Call me Vidvad - I day trade futures

What followss is not from me. I saw this post in a Facebook group dedicated to TRO's methods and approaches. I will posts a screengrab of the original post, with the author's identify edited out (I don't know what the rules are for sharing posts from other social media sites.

The text below in green is my attempt to edit the original author's post to make it more readable by adding paragrpahs, punctuation, and capitalization. I tsake no credit for this content. I am posting it here in my journal because certain elements of what he says tell me that he too has experienced the roulette epiphany (though it is highly unlikely that roulette was the foundation of his epiphany - we each seek our own epiphanies and what inspires such insight will differ from person to person).

Link to the Facebook group:
NEVER LOSE AGAIN - TRO | Groups | Facebook

Screenshot of the original post:


10 000 HOURS IN VAIN ))))
..............
Guys , new traders, you might find this post shocking, but I will give u the raw truth, and yes, it's pretty dark, but I still see maybe a little light in the end of the tunnel, maybe.

Guys, I literary put 10k hours and 5 years to fx trading. I'm a pretty smart guy, went on math contests, I was absolutely sure I will be that 5%, but I was not! I saw TRO s stuff 4 years ago. I laughed on him. It seemed ridiculously stupid simple as an entry signal.

So, I studied all indicators. They indicated nothing. I went on to dollar cost averaging as that seemed promising but ended in blowing 13 accounts!! Then I went on to "institutional" smart money, and I studied ICT, order blocks, imbalances, reversals, Wycoff , liquidity grabs. None of that worked.

Now, 5 years later look at my chart now! It's an m1, zero indicators. But I don't even look at this chart!

I realized that price doesn't care about what I see. It's even detrimental to have an opinion on what will happen!

Now you might say, "This guy sucks, ICT and order block and double top reversals are incredible!"

But u know what? I tried to be the best reversal trader in this planet. I even looked at volume spikes for reversals at a level. Forget it guys - all this is wrong! All this stuff tries to predict!! And my conclusion after 10,000 hours is to just simply let go of all strategies you have tried. Let go all indicators, let go of the ICT and smart money bullshit. Nothing works guys. Nothing can predict where price will go in the next hour.

Imagine if there would be a winning strategy! Everyone would discover it and use it! So why do we still have 95% losing???

So, then what u might ask?

Now I am just reacting to price moves, not predicting. Yes, double tops, resistance support, all this stuff sometimes it works, sometimes price just go through it. As you see there is nothing to predict, just react!

That's my conclusion after wasting 5 years on trying to predict with all possible strategies out there. All those people on youtube putting out these strategies are scammers. Guys, nothing works.

It's all about money management and cutting losers and letting winners run, maybe even adding to them. Thats all you can do!
And it's incredibly hard to have a trade go 20 pips into profit and not take that profit, but not taking that profit is what is good trading! Taking the quick profits is pleasant but it's not good behavior. Just because it is easy and pleasant to take quick profits does not make it good trading behavior!!

So now I'm back to simply entries as London open or Walmal style because I realized after 5 years that trading fx is has nothing to do with any entry strategy. FX it's a coin flip and 100% of what you do once you are in the trade: mental fortitude and money management.

And I'm sure 90% of u will say now that this guy speaks stupidities because he's just another loser and you will be the 5% with your smart money concept ......and that's ok guys I don't mind. After losing all your accounts you might remember my post one day and admit that fx is a coin flip . I wish u all a happy 2025 and if I will be profitable, I promise I will share what I did. I was always 100% transparent in this forum! Good luck guys!

And this is the section that really caught my attention (reading this it almost could have be have written by Driven18!):

It's all about money management and cutting losers and letting winners run, maybe even adding to them. Thats all you can do! And its incredibly hard to be 20 pips in profit and not take that profit but that's good trading - NOT taking the quick profits and instead letting them run! Taking the quick profits is pleasant but it's not good behavior. It's not good because it's easy and pleasant!

This section reminds me very much why I don't like and didn't adopt the later money management rules that TooSlow added to his original HOLO method: Taking quick profits and moving the stop loss to BE+1 or BE +5 is both easy and pleasant to do. It immediately removes the risk and alleviates the fear of loss for you. But it almost certainly condemns you to a life of meager profits, and average losses that will be much greater than your average profits.

I also like that he is advocating simplicity of complexity. To me the HOLO method is exceedingly simple. Whether TooSlow would say so or not I think it is obviously inspired by The Rumpled One. HOLO is simple. My M15 NQ method is simple. Both require no indicators other than the price bars. You don't need arcane concepts.

