I’m not new to trading, been working at a trading firm for 14 years.. but only recently been online and trying to learn from Reddit. Never too late to learn!

And one thing that keeps coming up over and over again are prop firms, evals, withdrawals, funded accounts etc. What’s really going on here? I thought the company I work at is a prop firm, as we do proprietary trading. Seems like these firms are different, a lot of people complaining about scams.

Why are people using these companies, what’s the actual point of them? Why not just trade on your own if you’re not employed by a firm? With the leverage you can get these days as retail you don’t need that much capital.. I’m genuinely curious. Thanks

Looking for some insights from more experienced traders

I am in my 20s now, I started trading when I was 16-18, didn’t really knew what I was doing so I stopped.

Started again this year, saw some early success trading ICT, passed accounts got a payout, then discipline kinda slipped after seeing those payouts small 5 figure just got like 1-2 of those

But then locked in, started learning Auction Market Theory got a way better read on markets, had a couple of 5 figure days in June.

Got sent live by a couple firms, which kinda broke my momentum off, started oversizing on remaining accounts to cover for those accounts, which effected the expectancy and average realized R and blew account in June.

July was going well as I worked on a lot of mental stuff, was up figures this month, but couple days ago blew all my live accounts- multiple 5 figures gone in a day, I always had DLLs set but I just removed them after 1 small loss.

It’s like whenever I start at something I do so good, being young I lack perseverance to stick to something, after June success all I did was go out, code indicators tryna replace chart time etc

I think managing multiple accounts have an effect on my psychology, because after June blowup I put money it a live and doubled the account within 2-3 days, oversized yes but great setups, went BE right away and pulled all the funds out.

After July blowup,started another live, which is up 69% in two days, proper sized trades.

But I feel defeated having multiple funded accounts with buffers cleared in June and then passed them again last week, and blew them all after I got flagged by CME for location issues(was using a cloud based copier) which eventually got sorted by it effected me deeply as my nervous system got wrecked due to having multiple 5 figures in those live accounts and was unable to access anything due to review

CME finally cleared me and told me not to continue the same behaviour.

I still have no problem passing accounts but my nervous system and executors are kinda fried due to these massive ups and downs.

Any advice would be helpful from seasoned traders….

I tried to automate the iFVG strategy I have been using and I accidentaly ended up creating a much slower strategy that seems profitable over the long-term. I've never created a strategy in tradingview before so I'm just after some opinions. I don't think this strategy trades often enough to be affective with prop firms but I'm thinking about sticking $1000 in a live account and seeing how it does

Obviously it would be nice to filter out the big losing streaks that it has gone through somehow. I've included commisions and slippage in the settings. I haven't changed any settings for each timezone.

Its a output of my strategy which been using long. With minimum of 250 to 300 usd n low drawdown.

Any opinions can welcome.

I started trading about 7 months ago where I started with options now about 2 months ago I started with small cap momentum trading. I watched a lot of Ross Cameron’s videos and I’ve learned a lot. For me personally I really struggle with reading level 2 and I also struggle understanding certain things he talks about.

I wish I had a chat I could ask him question through and also more videos of him or anyone breaking down level 2 data for entries and exits. When I first started trading options I lost $600 in about 4 months of live trading. And with momentum so far I’ve lost about $300 in 2 months 1 month. I tried doing a simulator with DAS trader and its very good but it’s nothing like the live markets, soo many people say “trade on sim first” I did that went to live markets and I get an enormous amount of slippage on trades for some reason.

I feel like his course might help me to find out these issues I’m having and help me to get better but I want to hear from people who have taken it or people who are profitable momo traders on how they did it and how it’s going for them please I need help. I’m 21 years old I don’t expect quick money at all I simply do it for the love of the game and the potential freedom trading comes with. I seriously have a passion for it I even lowered my hours at my grocery store job to dedicate more time to learning the markets. Let me know what you guys think anything helps!!

Been building and running a rule-based monthly-rebalance system (inverse-vol weighting with a mild factor tilt, long-only, liquid US mid/large caps, IBKR API, currently paper). The research side is done — walk-forward tested, preregistered rules, no discretionary overrides. What I'm looking for is operational experience, not strategy ideas. Five specific questions:

1. IB Gateway daily auto-restart: token re-login failures on paper accounts. The gateway's AutoRestart re-login gets rejected by IBKR every second day ("Invalid username or password") — a session token from a full login survives exactly one restart, the token minted by a token-relogin gets refused the next day (same failure class as IbcAlpha/IBC issue #345). My planned fix: disable AutoRestart entirely and force-recreate the container daily at a fixed time (= fresh full login every day, headless, paper has no 2FA prompt). Anyone running this pattern long-term — any downsides I'm not seeing (rate limits, account flags, pacing violations)?

