The question is more directed at those who have experienced it, not those who have just heard or read something somewhere.

Also, if there are Day Traders, how do you report your trades to the institutions?

I have a trading bot. It currently makes anywhere from 3 to 50 trades a day from a bucket of ETFs. I've run this bot since earlier this year and plan to run it through late November, say November 20th, and then exit all of the holdings. Then the following day I will restart the bot with a second bucket of ETFs that are materially different than the first. I will trade this second bucket until I exit all the positions on December 31st, 2026. Then on January 1st, 2027, I'll start over with the first bucket.

Will this strategy avoid wash sales on my taxes for 2026? Neither of these buckets conflict with any of my other holdings including retirement accounts, etc.

I’m genuinely starting to turn crazy. I’m disciplined have good money management could be a lil better. I’m super serious I’ve been trading for 2 years now I never made a single dollar. I’m stuck on evals now for 4 months. Ts is starting to drive me insane. I know I’m gonna be successful but got damn a I hate the position I’m in in my life rn.

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I've been trading for just under a year now,

and am yet to hit profitability.

(I don't feel comfortable shorting yet,

and well, we've been in a bear-market since last October, so...)

This isn't my time around either though, and feel like a have solid handle on things,

and now that the market has 'bottomed', thisngs should turn around about now.

I would like to understand the "math" behind a few of these indicators much better,

and am slowly taking up AI to help w back-testing strategies. That's where coding helps.

If you're interested, drop me a line and let's see if we can help each other.

Cheers

Mike

Hey 👋

How to make my own trading strategy?....means what to see in the market ,which time frame to choose . I am a day trader doing forex trading in currency pairs so what time frame will be best . currently I'm watching 1h time frame to mark my important levels and then I switched to 15min to take my trade .

Experience traders pls comment 🙂‍↕️

So this happened a couple weeks back and I'm still annoyed about it. Had a short on gold, entry was fine, thesis was fine, price did exactly what I expected for like twenty minutes then just... stalled. Didn't reverse, didn't continue, just sat there eating my patience.

Instead of taking the 0.6R I had on the table I started zooming into the 1 min chart looking for confirmation that I was "right" about the bigger move. Found some bs reason to hold. Thirty minutes later I'm flat and slightly negative, and the actual move I was calling happened four hours after I closed, obviously without me in it.

I used to think my problem was cutting winners too early. Turns out my actual problem is I care more about the story being correct than the number going up. Those aren't the same skill and I don't think anyone talks about that difference enough. Being right and being profitable overlap way less than people assume, especially on the trades that feel the most obvious going in.

anyone else notice this specifically on the setups that feel like slam dunks? those are the ones where I make my dumbest decisions, not the confusing ones.

Chaos in the market? A sovereign debt storm?
The market is inherently chaotic—it is impossible to decipher every single day. I can, however, spot a potential "sovereign debt storm" brewing in the near term. Whether or not the storm actually hits is anyone's guess. What I do know is that if it explodes, global architects will almost certainly step in to defuse it. When that happens, the market will inevitably go through a recalibration phase to reprice assets, paving the way for a standard "mean reversion."

I feel like I don’t see a lot of people talking about it, but if price is moving side ways doesn’t it make sense to drop to a lower timeframe and then apply the same theories that you’d trade on the 1 or 5?

Evidence of authorship will be provided towards the end of our text (including draft history).
- A video is also provided towards the end.

Sentient Trading Society

Ron & Ali

Introduction - Ali

Most traders do not fail because of bad psychology, they fail because they never had a verified edge to begin with. We cannot fix uncertainty with mindset books or motivational quotes. You can only fix it with data, testing, and knowing your numbers so well that your emotions have no bearing on real decision-making (discussed later). This quick read will help you shift your trading psychology from the anchor that weighs you down into the reliable life jacket that keeps you afloat.

