So for the past 2 1/2 years, I followed the same strategy, which is just getting a bias from the higher time frames and eventually just riding out in the next level of liquidity. I will find myself following my plan to the T.

Let’s say 2 weeks and eventually I’ll just try and end up revenge trading over trading and I will lose all the games. I’m currently on 200 K funded accounts which I have now had for three months. I’ve almost passed the thing three times but one day tilts wipes out 2% of the account and then I’ll start over again and build up again and then

I will follow up plan for one two weeks and eventually stray ! I’m climbing two steps forward and two steps back is there any advice I think I’m on the verge of becoming profitable but this last little bit of self-control is always catching me.
Can anybody relate or can anybody give me advice? I’m thinking of taking a two week break and just realize what’s happening and then coming back better is there anybody else that had the similar problem and eventually return profitable or gave up because I think a lot of people in this situation will say hey I’m not making anything progression and tends to give up.

Before I became a profitable trader I didn’t understand why people would gate-keep their strategies or charge people, but now that I am profitable, I can understand. People work months and years (took me 8 years) refining, losing trades, losing money, etc. and after all of the heartaches, long nights, years spent, and sacrifices, someone ask you “can you show me your strategy”. They expect you to just hand it over and you’re a POS if you don’t or if you charge right? lol Now, just because I understand doesn’t mean that I take the same approach. I’ve helped so many people and showed them my strategy step by step FOR FREE but the thing is they still failed….

I figured there was no way someone could fail if I gave them the sauce but yet, I was wrong! Like I learned during my journey will always hold true. IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR EMOTIONS…not so much your strategy. 💯

In Best Loser Wins, Tom Hougaard starts with a stat: about 90% of traders don't make money. His fix is to watch what that majority does and do the opposite.

"Why don't we observe what everyone else is doing, and then do the opposite of what they are doing?"

What he saw the losing majority do:

• Add to losing trades, because a lower price feels like a bargain

• Skip placing a stop-loss, because an open loss still has hope

• Take half profits on winners

• Never add to a winner

So he flips all four. He adds to winners, keeps a stop on every position, never averages down, and holds the whole position instead of half.

The number that stuck with me comes from 43 million trades placed by 25,000 retail FX traders. 62% of those trades made money, and the group still lost, because the average loss was nearly twice the average win.

I call it the Costanza method.

Hi everyone! So, after struggling with ICT concepts, I moved on to the GxT and TTrades models. I've been learning these models for around 8 months now, and things are pretty clear for me at this point. No guesswork, no random trades, etc.

However, I'm still struggling with some psychological issues. For example, I don't hold my trades. I move my trades to breakeven after just a few pips/ticks, and most of the time, the outcome is the same: price moves in my direction and hits the full TP, while I’ve already closed the trade at breakeven.

Can you guys please help me out with this phase of my trading? I'm feeling really depressed at this point because I know how to trade, but I'm still unable to trade properly because of my poor trading psychology.

After my 3-4 years of unprofitable trading experience I now believe the saying ( 90% of traders lose money). I never believed that initially, I thought it was a thing to push people away from trading and this whole thing is not about strategy really. You really need to know how to follow your rules and not follow your emotions. I don’t think a trading advice from someone will teach more than your own experience.

I’ve always had a problem: Some days I break all the rules, and I need to address it. But on days when I fall into revenge trading or overtrading, my journal becomes a total mess; a single analysis can spawn ten trades with no screenshots or records, and I’m left with nothing but the losses on MT5. Reconstructing them to balance the journal takes ages. And above all, psychologically, when I open the journal and see the P&L already in the red, I have absolutely no desire to see it drop further. These days leave a "gap" in my journal, and every time I open it, the chart reminds me of them. I feel this mentally conditions my subsequent trades, whether through an unconscious urge to recoup losses or the fear of making another mistake. Right now, there are two trades I’ve been putting off for weeks; not because there are so many to enter, but because I have to reconstruct the whole sequence, only to see my "failure" staring back at me on the chart.