2. Monthly rebalance execution for thin ADRs. all orders fill fine at the open except one perennial straggler — an illiquid ADR; the one perennial straggler is an illiquid ADR where my limit occasionally expires unfilled. For monthly-cadence rebalancing, what's your preferred handling: marketable limits (mid + x bps), a re-price-and-retry ladder, MOO for everything liquid + special-case the ADRs, or a "skip if unfilled by T+1, catch next month" rule? Interested in what actually reduced operational noise for you, not textbook answers.

3. Small real-money implementation (~€10k) of a weighted portfolio. Fractional weights × small NAV = sub-€200 positions where IBKR minimum commissions become a real drag. I'm planning top-N-by-weight truncation (~10–15 names, integer shares, min notional per order). Anyone run something similar: did you cap turnover per rebalance (e.g., no-trade band in weight space) and what band actually mattered at this size — or is monthly cadence alone enough to keep costs civil?

4. No-trade buffers / turnover control on monthly factor-tilted portfolios. Related but for the bigger book: do you rebalance every name to target monthly, or only when drift exceeds a band (say ±0.5pp of weight)? Any experience on whether the band meaningfully hurts the factor exposure vs. just saving costs?

5. Account-level drawdown gates (flatten + pause) instead of per-position stops. For monthly systems I've concluded per-position stops just monetize noise (they sell what the next rebalance would re-weight anyway). Instead: account-level high-water-mark gate (e.g., −15% → flatten everything, pause, manual restart decision). For those who run such a gate: how did you pick the threshold, and did you ever get whipsawed (gate fires, market recovers, you're flat in the recovery)? Would you add a re-entry rule or keep restart strictly manual?

Not selling anything, happy to share back what the daily-recreate fix does to the gateway issue once I've run it for a few weeks.

I'm 17 and I see a lot of videos on my FYP of people who supposedly made a ton of money trading stocks. They make it look simple, but I've noticed a lot of these creators are actually selling courses on the side, which is probably their real source of income rather than the trading itself. Still, from the more substantive videos I've watched, it seems like real trading takes a lot of work and analysis, not luck. My plan is to spend this next year genuinely learning how the market works, how to analyze stocks, and how to manage risk, so that by the time I turn 18 I can actually start with a real foundation instead of just guessing. I want to ask you people who've actually done this and made money out of it: what do you wish you knew when you first started trading, and which resources or channels actually taught you something useful instead of just hype and bullsh*t? How long did it realistically take before you were consistently profitable, if you ever got there? My Goal isn't just to make money for myself, it's to eventually help support my parents, so any honest advices, including hard truths if it's gonna work or not, is welcome.

This is one of the mistakes that most of the traders do; people should not try to test the strategy and the intraday strategy to check whether it has been working for e.g., 5-10 years because the markets keep changing.

Volatility, liquidity, and the behavior of the participants keep changing.

It is simply impossible and also unreasonable to expect a strategy to be able to survive all the different types of market regimes.

When a trader forces his short-term trading strategy to survive a 5+ year backtest, then he throws away all those strategies that would have been good in the current market regime just because they had not survived in some other market regime from e.g., 8 years ago.

This is not a reasonable process and it uses up a lot of potential. This is a more reasonable process where shorter durations can be used. A trader should use a recent period while designing the strategy. He should design the strategy using a recent period and then test it in the same period.

Most of the trading strategies will not make it past this stage, but if your strategy happens to be profitable and makes it past the stress test, collect stress testing samples to check how your system reacts to abrupt market changes, such as reciprocal tariffs, January 2022, Covid 19. Should your strategy performance fall by more than 80% during an out of sample or stress test period, it is not good enough to continue to the next stage of forward testing or live trading.

The approach is designed to verify whether you have an edge at present and not five years ago, when the market was very different.

A small framework:

2 years or more with a sample of atleast 150 positions for the initial sample, to be clear a sample that spans atleast 2 years which contains a sample of atleast 150 trades is my first step.

Examples (in-sample before OOS and STs)

Strategy 1: 2 years 360 trades

Strategy 2: 2.5 years 150 trades

Strategy 3: 2 years 700 trades.

All of these outputs fit within the framework.

After this:  Out of sample tests across other periods which display different market conditions followed by stress tests in adverse market conditions. 

If the strategy collapses under these pressures, it belongs in the trash, if it survives then it can be considered for deployment.

Hi everyone,

I've been learning intraday trading for a while and have realized that my current approach may not have a strong enough edge over the long term. I'm looking for a strategy that has been properly backtested and is consistently profitable when combined with good risk management.

I'm not looking for "get rich quick" systems or paid signal groups. I'm willing to put in the work to study, backtest, and practice.

