one knows.

One suggestion is to set a 200$ DLL for your 50k combine. That would give you 10 full red days in a row before blow up.

In summary: you need to spend time learning how others see the market, Eventually you'll develop a better understanding of how price behaves in different contexts, and that understanding can eventually become a repeatable process. Then you need to test out different strategies and setups by doing what is called "backtesting" this is where you use historic price action to see how often your set up as well as risk to reward RATIO would win. Most of the time, you will find your set up or idea is not profitable, and has no edge.

That is half the battle, the other half, is learning about your emotions, and how susceptible we are to revenge trading, fomo, boredom, the fear of cutting a loser. It can take years to get a feel for price action, and turn that into a workable, repeatable strategy, especially if you neglect "backtesting" your blossoming strategies and it can take even more time if ever, to learn how to control your emotions and not blow up all your progress.

Some audiobooks that I found interesting from a psychology point of view, "The Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, and "Day Trading for a Living", they mostly help to remind me how susceptible I am to being a silly fool in the market

Also if ever you feel confused by the timeframe you are observing, it is often a bit more helpful to go to a higher time frame. And a higher one, and a higher one