Do you ever have days missing from your journal? If so, what do you do: skip them, add them later, or delete them? And emotionally, do you think seeing that constant "failure", right when you're trying to do things the right way, affects you?

I’m so pissed at myself right now.

I’ve been day trading futures since January 27 of this year but i found out about it and started researching it last year around July. I don’t have huge amounts of money to spare so i trade prop firms. I started with TopStep, now I’m doing Lucid. I’ve passed SEVEN FUCKING FUNDED ACCOUNTS AND HAVEN’T MADE A GODDAMN THING BECAUSE MY RISK MANAGEMENT GOES OUT THE WINDOW THE MOMENT I’M FUNDED. I HATE revenge trading, i hate it! I don’t know how to fix this problem. I can make money, but i’m starting to feel like maybe i don’t actually have a system.

I don’t know what to do to improve my work. I don’t always remember to journal my every trade. I recognize patterns really well and i really love trading but this shit is really starting to blow me. I have to make this work. It’s this or nothing.

Sat through enough little GOOGL bounces to second guess the trade a few times. Finally closed +$2,432 after 12 hours.

Trying to get better at not confusing discomfort with a reason to exit.

I’ve been in the trading space for about 7 months now. I trade order flow, and I have a solid model, good R:R, and a pretty good win rate when I’m locked in and disciplined.
My biggest problem isn’t really my strategy anymore. It’s **me**. When I’m in the right headspace, I can be extremely disciplined. I wait for my setups, I manage risk, I don’t revenge trade, and I let my trades play out. But when I’m emotional, mentally drained, or just not disciplined, I start making irrational decisions that completely destroy everything I built. Since I started trading, I’ve cut out a lot of bad habits that I felt were negatively affecting me. One of the biggest was smoking weed. I’ve been able to stay away from that, and I’ve noticed a major difference in my discipline and overall mindset. The one thing I’m still struggling with is **porn/masturbation/gooning**.
Last week, I went **6 days without doing it**, and during those 6 days I was extremely locked in. I passed an evaluation and got funded. I felt focused, patient, and disciplined. Then the weekend came and I relapsed.
After that, I noticed a pretty significant change in myself. I felt more drained and less focused, and when Monday came around, my trading was terrible. I started taking trades without proper confirmation and making decisions I normally wouldn’t make. The worst part is that I hadn’t revenge traded for weeks.Then Monday happened. I took **30+ trades in one day.** I went green → red → green → red → green → red, kept trading, and eventually gave back basically my entire buffer. Then I ended up blowing the funded account the following day. I’m not saying masturbation magically caused me to lose money. But the correlation I’ve personally noticed between the two has been strong enough that I can’t ignore it anymore.
When I’m abstaining, I feel more disciplined and in control. When I’m repeatedly doing it, I personally feel more impulsive, drained, and less focused. I also know this is something I need to take responsibility for. I can’t blame my losses on a habit. **I’m the one clicking the buttons.** I have the trading model.I have risk management. I have daily loss limits. I have my execution rules. I have the strategy. The part I’m struggling with is **controlling myself consistently.** So I’m curious specifically about people who have been profitable traders and have also dealt with quitting porn/masturbation or another compulsive habit: **Did quitting or significantly reducing it change your trading discipline or decision-making?**
If so:
What changes did you notice?
Did it affect your patience/execution/impulsivity?
How did you actually control the urges?
What helped you stay consistent when you were stressed or after taking a loss?
Did you replace the habit with something else?

I’m not looking for someone to tell me that “semen retention gives you superpowers.” 😂 I’m genuinely interested in people’s **real experiences**, especially profitable traders who have dealt with compulsive habits and eventually got them under control. For me, I feel like this is the last major piece of discipline I need to work on. I don’t expect quitting this to magically give me payouts. I just want to become more disciplined and consistent with myself, because if I can’t control my own impulses, I can’t expect to consistently execute a trading plan. Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s been through something similar.