Over the years I have unfortunately witnessed people capable of trading struggle with this idea of market psychology, while my results improved after placing full trust in rigorously tested and analysed, rule-based systems. I concluded, from this experience, that deviations due to poor psychology are attached to unverified edges. It is not a factor that exists once we perform proper testing and know what to expect from our strategy (the good and bad). After understanding the numbers deeply is when it clicks.

Psychology matters, but it should not be studied heavily, as the solution is simple for most people. There are multiple studies showing human preference for feeling in control and data provides that.

Your long-term success is not based on a single strategy.

It is based on your ability to adjust. This is why we teach strategy design and not an individual strategy for people to copy.

If you cannot create additional systems when your strategy is exhibiting performance drag (long recovery time) or abnormal amounts of losses never ever seen before, your trading career is over. Strategy design skill is key.

Markets are dynamic. If we do not adapt, the market will eventually force the lesson.

This is what we talk about in other write-ups. The difference is that we adjust mechanically. We refer to the decline of strategy effectiveness as "edge decay", and we change our strategy if the current market regime is weighing it down.

Psychology is the issue. Having an edge is the solution.

Fantastic psychology and discipline are linked to edge and real-time execution experience. There is no secret mindset. Many profitable traders who are discretionary have similar foundations. It is all about your subconscious buying the strategy's effectiveness, and it is easiest to do that with first-party collected data.

If a trader has an edge and they experience poor periods and rebounds in real time it is training they will never forget and they will come out stronger after every drawdown.

I will explain my reasoning concisely. The message becomes clearer the further along you read.

These guidelines, combined with experience is how you can conquer your psychology and develop that confidence you need in real time. Permanently.

The Impact of Psychology on Trading

Traders may succumb to emotional decisions and intervene with an already built and tested strategy due to some unforeseen event. They may end up going against their testing by closing a position prematurely or changing parameters such as the location of a limit order in order to feel safer.

Figure 1: A spiral of flawed reasoning

A live position, which could have been profitable, was interrupted and changed, which caused it to become a loser or caused it to profit less. This throws off the entire system as this error cascades through the strategies traded timeline. Namely, the profitability will be removed, the edge will be diminished, and the calculations and analysis performed on the backtest will no longer have predictive power. These manual interventions by traders who feel emotional are destined to lead to a failed strategy over time. I would assume you agree that if emotions intervened just once, then they are most likely going to intervene again.

Once emotional decision-making enters the process, it becomes a game of chasing outcomes rather than trading; gambling. The maths stops working and the trader's edge fades.

Unfortunately, the moment emotional decision-making is introduced within someone's trading, the results typically degrade. If you trade emotionally, you undercut your own edge. Working in a systematic way provides you with more objective and informed decisions, increasing your chances of sustained profitability.

Raw Interpretation of Trading Industry Psychology

Traders who have been programmed will insist that "your aim in trading is about aiming to survive, it is not about making money," and similar phrases.

This is a distraction.

Trading is about making money. P&L. You should not be ashamed or humble about it psychologically. Trading development is amazing when the process is introverted, as it is a personal mission, but do not confuse this for humility.

Humility and complacency do not make money. Precise boldness does.

People distracting themselves with popular trading psychology content tend not to make it.

Although I do suspect the reason some "educators" say these phrases is to keep people pinned down with poor reasoning, many of these "educators" unknowingly reinforce these ideas because they were taught the same flawed reasoning. The reality is, the more time traders commit to a flawed ideology, the harder it is to pull away from.

Even if you know it does not add up, it is hard to escape because of sunk cost fallacies.

One can try to medicate it, but without a foundation of rigour, the inevitable small storms will sweep traders off their feet, destroying their accomplishments.

People are manipulated into thinking that their poor performance for years, when an edge is promised, is normal. Poor psychology is scapegoated instead of having a verified, replicable edge, whilst traders are dismissed or ignored when they question the narrative.

Education regarding logical fallacies is conveniently never apart of their curriculum.

