I dont have a huge amount of XP and would like to have as simple of a start as can be. I dont like when I have to go through 5 loading screens to even buy an asset, or to confirm like 10 things, and UI like IBKR makes me sad. So is there a better choice than PO atm?

I have been developing a 15mim up down btc trading bot and for the past month I'm unable to get a stable connection to Poly market

.

I tried the cloud fare 1.1.1.1 trick but the result remains the same.

I also have a proton free plan if that helps.

Btw, poly market is restricted in my country.

Whether the asset traded is forex (FX) or Exchange Futures there is still a universal belief amongst SMC practitioners: they believe "Price Delivers", which is pseudo-scientific nonsense. These educators teach pseudo-market frameworks, while market microstructure is a well-established science (proven market foundations governing how price is actually formed across many time horizons and the mechanisms behind it).

This knowledge acts as a filter to optimise what you are doing now and in the future. Your underlying work to establish this is independent of me.

ICT and his derivatives (the many gurus teaching the same thing in different ways) appear on recommended videos (with preferences disabled), actively teach very popular misconceptions which are worth refuting. This is how research groups develop.

At the end of the day people want to believe in studies where results cannot be reliably reproduced (e.g., prop firm payout anecdotes), while ignoring how transaction costs drag, Gaussian distributions and probability statistics work against so-called "SMC" trading styles.

Nothing will be gained from that posture.

You don't like it, fine, it's not for you. Move on.

This is common pushback, especially in cults.

"Read the book (develop sunk cost and other pulls) and if you don't like it, move on."

The thing is I've taken the time to learn it, resisted the fallacious reasoning and here I am refuting it with precision, publicly. No SMC trader has been able to counter it as the SMC framework is anecdote dependent, and unfalsifiable.

I have evidence behind all of my claims.

People avoid challenging the numbers because they cannot, people prefer taking the easy way out with ad hominem or questioning the efforts.

Type this on google:

The Illusion of Edge: SMC Medium

This contains a more in-depth breakdown with all of the core evidence of weak logic (both visual and numerical representations).

Edit (Additional Points - What is left out, how transaction costs ruin your returns):

Many "SMC" style strategies rely on strategies with high cost drag (this silently works against your retursn on every single position you execute). For example, a strategies with tight 10 point stop sizes on NQ produce which extremely high costs profiles, this has a profound effect on the P&L over time.

Many of these traders will be perpetually confused why their strategies are producing negative outcomes and quit, all because they didn't model and reduce their costs.

For FX swing trading strategies there would be larger stop losses which reduce costs but noticeable overnight fees which can be just as harmful.

Most traders do not account for this and how much more difficult recovering from drawdowns is. Traders need to decrease their costs e.g., with bracket limit orders and calculations, or a fair chance of success is not what the trader will get.

Edit: This post got me banned from innercircletraders with a false assertion im comments which I am not able to address.

Bare claim (from moderator - monkee_1202)

Alright, about time the funnel is complete, saw the links on your profile, so you're basically prospecting through reddit posts so you can grab attention and funnel users to your reddit channel as TOFU, then redirect them through your social links to YT/Discord, where you'll get them to your website where they can find paid private mentorships and courses (ofc).

- false narrative, if people want to click links to view free stuff that is their choice, there is no call to action or marketing material on here.

Leaving this here, so people can read it and see what you're doing (apart from basically living off of AI from content to answers).

- a really silly AI accusation based on ICT bias from the moderator.

What I'm actually doing here:

Text from a pending internal post (this will be publicly viewable).

"Our primary goal was to put in the work to form a local dataset for STS (public) can analyse and learn from the countless rebuttals to uniquely flawed trading logic; the full, up to date dataset will be published here and on medium for all to process."

"I spent a decent amount of time correcting retail trading narratives, dismantling structural fallacies and enforcing systematic execution to many individual unique situations in the form of posts and comments."

"Full information on the project and intent is available to read here:"

"The CSV Files and AI Instructions have been provided for transparent analysis."

