Old Fashioned Trading - Aimed at First - Two Year Traders

Please do not attempt to follow my strategy before 1000hours of simulator, demo or live trading. 2000-6000 or more hours before you can do this full-time.

This is aimed at traders, 4 months - 2 years, either hobby trading or with intentions to trade full-time. At times, this will feel like a strategy/journal thread, but it is not.

You can ask questions here, ask for topics to be covered, help each other, ask for help, and discuss the challenges faced. This is not my way is the best way; there are many different ways. I hope to help others and share my experiences from the last 10 years. Hopefully, this saves a few months of your first year journey. If you're experienced, you won't learn anything new here, but that is not to say your experiences and advice are not wanted here. Everyone is welcome.

I have been trading on and off for just over 10 years, consistently for the past 6, full-time for 3 years, I would classify as long term profitable for 4 years. In the first year of the 4, my stats deteriorated, and I had another blip for a month in self-discipline. There are members here with more experience and knowledge. This thread does not make me the authoritarian spokesperson on the subject. I'm purely someone who has the inclination and can be arsed doing this. There are lots of different ways, and mine is not the best.

This will be worded at times, with a motivational, move your arse, be inspired theme. I personally respond well to this style of training; it usually inspires me to do something about it, get off your arse and move. Also, I don't think psychology is discussed enough here, or if it is, I've completely missed the topic and thread for it.

The first page to post#23 is a general background introduction, but with a hidden message...The language used gets slowly more aggressive. This is targeted at an impulsive individual who is impatient and repeats the same mistakes over and over. The language used, I know from experience, will work for you; it may provoke a reaction, or if not during this read, maybe the next. For this to work, you will need to read from this introduction until post #23, entirely watching all the videos, treat it as study time, over a few evenings or a few weekends. If you have a bad moment, come back to this and read it again. The provoked reaction in itself is not the fix, but it will set you off in the right direction, and that is often all that is needed. I've turned you away and diverted you from an open manhole, but you have to make sure you don't turn back.

To clarify without spoiling- This thread is a hidden message. It is not about a strategy: - To be profitable, all you have to do is?



To misquote Warren Buffett. "The most important rules in Trading"

1. Don't get punched in the face.
2. Don't forget rule no 1.


And brings me nicely into rules, there are none!

Charts will be 15-minute Gold XAUUSD spot, unless explicitly stated as not.

Contents: If you are here for psychology training, don't jump from section to section; follow it through, and complete the course to post 23.

Page 1
Introduction - This
Trading For a Living
Training Time
System I Use to Trade Full Time
-Initial Setup
-Volume
-A Buy Example
-Details
-Stop loss / Take Profit
-Conclusion
Introduction To Psychology
Win Rate
Familiar Trading Story
Trading Rules

Page 2
A Sell Example
Summary - End of Psychology Targeted Message - If you jump to this, you will miss the buildup, it will weaken the effect - Start at the beginning for psychology Training
Fundamental Futures Markets
An Example to cover Futures Gap, Several topics - Leading into SMC
Example of Futures Day Chart Gap
Futures Gap Clarification of a Gap
Hesitancy Causes - How to Fix
SMC Basics - Breaker Block
Inducements
Wyckoff theft - Imbalance Fair Value Gap (FVG)
4-Hour Candle Open Times
4-hour Candle times error
New York Midnight Price Level
Round Whole Numbers
Checklists and Procedures
Trade the News FOMC Example

Page 3
Pennant Pattern
How Nuclear Warheads Can Reduce Stress
Month End - Dance of the Staplers
AB=CD Pattern
Risk Reward Money Management

Page 4
Fear
Training Exercises
Coin Toss Training EXERCISE Demonstration
Forum Dynamics
Gartley Pattern
Harmonic Patterns Sheet
Wyckoff Spring - Equal Low Equal High

Page 5
Gartley Example
Breaker Block 4:1 Example
Fear and Ego
Another Breaker Block example
Anchored VWAP
Predicting the Market
Spot the Gartley
NY Mighnight Example
Why Wait for a Break
Adjusting My Setup for Ranging Conditions
4-hour candle times - I made an Error
Futures Gap Clarification
4-hour Candle Times Example
Simple 1-hour Strategy
Sit on your POC
How to Build a Starter Strategy
Second Part of Starter Strategy
Divergence

Page 6
VWAP - The king of Average
Volume Indicator
Trading Sessions Notes / Day - Example
Simplified Description of my Strategy
Sit on Your POC Example
Sell your POC
How to be Greedy with Safety
Good example to POC

About psychology and trading: Most of my challenges in trading have been psychological — trading money I couldn’t afford to lose, acting impulsively, hesitating out of fear, and struggling with self-discipline. It took me around 18 months to work through it. Trading can be brutally stressful; it can expose parts of your personality you didn’t know existed. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; in fact, talking about fear, frustration, and emotion in trading is healthy. There’s far too much ego in trading.