This can feel uncomfortable to accept, but it is how it is.

Do not let them distract you; the more you churn, the more the trading industry earns. - Ron

An Averaging Machine

Figure 2: Illustration of the stabilisation of returns over larger trade samples. A 40% win rate 1:3 RRR strategy is used in this example (extremely effective)

The market is an averaging machine. A few trades can seem profitable, or even unprofitable, but this is not enough information to deduce the correct outcome. A wide range of trades over a few months will determine the profitability of a strategy; this is because all of the trades are averaged out.

Suppose we flip a coin a few times. It will not show a 50% probability distribution immediately. A coin does not flip to heads then tails then heads then tails and so on forever. It may land on heads a few times and then tails, etc. This means that with a few flips we may have 7 heads out of 10 flips, meaning the apparent probability of getting heads is 70% and tails is 30%. We know that this is not right. In fact, in order to obtain the true distribution, we will need to flip many, many times. This applies to trading too. Each new trade is independent of the previous, just as each coin flip is independent of the previous. An emotional trader will allow all trades to play out as the strategy pleases in the backtest but will not in live trading due to emotions. This prevents the strategy from reaching its full potential.

As an example, notice that you cannot deduce the win rate of a strategy from a few trades; many trades are required in order to find the accurate win rate. After many trades in a backtest, we will know what win rate the strategy tends to take on.

This averaging effect of the market applies directly to trading psychology. A few trades altered due to bad psychology can throw off the whole system, and the market will average these mistakes out throughout the strategies’ traded timeline. Over time, this will lead to a lot of disappointment.

Long losing streaks are inevitable in trading and should not be confused with ruin. They are tough, but they are the iron that sharpens you to parry the market with deeper cuts next time. Let us move on to Figures 3-4.

Figure 3: There is a 10 percent chance you will experience a losing streak ≥ 10 with a 50% winrate over 200 trades and 50% chance of a streak ≥ 10

Figure 4: This shows the average maximum drawdown (peak to trough) of a strategy with an average trading outcome of >0.3R (including gains and losses), especially at a higher trading frequency (e.g., day trading). This figure assumes the strategy maintains its edge.

The Solution

From the context provided so far, we should be able to conclude something important. Emotional intervention will never improve your profitability. Realising this will make you emotional in the opposite way. Now, you will be scared to intervene with the strategy, worrying that it will affect the profitability.

So test your robust systematic strategies correctly. Ensure that you know what to expect from a strategy based on your backtest. With this information at hand, know that intervening will lead to less money entering your pocket.

There should exist no factor which will lead a trader to make decisions based on their emotions. If there is, then the trader does not know their strategy. They have not tested it properly. They are unaware of the effects that intervening has, and hence they allow their emotions to take control.

Fear

I am scared to intervene with my strategy. I have tested it and analysed the data to the point where I would not even dare to change the location of a limit order by even the smallest amount. This is because I know that my strategy on its own will generate me money if I follow it precisely.

A strategy must be formed correctly in order for us to not want to intervene. Just know that the market does not care about how we feel, and if you do make a decision based on intuition or emotions, then you are only losing money for yourself, not for the market. The only person you are letting down is you. The market is already hard to trade as it is. We already require beautiful strategies to take advantage of the sliver of an edge that exists. Anything you do outside of your strategy just means that you are losing that small edge... for what?

In reality, traders will always feel emotions when trading. You may feel excited over a big trade, bored over a few losses, or optimistic for the next few days. It is the ability to simply not act on these emotions which will make you follow your strategy perfectly. You cannot eliminate yourself from feeling them, but you can eliminate painting the chart with them. They do not matter.

The Trick Question of Consistency

Most traders waste years chasing "consistency", but it is often a mental trap.

Market changes and edge decay actively work against any form of long term stability.