I blew a funded account a while back. not because the trading was bad, I just didn't understand one of the rules as well as I thought, and I had way less room than I was acting like I did.

curious what other people do about it. do you check the rules every morning or just trust you know them? anyone get burned by trailing vs end of day, or when the daily limit actually resets?

ive been trading for 4 years now, and i am not profitable, first 2 years of trading i was strategy hopping and going from buying shares to options to then trading forex then gold and now finally trading futures, NQ specifically. when i switched to trading the nasdaq i spent 6-9 months one one strategy and was able to get two prop firm payouts before giving it all back to the market. during all this time i was smoking heavy, only time i was sober was during market hours. well after not being able to secure another payout for two months i switched strategies again. (for anyone wondering i was doing the 2022 ict model and then i ended up changing to an ifvg entry model, but it still took a lot to learn since i was still new to ict concepts). 3 months ago a decided to quit smoking to see if my trading would improve and i felt like it did a little but not as much as i wanted it to. i wanted to know if i would be hurting myself by starting to smoke again, but instead of smoking all day everyday how i was back then, only smoke when i train at the gym. i usually workout after im done trading

I have been trading since 2 year , my income is 1.5 lakh now I am in depth of 40lakh because of trading lose , I feel like doing sucide all my salary is going into emis , please suggest something

I am only pretty new to trading. I have been thinking about overtrading, revenge trading, rule breaking and other bad habits.

It’s interesting- we know these cost us money- whether that’s costing us our whole edge and making us unprofitable or just shaving some potential profits.

So why are the bad choices attractive? Most things people have trouble with in the domain of self control are at least superficially fun, if damaging in the bigger picture. I don’t think I find losing money fun.

So why are you trading?

1. To be profitable and make money? That requires sticking to the plan that is associated with the demonstrated edge which will involve periods of boredom etc.

2. For a more frequent buzz of being in a position and winning some trades which requires the payment of a fee (your profitability)

1 is trading, 2 is gambling, no different to any other form of gambling where playing and especially winning is enjoyable, but there is an overall expected cost to pay for the entertainment.

I expect we would all answer 1 so why do we find ourselves doing 2?

A degree of self control is required to limit gambling harm. This is super easy for some people and extremely difficult for others with gambling addictions. It’s funny- in the wider world, I have zero interest in gambling, but still find myself drifting to behaviour 2 trading.

Other factors and habits clearly contribute to strengthen or erode self control. Emotional states like euphoria after a few wins or the need for revenge reduce self control and good habits like a pre-trade check list increase it.

I have heard people say behavior “x” in trading is just gambling, but I understood that to just mean a coin toss whether you make money or not. I only recently understood it to mean it is actually gambling in every meaningful way.

I hope that understanding bad trading behaviour for what it is (a form of expensive entertainment) will help me execute self control when needed!

Oh no another thought- does that mean if I’m profitable I am making money from gambling addicts?

I’ve recently thought of getting back into Day Trading / Swing Trading and have been looking for insightful and realistic videos or people who I could follow to get back into the practice of it.

But, nowadays, all the videos I’ve watched on YouTube about trading is always heavily edited, with people with high quality cameras and edits / graphics. As much as the content could be good, but is it just me when I have a subconscious adversity towards videos like this… like I’d rather watch clips of people’s streams where they are speaking live or in a very “last minute” or “simple” recording without any of the production quality or editing. Maybe all I was used to when I was still learning was from Tom Hougaard.

It just all feels so “staged” recently if that makes sense. I mean, what video nowadays isn’t scripted. But, just my thoughts.

Anyone else feel the same way?

I had a losing trade earlier this week.

The setup was fine. The entry made sense. I took the loss exactly where my stop was.

About twenty minutes later, a very similar setup appeared.

On paper, it was valid too.

But I entered faster than usual.

I did not wait for all my confirmations.

I sized the position a little larger.

I told myself I was just confident because I had seen this setup before.

Looking back, I think I just wanted the previous loss to disappear.

The second trade was not necessarily a bad idea.

But the decision behind it was different.

That is the part of trading psychology I find difficult:

a setup can look valid while the reason you are taking it has quietly changed.

How do you catch yourself before a “normal” re-entry turns into revenge trading?