Once you have your own epiphany, you will likely find yourself shedding indicators from your charts, trading larger bar durations (M15, M30, M60 or higher instead of the M1, for example). You will be looking for methods that offer greater profits than you had been trading for in the past.

All these advances won't come immeditaly upon having your epiphany. But they will start soon, and there will be a progression.

I am still making my way through all the ramifications of my epiphany. But the epiphany is real. It opens your eyes to how you yourself have been the primary limiting factor of your attempts to succeed at trading.

The author of the words I quoted above has had his epiphany. I recognize in his words the words of one who has experienced what I am still in the relatively early stages of experiencing.

Having the trader's epiphany reminds of the phrase "once you see it you can't unsee it." Or, to borrow yet another common trope, "If you know, you know."

IYKYK

I am grateful and feel blessed that finally my eyes have opened to the years of self-sabotage I inflicted on my trading results. I am excited for the progress I am making and will continue to make. And I am grateful for the opportunity to share it here with the wider FF community because the epiphany isn't for me alone. It is available to each of us I believe.

I have no idea who the guy is, but, sounds about right...I was telling and showing you exactly the same thing for the past few weeks, look up my quotes .

Hard work, 10,000 hours - Yes, but at this point that write up is nothing new for 5% of successful traders.

Entry - flip a coin, Money Management is the Key, MindFuck is controllable.

As someone who has thousands of hours spread across hundreds of systems... sadly, I agree with these sentiments... But I think you need to tread these waters and experience trading systems to come to these realizations, so it's not all for nothing.

Looking forward to the new casino epiphany journal. Good stuff brothers

100% it is not for nothing.

You are on your way..but be prepared for additional few years to "figure it out", and when "you get it", this profession pays better than 90% of doctors and lawyers are paid and you have no overhead and commitments, only to yourself.

The biggest hurdle is a Miundfuck, but that is controllable as soon as you start believing and executing correctly your trading edge. To believe in your edge you do have to trade live account, when ready.

I do not want to publish this, but just to give an example ...

I started trading Dow Futures with 1 micro contract where each point is at $0.50 cents. I trade now more than 6 mini contracts, where each point is $30.($5*6)

That is how it should be done and something along those lines is what I am planning to do with the new funded account I got this week. I won't be trading today as I have to work off site today.

Starting small, scaling up is the plan.

I was listening to TopstepTV while I was on the road this afternoon, aand the "Shoulder Tap" segment had some interesting commentary on some of Topstep's Live traders.

I just got this book and I've been reading it this weekend.



What a story! I highly recommend it! I just reached page 143 and it is looking as though the most succesful hedge fund in history made billions for its owners by day trading based on 5 minute charts!

I may be wrong, but that's how it reads to me.

I don't know how the book ends but even if the rest of it sucks it iw worth reading the first 143 pages lol.

Once I finish it I'll have more to say.

anyone here made the list?

I'm funded but still trading XFA's which are sim funded, not live funded. I have a friend who was called to live after banking $80K from his XFA's and then he blew the live account. He is back trading XFA's.

We look forward to your summary of this book V.

Shoulder taps. An apt name for those traders that need their attention drawn to their destructive behaviour

It is a good read. I may pick it up. I used to go to bookstores and spend hours reading new trading books inside the stores.

Ahhhhhh....there was something special holding a book in my hands and grabbing that knowledge.

Me too! My grandfather taught me to read at a very young age. He died when I was still in elementary school and left me his library: Balzac, Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, Tolstoy, and my favorite, Dostoevsky. A lifelong love of reading was his legacy to me.

I still prefer physical books to digital. I am reading the hardcover edition of The Man Who Solved the Markets. I always buy a physical book, and if it is available in hardcover, I prefer that to paperback.

Even when someone shares a pdf with me, I usually print it out rather than read it on my screen.

I'm old school in that way.

I could have used a shoulder tap myself this morning.

Finished the day in profit in spite of myself.

As I'm not important enough to warrant a shoulder tap from an outside observer, I have to be prepared to do it for myself.

I have to call "a crap" when I see one..."shoulder tap" is just another marketing ploy to get people onboard...yes, they do talk about losers, but it is all part of that well oiled machine we call "prop firms", to get you in and spit you out quickly and hope that you will buy another challenge. Look at the stats of the prop firms, winners that get paid are even less than 5% of statistically profitable traders.