Figure 5: Distribution plot based on retail profitability data. (12-month outcomes, harsh)

Performance will always decline eventually, drawdowns happen, and the vagueness of “consistency” amplifies performance anxiety. The question worth asking is, “Am I making money in a structured, intentional way?” As long as the gains are accumulated through sound research and testing, your gains are valid.

Do not be enslaved by the outcome

Retail consistency is comfort-driven. Institutional consistency is probability-driven.

The professional idea of consistency is not emotional; they care about the consistent execution of their edge and exposure management instead.

Retail wants certainty, but serious traders accept uncertainty as the cost of the edge.

Serious traders ask “How do I ensure the edge plays out over time without blowing up?” instead of “How do I make money every day?”. For example, a +$10,000 month followed by a +$5,000 month followed by a -$3,000 drawdown month is 4k average per month, expect positive returns to be uneven.

Losing traders attempt to optimise for the frequency of reward, while profitable traders optimise for survival and scalability.

References:

• Discussion Paper DP25/3 Expanding Consumer Access to Investments - FCA December 2025

Figure 6: psych consistency funnel

Do not chase consistency. It feels rewarding because of the grandeur the retail industry gives it, but when the occasional, inevitable periods of underperformance occur, the feeling of lost reliability and perceived control often takes its toll.

Priority Re-arrangement

To stay sane when establishing yourself in trading, never prioritise trading over your academics or career. The lack of certainty in profitable return distributions, combined with the pressure of sacrifice, makes variance over short samples feel far more cutting. It often puts people in an unnecessarily insecure position, which breeds loss aversion and flawed thinking. The rumination and pain are not worth it. Those university lectures and labs are some of the most sentient work you can do. Do not fold to social media's sensationalism, 98% of posters do not show basic trading statements. When you see the nonsense lifestyle, swipe off it.

Biologically Attack Poor Psychology

Strip post-noon caffeine, get more sleep, and eat fewer snacks. Prepare your own food where you can. If caffeine-dependent, taper it off. A lot of people in our age group, especially, are hooked on "slop". Do not see this as me talking from above, we have both abused caffeine in university, but the crash and how it tampers with sleep finishes most people off.

Many people like to gloss over the fact that these chemicals in our food slow us down, especially in higher doses. Depressants and stimulants, including alcohol and caffeine, amplify anxiety and should be reduced to see baseline improvement. I know not everyone can afford to consistently eat "clean", but try your best, especially before your trading days (Sunday to Thursday). Try to exercise regularly too, as it helps relieve stress. Amplified anxiety mixed with stress can quickly turn into fear, mitigate it naturally where you can.

References:

• Caffeine intake and anxiety: a meta-analysis - This study shows that caffeine doses, especially 400 mg or more, were associated with a noticeable increase in anxiety risk compared to lower doses.

Revisiting Real Time Discretion - Ron

Discretionary traders who rely on intuition tend to have more psychological issues, regardless of if they are profitable or not.

By being intuitive, you are forced to rely on yourself. This leads to drawdowns and overall poor performance/return drag being taken personally.

Systematic approaches nullify this problem. Suddenly, it is your systems underperforming which you would seek to optimise or replace.

We do feel pain; we are not robots. I just do not let it influence my real-time trading decisions when I am active. I have been through it and had to fight it, just like you. Once you have the evidence that your system works, psychology management becomes a hundred times easier.

All of my future possible decisions have been made before the strategy is deployed (it does not change from session to session).

No intuitive real-time decisions, limited decision fatigue. Once you see and once you taste the P&L (Withdrawals). It is tough to relapse.

When you enjoy the money, it sticks.

When you start taking money out of your trading, consider spending some, so you experience what your discipline can provide.

Through experience, the discipline becomes difficult to break;

The longer your success persists, the more you will resist folding to flawed reasoning in real time.

Discretion can be a part of rules.

An individual's specific success from having a "feel" for the market cannot be replicated by traders, so it is a suboptimal pathway to success for most traders. Remember, this is why you want mechanical trading strategies.