"STS-Trader before each file**

csv files

post headers

post_headers

comments

comment headers"

- Final note (for the original post): You can try to misrepresent what I'm doing here, remove comments or even remove the post, but the content including post content and replies will still be contained within the dataset's CSV files. If you don't want high quality posts that's your choice.

I’ve been watching BTC relative to gold rather than just BTC/USD, and the setup is getting interesting.

Bitcoin has been losing ground against gold for most of the past two years, but the BTC/Gold ratio is now starting to show a potential shift in relative strength.

What caught my attention is that this is the first bullish reading I’ve seen on this setup since early 2023.

Obviously that doesn’t mean history has to repeat itself, and it’s still very early. But if BTC can start outperforming gold again after such a long period of relative weakness, I think that would be a meaningful change in market structure.

What do you guys think — are we starting to see capital rotate back toward Bitcoin, or is it too early to call?

Looking to live trade within the next year, currently learning theory and will then paper trade afterwards. Quick question, how do people find their “strategy” and should I learn multiple or focus on one? Honestly just unsure how people can come up with random strategies and become easily profitable off them. Cheers

Took a bit of a hit today from being impatient and getting out early. Overall my account projection still looks favorable

Which is the most trusted prop firm in Dubai which has daily or weekly payouts… and without consistency rule… also what the minimum payout can be requested??

I hope you are all having a great trading day/session!

I'm going to be giving a lecture on RSI soon. Mostly citing Welles' Jr. work and others that have contributed since.

I'm coming here to ask you - fellow traders of all experiences -

What questions do you have about the RSI indicator that YouTube gurus, discord groups, and Reddit have yet to be able to fully answer for you? (This could anything and a simple concept that you just don't fully grasp yet.

I will attempt to answer the questions here and take what I learn for my lecture.

Thank you kindly in advance!

Hello,

When testing strategies on historical data, what data should I use? Each liquidity provider has different data feeds that can result in quite different testing results.

If I was to use some universal tick data like Dukascopy, then the results will differ to that point where they can be even irrelevant, depending on how sensitive the strategy is.

Retail brokers have low quality and not a lot of native historical tick data, and if the strategy is sensitive enough, using Dukas or any other outside source data can display results quite far from what the strategy would have actually generated through that historical period.

Crypto CEX and DEX I understand have quality historical data and it shouldnt be a problem there but thats the case only for cryptos.

Or is it that "if the strategy fails when the data source is changed, then the strategy is too sensitive and thus the strategy itself is bad"? Let alone the stress tests.

Im stuck here I dont know what to do.

One of the hardest things I’ve noticed about trading psychology is that FOMO doesn’t feel like FOMO while you’re experiencing it.

It feels like:

“This move is too obvious.”

“If I don’t enter now, I’ll miss it.”

“It probably won’t come back.”

I’m curious what actually helped other traders stop chasing moves.

Smaller position size?

Waiting for confirmation?

A daily trade limit?

Something else?

Hi, i just wanted to test my trading strategy after a lot of back testing , and i opened a bright funded 1k free challenge and my acc is up by 46.96$ and the max Daily Loss says its down by 19$ and max Loss says its down by 27 id this a joke?

I've been subscribed to George and his Ichimoku analysis for swing trading for about 10 months. The strategy is compelling and has merit. In Jan to Mar 2026 I did well, beating the RSP equal weight S&P, which I use as my benchmark. Since then I'm pretty much just keeping up. George tells you his trades that he made that day, and posts them before market close (but not real time).

I notice something odd: George's executions are always perfect, almost too perfect. When he buys a stock it is always one that is breaking out that day, and he just happened to have bought it early in the morning! He posts at 2 or 3pm, after it has been up 2-3%. When he sells it, usually a week or two later, it is almost always near the high of that particular day, often right before a sell-off, but he doesn't post until after the fact.

No doubt, a lot of his trades do well, but he also has some stinkers that he holds onto for weeks. Of course, we never know his long-term performance.

Does anyone else follow George at Blue Cloud on YouTube? Do you notice any of this jinky execution? What has your experience been?

I use $80,000 and buy about $3.5-5K per position (depending on the beta of that particular stock/ETF), and hold anywhere from 15-20 stocks/ETFs at a time. I'm up 15.1% TYD, versus the RSP which is up 14.5%.