When you start trading live, your MindFuck emotion will be totally different than your emotions now. My suggestion, start trying going live with minimal position size.
Another suggestion, do not get stuck with the prop firms. It is a losing proposition. They are in the business of looking for suckers who they can ease of their money as quickly as possible.

If you, vidvad do not mind, i wanted to publish my real live track record so far this year...so you and/or my subs, can see what real trading is all about.

Almost half of the month gone and it was, what I consider to be a difficult start to the year. I eked out 5% profit so far per each 100K deposit, on my way to 10% per month, as per trading plan.

in leu of the discussion above about prop firms, in order to make consistently 10% a month, one have to realize that DD will also be around 8-10% a month(as it was during this period). Prop firms will never tell you this, as these stats are damaging to their money grab.

I do trade a live personal account as well. I had stayed away from the prop firm world for years and years. I finally decided to work with a couple of them that I felt were on the level and offered an opportunity for me to experiment without taking on very much risk.

For example, my newly funded TradeDay account is where I am starting a YM HOLO campaign. I'm starting with 1 micro at 50 cents/point, and the goal is to grow the balance and trade size to 25 mini's, which would be $125/point. I don't know how long it will take me to get there. I know that if I could 100% avoid what you call "MindFuck emotion" that it could be done much more quickly than most would think.

Avoiding the "MFE" is the issue. I'd rather work through this in a prop account where if I were to blow it up, I can then pay another $100 and I'm right back at it.

I do treat these accounts like real money though. I've taken thousands of dollars in payout from the prop firms I currently deal with.

I remember the story of Navinder Sarao, the trader who caused the flash crash, started trading at a prop firm. He ran his account up from the initial $2000 drawdown limit to something on the order of $15,000,000 before he took his balance and funded his own account.

For now I'm trading small, focusing on just the newest funded account, and I'll be trading MYM/YM for the next few weeks to a month. TradeDay, the firm with whom I have this account, will move me to a live funded from a Sim Funded account after I accumulate $5000 in profits. The reason I am only going to trade the one account is that I proved to myself this morning that I am not cut out to trade multiple instruments at multiple brokers on multiple trading platforms. For me that is a recipe for disaster. I avoided disaster today, but only by the grace of God, I might add.

All I care about is that we all treat one another with respect here in this journal. I will always appreciate the sharing of high quality information.

Speaking of proper firms, in the past I've posted that I really prefer TradeDay's model to all the other propr firms. The reason is that TradeDay really seems to operate as the original prop firms operated: One account per trader, a 100% objective and defined progression from sim to live, the ability to scale larger size as you allow profits to accumulate in your live account as examples. The one area where TradeDay, I believe, gets an "F" is the same place ALL of these prop firms fail: The trailing drawdown. Why trail the drawdown? If someone pays the firm for a $2000 drawdown, which is what a so-called "$50,000" account is in reality: It is really a $2000 account and with that $2000 you may trade up to 5 mini's or 50 micros and if at any time you lose more than that initial $2K you're done. Fair enough.

But why trail that $200 as a drawdown? Well, it is to create failure and generate new sub and reset fees, of course.

That is the one area where TradeDay, like all the rest of the firms out there, are NOT on the trader's side. If they were, they'd be set up like the older in-person prop firms where that $2000 drawdown was static.

In other words, if you make $1000 profit with a modern prop firm, your drawdown from current equity to failure is still $2000. If you make another $1000 profit, guess what? Yup! Your drawdown is still $2000. The way the the older firms did it was that your drawdown allowance was $2000. If you made a $1000 profit, you now had a $3000 cushion. If you made another $1000 you now had a $4000 cushion between you and the streets. See the difference?

The big virtue of TradeDay over ALL the other firms is that TradeDay's interests are more closely aligned with those of the individual trader. However, that trailing drawdown comes from the new era of on line prop firms. TradeDay should do away with it, imo.

That being said, I really do believe TradeDay is the best firm out there. Even better than Topstep, which I would put in second place.

Tomorrow, the next stage of my development as a trader within the context of the roulette epiphany begins.

I will be trading MYM to YM, starting with 2 micros. The plan calls for 2:1 or better reward to risk per trade. I will scale up in size as equity grows. If at any point the equity is -$500 I will stop trading to evaluate the cause of the drawdown.

I started today with 1 micro. The day was profitable, but I really screwed up the execution of the plan. Per Mark Douglas, when trading in sample size, if you break a rule or otherwise commit a trading error, then the trade count resets, and the sample size starts again.

So tomorrow is the day one.