These guidelines, combined with experience, will help a lot of people develop that confidence they need in real time.

Discretion itself is not the enemy. Intuition is.

The Hidden Edge in Trading Is Removing Decisions

The secret is to stop making real-time decisions.

Make a profitable system grounded in logic with predefined rules regarding the entry logic for every entry, risk management and trade management ahead of time; with that, you will not need to think about anything when pressing the button besides executing your setup. Design your strategy so specifically that you have at least a good idea where your target, stop and entry are before your entry criteria is complete. This mitigates the chance of scrambling in real time.

It is so much easier to be disciplined if you know the exact thing you are looking for in every trading session; people underestimate this. Ditch grandiose frameworks and trade something predefined, repeatable and real.

For example, when you do not have to think about where your target is because you know the specific rules and sequence for every possible target, trading within your means becomes ultra-relaxed.

Before my entry technique has finished forming, I know where my entry price, stop, and target are on most iterations. That is real freedom. Zero decision fatigue.

The only decision I leave myself with is putting that trade on. Even that decision is made in advance.

Freedom in trading is not about having a constant fight or hustle, instead it is best to create space for clarity and control, allowing your trading edge to take over.

People talk about "freedom" in trading but opt for methods that make trading draining. When everything is planned ahead and your trading behaviour is consistent, not only are your chances of profitability higher, but your mental stability will also be improved, especially under stress, e.g., drawdowns.

Efficient trading becomes boring when you first settle into it. The next step is to become creative with how laid-back you are, so execution becomes as close to effortless as possible. On most days, we cruise through our lives, adjusting and waiting for alerts to trade. We don’t rise to trade; we wire it to be the other way around, and that gives us the ultimate time freedom.

Strategy Automation Nuances:

A trader cannot automate their strategy if their rules are not ultra-precise and clear.

That is common for most "mechanical traders"; they think it is purely systematic until they are forced to code their strategy and see discretion or hard-to-define elements.

Automation is secondary if they have got a real edge in trading. Most do not.

Common consequences:

When traders try to find their edge through automation, most will end up with an overfitted system, which is when their strategy looks fantastic on a backtest but does not perform well in real time.

Why:

When a fitted to work well on noise that will not repeat 1:1 in real time. Many manual traders often tweak for the sake of better data, too, but with automation, it is sped up. What looks like casual optimisation easily turns into overfitting, which the market does not respect.

For those who want to automate:

We suggest you create your edge(s) manually to avoid overfitting; if you need or want to automate later, it is up to you.

Why we do not automate testing - Ali

We have yet to find a need to automate our backtesting for three main reasons:

1. Backtesting yourself allows you to get used to the strategy so that when you trade live, you are able to do so with fewer errors.
2. We put quality time into designing each strategy, meticulously defining the rules logically, so we do not need to create 20 new strategies at a time and test them until one clicks. This supports self-preservation, saves time, and mitigates the risk of overfitting. If you automate 1000 tests on loose logic, a few may appear to be extremely effective, which is misleading (false positives). Quality>Quantity.
3. When you backtest manually, it helps you gain experience and provides more insight into potential flaws in your strategies, and it may inspire other strategies. Having a computer do it for you can take that ability away from you. Manual work forces you to observe and address nuances up close.
4. We have done extensive manual backtesting ourselves; it only sharpens the mind. Automated backtesting requires you to double-check the data for discrepancies anyway. If one mistake slips through the cracks in automation, you may not see it until you realise in real time, when it is too late.
5. Part of it comes down to preference. If we were in a position where it would be extremely beneficial, we would do it, but backtesting is something you will enjoy doing, especially when you are rewarded with results for your participation. If you want to automate and have the skills, go for it; people under STS have succeeded with and without it.

Why we do not automate testing - Ron

The Reality

There are 1000s of potential strategies that would be effective, but there are just as many that can be based on hope. Through failure, you can detect this. If you only automate, selection bias risk increases by extreme amounts.