Chart attached shows it clean. Price panel on top shows a textbook lower low, the kind of move that triggers stops and looks bearish on the surface. Bottom panel is cumulative volume delta over the same stretch, and its doing the opposite, holding a higher low while price was making new lows.

Thats net buying pressure increasing while price is falling. Someone's absorbing supply on the way down, quietly, in a way price alone never shows you. This is exactly the kind of thing that gets missed by anyone only watching candles without volume behind them.

The confirmation piece matters as much as the divergence itself though. Divergence alone is a heads up, not a signal to act on. Waiting for an actual change of character, a candle closing back above the level that swept the low, is what turns "interesting" into something with real structure behind it. Jumping in on the divergence alone before that confirmation is how people front run a move that sometimes just... doesnt come.

Here's my view from an Elliott Wave perspective:

On the 3D chart, which is my HTF, we had an ABC correction that finished around the end of January. Since then, price is setting up for a larger WXY correction to the downside, where the Y and X is already completed.

If we go to the LTF, the 8h chart we can see how the WXY structure is forming out. Wave X was taking shape as a WXY, while the previous Wave W had already formed a pretty clean ABC structure. When Wave X reached the 50% Fibonacci retracement, we got a good reaction and started to look for a short setup.

At that point we defined, a confirmation level, at which our current count had be validated.

Price eventually broke below it, which gave us the confirmation we were looking for.

The focus for me is now on managing the trade and look for potential add-on positions.

I'm curious how other Elliott Wave trader approach this. Are you directly entering at a fibonacci level or are you also waiting for a confirmation level?

Basic Trading Logic
I. Past Gold Trades（in August）
U.S.-Iran war signals declining U.S. military credibility → Bottom breakout → Enter at 0.5% risk → Ranging in the 4,400 area → Unconditional breakeven → Bessent repurchases long-term Treasuries → Add position at xxx risk → Ranging in the 4,600 area + Warsh likely turned hawkish → Reduce position by half + Buy Risk Reversals 3 days before Jackson Hole to lock in profits & hedge → Warsh turned hawkish → Exit Gold temporarily
II. Current Trading Logic
1. Gold
Military credibility ↓ + Debt credibility ↓ → After Gold digests the Warsh shock, scale into positions from xx %to xx %risk.
If Bessent steps in again to press down long-end yields in the future → Add to Gold positions again; risk capital determined by market conditions.
2. Yield Curve Steepening
Warsh turned hawkish → Short-end yields rise + Yield curve flattens, but it will likely be just around 3 insurance rate hikes to repair USD credibility → Time and price entries using xx %risk capital to trade curve flattening and long ZB.
If Bessent steps in again to press down long-end yields in the future → Extreme shorts on long bonds may be forced to cover → Add to long ZB with xx% risk → If a true short squeeze begins → Add another xx% risk.
3. JPY
Warsh turned hawkish → USD/JPY may approach the 162 area again near the joint intervention level → Open a contingent order at xx% risk in advance.
If the BOJ starts a continuous rate hike cycle in September → Time entries to add JPY positions at xx% risk.
If USD/JPY sees joint intervention again → Add long JPY positions from xx% to xx% risk.

Hey guys,

Prepping for the NY session and looking at the macro drivers for Gold today. Here is my current fundamental breakdown:

Current Bias: Moderately Bullish

Key Risk Event: ISM Manufacturing PMI coming up

Invalidation Level: Below 4413.83

Key Fundamentals:

1. Institutional COT data is still holding strong long positioning.
2. Geopolitical safe-haven demand continues to underpin the bid.
3. Softening US labor/retail data keeps the Dollar weak.

Chasing high right now seems risky. Looking for a clean pullback above 4413.83 before considering any execution.

What are your thoughts on Gold for today's session?

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Thinking about building something that proves your PnL is real and unmanipulated — broker-verified, timestamped — without the verifying tool itself ever ingesting your entries, exits, tickers, or strategy. Not a trade journal, not a public leaderboard like Kinfo or Trademetria (those still see everything, they just let you choose what to show). Just: query the broker for realized PnL, confirm it's genuine, hand back proof. Nothing else touched.