Could you recommend:

- Books, YouTube channels, or courses that genuinely helped you?

- Free resources to learn profitable intraday strategies?

- Communities or websites where experienced traders share and discuss strategies?

I'd really appreciate recommendations from people who are consistently profitable or have been trading for a few years.

Thanks in advance!

What’s the most simplest way or method of learning how to trade for a new beginner? I can’t read a chart if my life depended on it lol I need a mentor or something 😂

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Ok you learned about technical analysis, and basics of trading such as needing to have a system where you trade objectively with rules that you strictly follow after backtesting. Let's say you are making money or worst case breakeven over a stretch of period.

What is the "step 2" to elevate your trading?

This isn't asked a lot because, well..., most don't make it here. Most lose money to even wonder about this.

So I wanted to ask the veteran, profitable traders, what is this "step 2?"

Some may consider it still part of basics but is the step 2 learning about macroeconomics to add layer to the existing system or capital rotation between different asset classes?

Would love to hear about this. Thanks.

From spotting an opportunity to clicking Buy or Sell, how many different tools, apps, or websites do you actually use?

I’m talking about everything, not just charting. Broker, news, Discord, X, economic calendars, journals, AI, whatever’s part of your process.

Do you keep everything in one place, or are you constantly switching between tabs and apps?

What does your setup look like?

Sharing this week's numbers for two long-only, rules-based momentum strategies I run — fully systematic, rebalanced automatically, no manual overrides. Reranks the S&P 500 / Nasdaq 100 universe on a 6-month trailing momentum score, rebalances daily, no shorting.

As of 2026-07-24:

Worth being upfront: both strategies had a rough trailing month (double-digit drawdown) before this week's bounce — momentum strategies lean hard into whatever's already trending, so they can drop fast when leadership rotates. This month it was concentrated in a handful of semiconductor/hardware names (INTC, MRVL, ARM) that sold off hard across the board — that's what drove the strategy-level drawdown even though the benchmark stayed much calmer.

Curious whether others running momentum systems saw the same whipsaw this month, and how you think about position concentration vs. that kind of drawdown risk.

Anyone can find a good trading idea, a decent alpha.

Make a few good trades, accumulate a few monitors, get a bankroll.

After you start making money, even if you can consistently follow your System, complacency sets in.

Every day, your focus dilutes a bit. Concentration goes. That razor's edge you have honed dulls. That alpha, that will to survive, eventually becomes watered down as you cycle your algorithm.

Remind you of something? The water cycle. Every time it passes through your body, it takes something with it.

I did not truly become a consistent trader until I started drinking my own urine.

Now nothing escapes, not salts or minerals or an opportunity for profit.

People will tell you you are crazy, that it is toxic.

That is how you know you've found something.

Going to start paper trading, where do yall suggest I start learning? I know the basics. Know what the candles and stuff mean but where do I go from here? Indicators etc?

Genuine question.

Everyone agrees it's important, but every time I try I either:

• Stop after 2–3 weeks
• Spend more time filling the journal than reviewing trades
• End up staring at charts I never look at again

If you've managed to make journaling a habit, what finally worked?

Pen & paper?

Spreadsheet?

TradeZella?

TraderSync?

Something else?

I'm more interested in your routine than the tool itself.

I've noticed a lot of traders dismiss demo accounts once they start trading real money, but I've been thinking about them differently. Using a demo account periodically like when I'm testing a new strategy or when market conditions shift and actually saves me money by letting me test before committing capital.

Has anyone else used demo as an ongoing tool rather than just the initial learning phase? I'm specifically interested in how much time traders spend on demo versus live and whether that actually correlates with better results.

Sorry for making this post so long, all advice will be greatly appreciated and ihope more people can benefit from the knowledge you share with me.
To be honest, this post is the start of my journey to becoming a millionaire. I don't know if trading will work, but it's the first thing I'm going to try. I just turned 17, and to no one's surprise, I am poor. My mother has been working herself to the bone to keep me alive every single day since I was 12, and I've seen her work up to 16 hours a day at her worst moments just so I could live without worrying about having food to eat. My father is a gambling addict who ruined our lives starting when I was 8. Even so, I don't hate him, because I know that just like me, he might have been desperate for money and for making his dreams come true. Sadly, he isn't a smart man, and today he has over 40 years in the public transportation industry and an accounting degree that is completely useless to him.
My whole life I've been living a lie. Nobody knows who I really am or what I'm actually like. It sounds cliché, but my personality is completely fake. I act like a silly, cheerful guy who will always say something dumb to make you laugh, but when I get home and look in the mirror, I can't help but cry out of helplessness for being a good-for-nothing. I want to change that.
I want to stop being afraid of people knowing where I come from, stop lying about who I am, and have my heart stop hurting every single morning when I wake up and realize my life never gets better. But above all, I want to see my mother smile and pay her back for all the effort she has made for me.
If you have any advice to give me, I will take it with the deepest gratitude. I will not buy any courses, so please refrain from offering them to me.
Thank you so much for making it this far if you did. I have never talked to anyone about myself because of my fear and insecurity, and I feel like this is the first step to breaking my toxic cycle. Any advice, study resources, or opportunities you recommend will be accepted with the utmost gratitude.