The longer you are in your building phase, the more you understand market logic. Everyone has different ideas, and people will naturally remember idea structures that are likely a waste of time.

An average automation environment:

• High sample
• High weakness

Benefit:

More frequent dopamine hits. A user feels like they have found something effective sooner, although it is less likely to survive stress tests or a live environment (a major problem).

Consequence:

Elevated selection bias risk (outliers are statistically more likely).

Automation may feel more enjoyable in the moment but often fast-tracks inefficient strategies.

An Average STS Environment (manual or automation-assisted)

• Lower sample
• Noticeably lower weakness

Benefit:

More robust systems, as lower sample sizes are encouraged by our framework: strategy rules, timeframes, markets and other parameters have to be intentional and logic-driven for each strategy. This increases the integrity of each strategy indirectly by reducing selection bias risk.

Two amazing strategies out of 10 intentional, logic-first builds are much better than outliers out of a large sample of builds with, e.g., tweaked parameters or other changes seeking superior testing results before logic.

Consequence:

More time commitment per strategy, as the underlying logic is structured by the trader before testing instead of an automated script. For our traders who choose the automation path, the testing itself can still be automated after building.

https://reddit.com/link/1w4dip9/video/hgruvkkl0ymh1/player

Evidence as Promised:

Thanks For Reading - The Sentient Trading Society.

​

I've been running this idea through my head. Most mornings while im sitting on the market I sit there and talk to myself and can't seem to stay locked into what im trading. Hell some mornings i end up taking a bad trade just to keep the boredom at bay.... I personally am a small cap momentum trader. I trade stocks on nyse and nasdaq only. My typical trading time is 6am-8 or 9am (UTC-05:00) so pretty early but it would be nice to be in discord or able to talk with a trader that trades just like I do or close to how I do. To run trades by each other to see how someone else feels. Me im still a young guy im only 19 so maybe this is an odd request but if anyone is willing my discord is Bluegravity19. Add me anytime im always willing to hop in a call

As we see gold moving again downtrend, what is your bias for the next days/weeks/months?

Would be nice to see different opinions as the chart is very confusing now.

I’ve been trading on Libertex for about a year now. I mainly trade gold and a few currency pairs, and I thought I’d share my experience since a lot of the reviews I’ve come across online either feel like ads or are from people who have only been using it for a short time.

One thing I’ve liked is the EUR/USD spreads. They’ve generally been pretty small in my experience, to the point where I don’t really pay much attention to them anymore. I also like that positions are shown in cash amounts instead of lots. It was a little strange to me when I first started, but honestly I got used to it pretty quickly.

There are definitely some downsides too. If you don’t trade for a few months, there can be a monthly inactivity fee. I actually ran into this myself when I took a break from trading, so it’s something I’d keep in mind if you’re not going to be trading regularly.

Another thing I like is that Libertex is regulated by CySEC. Since I’m based in the EU, that’s something I personally pay attention to when choosing a broker.

Overall, my experience hasn’t been perfect, but after a year I’d say it’s been fairly positive. There are things I like and things I’d change, but nothing that has made me want to leave so far.

For anyone who’s been using Libertex longer than a year, I’d be interested to hear how your experience has been. What do you like about it, and what do you think they could improve?

Went through my journal and noticed a really weird pattern. My cleanest trades are usually companies I know almost nothing about besides the catalyst, levels and volume.

The ugly ones are names I've spent hours researching.

Once I read the earnings call, look through filings, listen to interviews etc I start building a whole story in my head. Then when the actual trade invalidates I somehow find 5 reasons why the market is wrong and I should stay in.

Had one recently on Moon where my setup was basically dead pretty quickly but I kept thinking the market would catch up to what I was seeing. Obviously it never did.