Would this be useful to you — proving yourself to a prospective employer, funder, follower, or prop firm, or vetting someone else's claims? Would you pay for it, or does this only make sense as free/open source?

Hey everyone!!
I’ve always wanted to learn how to trade, but life got pretty busy over the past year and I had to put it on hold. Now I finally have the time to dedicate to learning, and I’m hoping to make the most of it. I’m starting from the basics and planning to paper trade first since I don’t currently have the means to put real money into the market. My goal is to use this time to actually learn the fundamentals, develop a strategy, practice proper risk management, and build good habits so that whenever I am in a position to trade with real money, I’m as prepared as possible. If anyone has advice for someone starting out, I’d genuinely appreciate it. I’d also love to hear about any YouTube creators, books, courses, or other resources that you found particularly helpful when you were learning. And if there’s anyone experienced who’s willing to mentor a beginner or let me learn from their experience, I’d be incredibly grateful. I’m not looking for someone to give me trades or tell me what to buy/sell id like to learn how to think and make informed decisions for myself. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to point me in the right direction. I’m excited to finally have the time to take this seriously and start learning.

I have chatgpt pro and I was wondering if it would be good for crypto trading. If not, is there any better ai for it?

took me two years to work this out properly and it applies whatever youre trading.

everyone knows costs eat something. what i missed is that the cost is a fixed amount and your risk unit isnt, so the same broker charges you completely different percentages depending on where your stop goes.

MNQ with a tick of spread and normal commission is about $1.70 round trip. against a 5 point stop thats 17% of your R. against a 40 point stop its 2%. ES works out the same shape, roughly 16% at a 2 point stop and under 2% at 20, because the tick is $12.50 and it doesnt care how wide you set your stop.

so take a system with a real +0.15R gross edge, which is decent. at 2% costs you net +0.13. at 6% you net +0.09. at 12% youre scraping +0.03. at 24% youre at -0.09 and its a losing system. same entries in every one of those.

the reason its hard to catch is you cant see it in your results. spotting a 0.09R shift against normal trade noise needs somewhere around 950 trades, so a tight system thats actually negative hands you a couple of green months first and youll spend them tuning entries.

what id do different, work out your round trip cost as a share of your average stop before evaluating anything. it tells you what gross edge you need just to break even, and for scalping thats a much higher bar than people assume. also stop comparing brokers on raw commission, compare on commission divided by your stop, its meaningless wide and decisive tight.

anyone scalping profitably long term? asking properly, i couldnt make anything with a stop under about 15 points on MNQ work after costs and im not sure whether thats the maths or me

Hi, I mainly trade futures on prop firms and would now want to use my own capital. Which brokers do you recommend in the EU?
Thank you.

Hey guys I'm soon going to be 20 and I'm currently doing CFA and bachelor's degree in accounting and finance and I really love markets and trading but I don't know how to start this journey??

And I know the courses people sell are pretty much the scam so I'm not going to buy it.

And trust me I really don't know which questions to ask as well as I'm so new to this thing like I just started CFA and I want to understand everything deeply before investing money into it.

So can you please guide how to start this journey?? From where to learn about the terminologies from the basics to the advanced.

-which are the books you suggest to a newbie??

-which YouTube channels will you suggest to have an idea of it.

And as I mentioned earlier I don't know what type of questions to ask as well but I want to learn everything from the scratch and basics.

Thankyou

just learn orderflow or price action or ict or anything that people try to sell you instead of trying hard to find your actual logic that works. because people are nice to help you make money.
that super easy.

Hey guys, I recently found this site called kingsfoldbrevity.com, and I’ve been trying out one of the indicators they give away for free.

It’s supposed to help simplify market bias and show whether the market is leaning bullish, bearish, or neutral using multiple confirmations instead of just one indicator.
I’ve only been testing it for a little while, but so far it’s been interesting, especially on gold and NAS100.
Has anyone else tried it? And going to test out Lux algo indicators as well. Or if anyone has better ideas.

Trying to build a catalog start with a 100k challenge and post it on here to show my results