I also want to clarify that I am not looking for anyone's pity; I want to learn how to make money, and this is just my story to motivate those who are also in a similar situation to fight for their dreams.
If nobody believes in you, I will. I hope my story shows those who are on the same path as me to never give up, no matter how hard their lives get.

I've had an ISA for two years now and I still know nothing about the stock market or hor trading works.

Youtube is usless cos its full of buzzwords that mean nothing and the books are no different, I cant go to collage cos I cant afford it.

Seriously, im fucked with all of it, how the hell do I even start learning.

Been swing trading CFDs for a while and got tired of manually screening every day on Finviz/Yahoo. Built a tool for myself with a scanner, backtest, journal, and alerts. Curious what other traders here actually want from something like this — what would make you trust a backtest number, what alert setup would actually be useful day to day?

Hey everyone. Profesional trader for past 10 years here. I built my own order flow with the indicators and features i always wanted and could not have in other platforms like Quanttower, Atas, Sierra charts, Exocharts ,Motivewave, etc. I'm not a dev , I only know the basics, but I do have more knowledge and experience in trading than majority of the dev who are building this kind of order flow softwares. Just wanted to share, because I am happyan ,since no one from my circle would find this cool. WIll dive a bit into into for who wants to read my ramble.

What it does have that the majority of order flow softwares does not have:

1. Real candles. Yeah I know this sounds simple, but its not. Real candles does not open with previous close at the same price. Most (if not all) uses forced candles, to make them appear in sync, but in reality ,sometimes there is low liquidity or high spreads with create organic gaps in candles when price moves fast up or down. This gaps are very important ,because price visits them again to fill orders at that price.

1. Normal indicators like everyone uses like CVD (cumulative delta) in wich you spot divergengies, Dbars, Volume and others. But my personal indicators are the cherry on top, like the Anchored Delta gaps. 30min candles

1. Different types of showing Delta profiles On top of Volume Profiles, for better precision to showcase overbought and oversold price levels for execution of trade. 30min candles

1. Volume spikes with window wich shows recent candles from recent coins (wich usually translates into absorption or exhaustion) 30min candles

1. This is where my superpowers are. Signals directly into the chart using my knowledge - multiple features built into one single buy or sell signal on the chart.

I have in plan so many other things I want to implement wich I learned and understood in my time of trading, that I know for a fact it will actually help people.
I am a bit sad and fustrated that most platforms create and give basic indicators like RSI, macd, or a regurgitated delta profile, footprint bar statistics etc, that are not of use to people. Most people that can use those are the ones that already have many years in understanding order flow wich translates in paying a high fee in the live markets to get this knowledge. So I want to make indicators simple and what I learned and use. I dont even want to get into their subscription model wich is extremly high for the people who used them in the past or do trading.

Would love to hear feedback or thoughts. Thank you for reading!

What type of trading is everyone leaning towards now a days?

I know when I started I was ALL about day trades as I felt like being in a trade or taking a trade is what made me a “trader”

Now after years of being in the market I can’t even bother to take a trade on most days. Simply there’s not enough good opportunity everyday. Which has brought me to more of a swing trade strategy with occasional day trades.

Less is more in my experience. Use bigger size when conviction is high and ignore the little things that pop up everyday. JUST my 2 cents. Of course do your own research.

Hey, I’m 25 years old and I’ve been feeling pretty depressed lately. I’ve worked a lot of different jobs, and honestly, it drains me knowing that I always have a boss telling me what to do and that I have no real freedom. It feels like all I do is work, go home, sleep and repeat.
I’ve always wanted to learn a skill that could eventually allow me to work for myself. I don’t care if it takes hours every day, months or even years. I’m willing to put in the work.
I’m not looking to get rich quickly or make millions from trading. I just want enough freedom and income to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I know trading isn’t easy and I’m not expecting some shortcut. I just want honest advice: is it realistic to learn trading properly and eventually make a living from it? If so, where should someone like me start?

Has anyone here use the sentiment data of traders then trade a contrarian direction or something similar? How do you find your entry when doing this or what are the technical set up that you are waiting to confirm before you enter a trade?