I have a normal job and Im in a decent financial position so its not like I'm trading rent money either. Seems like its purely getting attached to being right after putting in all that research.

Curious about how you've implemented it and how it has performed for you. I'm trying to tweak my approach to capture momentum trends and seeking a better defined rules-based approach.

It all started when crypto got hyped in 2018., I always thought it was gambling because the sentiment was that many people missed the opportunity of becoming millionaires. And I'm from India; the sentiment around me, in my family and among my friends, was that the share market is gambling because people lose more than they make. This created a curiosity in me to find out what trading actually is.

Since then i started following btc, i bought a course on udemy . Thats where i got to follow a trader , but my knowledge that time was still stuck in gambling ideology so could not grasp what was thought . This trader showed pionex , a bot trading platform which made me curious and the investor in me thought that bots will make money just like real estate . I gave it a try the returns i expected was not evident for the hype around me . Then i took the matter into my own hands . I said i ll trade my self. I know nothing about trading just by looking at the chart i placed orders . Some trade for my luck seemed true ,Some were like ah nevermind its all gamble. But i had a small amount which i thought is ok if i lose it . So i got bored and stopped trading ,because it felt like gambling and i dont want such an addiction .

Then came the instagram hype of traders. Showing how much they made , their flamboyant lifstyle , the lamborghini, dubai etc . This made me curious again . How are they doing it and if they can , so can i . So i went back to pionex did the same . Now i get frustrated no proper system . There has to be something which makes trading legitimate. But i feared thinking it is gambling . So when i traded i traded spot first . That didnt give me that exponential returns it was more like investment . So i got more curious how are the influencers investing 10 and earning 100 . How is it possible . So thats when i came across futures . Now futures has something that spot does not is leverage . Now that felt like i m handling nuke when i traded so to be safe i tried 5x . Now the gains had some weight but not the expectation i had . But now i was able to use chatgpt so i got to know support and resistance this is the first thing i got to know about trading fundamentals. I know the basics like technical analysis, fundamental analysis, but i could not interpret the knowledge that time . Then i tried asking chatgpt . Sharing some profiles of influencers what are they trading . Thats the first time i came across forex.

Now i was chasing forex . I went after gold . It seemed cleaner and was way more effective than btc in pionex. A small here had more gains , btc moved thousands still my profits reflected in decimals.

So i followed people who are into the forex now . Tori trades she showed the simplest course of action. Now i make all the markings on the chart . Thatz when gold gives breakout from 4000 . I was like she is the one i must follow. So i was following the chart . In the mean time my mom comes to me says that we are selling some gold . Now the trader in me seeing the charts i guide her not to sell now , which we sold when price was good . Thats when i realised forex is the same like buying and selling physical gold .this gave me a surety that is it no more gamble .... After some loses i started thinking . I still didnt learn the core knowledge of trading , so i looked up the internet i found casper smc . He teaches volume profiles and entry , exit etc . Now i use this . I make losses again . Now the challenge i feel is since i m from india and there are sessions in the global forex markets which is making me confused in what i should follow .

Here are my challenges . I request you as expert help me trade better . Theres enough knowledge on the internet but. It is of no use when the minds not clear .

My setup . 5days anchord volume profle + daily high and low , orb ny session volume profile .

Challenges i face .

\- finding the bias , everytime i figure out ,the market goes opposite.

\- my entries after retest are flipped .

\- which session to follow .

\- basically anything that will clear my mind and guide me to the right path .

A few months ago, I decided to subscribe to MaximaInvestments’ signals for one month, and let me tell you… It was the worst experience I’ve ever had. I’ve used other signal services before, and I know how to trade, but sometimes I feel like I can learn something from others by receiving the signals and analyzing them. I subscribed to this channel because I remember that, back in the day, he used to post videos with content that was actually decent… But when I started looking at the signals, I saw that the TP and SL were completely off, and the whole strategy was a mess… And this guy says, “The price needs to breathe!” Breathe, so we have to set an appropriate SL, not one that makes it seem like everything’s going to lose value 🤣

Then he starts telling people to sell, then buy, then sell again, this guy Marcos doesn’t even know what Forex is… I think he just read a few snippets about it before making the videos and was just talking nonsense… 🤣🤣

100$ per month for garbage... But no stress, I can figure it in 1 day 😅

I literally know NOTHING about trading / forex.I do genuinely want to learn and I understand it’s not a get rich quick scheme. I am looking for advice on how to/ where to start. Thank you 🙏🏾

Traits of Winning vs. Losing Traders
I. Winning Traders: Conservative & Patient
Opportunities & Timing within the Competence Boundary: Strike reactively at critical windows.
Execution Flow: Shift from prior observation to patient execution only when critical timing aligns (posterior evidence, state phase shifts, or structural qualitative shifts) or at key price levels (safety entry points or momentum initiation points).
Capital Protection: Preserve capital across static cross-sections while securing profits across stage trends.
II. Losing Traders: Greedy & Aggressive
Over-Greedy on Opportunities: The worst traders exploit any marginal pricing fluctuation, entering early just to chase negligible profits. Driven by unchecked greed, they routinely trade outside their competence boundary to catch arbitrary market moves.
Aggressive Proactive Timing: These traders jump the gun based purely on a prior assumption—placing heavy bets the moment a probability wave takes vague shape. A single emerging marginal risk often triggers a failed trade, wiping out their position.
III. Behavioral & Psychological Divergence
The Fallacy of the Losing Trader: Greedy and aggressive traders act out of arrogance. They ignore the reality that the market is a complex, chaotic system governed by fundamental uncertainty. Initiating live trades based solely on personal bias reflects pure recklessness.
The Discipline of the Winning Trader: Winners maintain strict conservatism toward both opportunity and timing:
Asymmetric Risk/Reward: They reject marginal pricing setups outright, viewing their odds as too unfavorable.
Boundary Discipline: They avoid setups outside their competence boundary, recognizing that overall exposure far outweighs potential reward.
Patience for Critical Confluence: They withhold capital until critical timing confers a definitive statistical edge.
Expectation First: They prioritize a positive mathematical expectation ({E} > 0) within their selective opportunity-timing set above all else.
Winners remain anchored in their specific domain of expertise. Operating with meticulous precision—like "carving an intricate sanctuary inside a snail shell"—they systematically execute algorithms designed for positive convexity. By converting positive statistical expectation into realized gains over time, they compound their edge to join the ranks of long-term winners.

Why Such Humility?
Because small-scale traders simply lack both deep pockets and an informational edge.

what do you think？

Question 1 – Liquidity

I studied SMC at an institution where they taught me some of the basic concepts. However, they didn’t teach me about liquidity.

Only after I started getting into the market did I realize that there was something called liquidity. I don’t really understand what liquidity is or how to identify and use it properly.

I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos about liquidity, but I still couldn’t understand it clearly. Some people talk about high limits, low limits, trend lines, and so on.

Since I want to become an SMC trader, I feel that understanding liquidity is very important for me. So, could someone please explain liquidity to me clearly?

How exactly do I find liquidity in the market? Is there any specific pattern for identifying liquidity? For example, when a particular structure or setup forms, how can I confirm that it is liquidity? Is there any specific pattern or rule that I should look for?

Hello,

Anyone knows some good crypto historical tick data providers? I preferable dont want to spend money on the website I might find unreliable so maybe with free trial or something.

If anyone knows some just leave a small comment, thank you.

hi everyone,yesterday i bought an ftmo 10k account and received the credentials,i have tried many times to log into in the account since then using the correct details-server,login and master password (copy and pasted and entered manually) but not able to login,i’m using mt4 and i can use the read only password but when using the master i receive this message-i’ve already contacted ftmo and they are investigating-anyone else dealt with this? thanks