U.S. legal and medical disclaimer: I am not a licensed psychologist, therapist, or mental health professional. Any discussion of psychological or emotional issues in this thread is based solely on my personal experience as a trader. Nothing here constitutes medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you experience significant distress, anxiety, depression, or any other mental health concerns, please seek help from a qualified professional or contact a crisis hotline in your country.

The information shared here is for educational and discussion purposes only and should not be taken as professional advice. Trading involves risk, and everyone’s circumstances are different.

The next post I'll start with the most popular, often asked questions

Can you make a living?

if you can why doesn't everyone does this?

Yes you can make a living, it is not easy and I think people underestimate how difficult it is. The second question reveals how easy people think it must be, it's not difficult in a technical sense, I think anyone is capable of understanding the basics, the hard part is not many people are risk takers, you need to be a certain type of person for this style of life. Employment is often with time taken for granted, I worked for nearly 20 years full time salaried employment, I have a good pension, my sickness and absence is covered, I have medical insurance and I had a team of people to turn to if I was stuck and needed help.

Self employed, bit obvious but you are isolated, there's no one to discipline you, you can watch Netflix all day in your undies, if you want to, you can take the whole week off but you have bills to pay, if I'm sick, I need savings to cover this. The opposite ends up being true, you feel guilty with time off, you are more involved, walk past your office, trading setup, and you are instantly reminded of work, tax, savings, worries. I've had 3 different self-employment sole trader occupations and I never stopped thinking about what task I had to do or when it had to be done by.

Then there is your psychology, which you will not be aware of at this point or maybe starting to become aware and that is why you are here. I'll touch on psychology at another time.

The strategy I follow is as old as trading itself its a modified OHLC break pullback with volume profile, as time has gone by, volume features more and more. I spent a lot of time looking for the perfect system, it may exist but in the end I gave up looking and over time specialised on this, but this needs a bit of experience and a bit of judgement.

I have spent a lot of time in the simulator, hours, hours and hours. I trained every weekend and still do, I've worked through the night and almost complete weekends, I've traded Asia - through to close of New York...Don't underestimate time involved in this process to get gud.

I trade exclusively gold, sometimes S&P , this is what a system like this generates, because I know what you are doing, scanning this as fast as possible, get to the point, is it worthwhile reading all this shit..the image is this month October, averaging 2000 pips a week 88% win rate.

And that takes it to the next subject

Training

The time involved, going from a newbie to competent, depending on your interest in the subject, age and memory somewhere between 2000-6000 hours, if you are young, you may do this in 1000.

If you have a job, a life, getting this time in during live, normal week market open trading is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. You either need a lot of money behind you or you need to put time in the simulator.

Think of it like a pilot training time or professional sports, they play competitive matches for a fraction of their weekly training time. If you want this, you have to work for it and the hard facts, people are just not prepared to do this, they want results fast or they find it boring and lose interest. If you do find this boring, find another occupation.

I'll put first details, with examples of trades here.

I take swing type trades too, but I won't be describing them here and are actually easier than intraday trading. If you are competent at intraday you can figure swing trades on your own. The higher the timeframe you go, the easier it gets - you just need larger stops, larger capital.

I've purposely left this towards the end because, this, hunting for systems, is not important, what I specify here is not the key to the universe or you follow this you will be rich. This comes with hard work, time and determination - rewards last.

And what is specified here, is matched by any number of other systems, this is tailored for my psychology and you need to do the same for yours.

Quantities I'm not sure about posting, because it feels a little show off, this is my salary at the end of the day but maybe I should be open. There is no point me saying trade here , close here - you need to see trade history (i'll have a think)

Break & Pullback principles have been in place with trading since before we had charts. This video gets posted a lot, besides the difference between an institutional pen flip and an amateurs pen flip, this is a good video to watch if you haven't seen it, it makes / helps you realise you only need price, a value for price and a value for fair price.



You and me as traders, we are a massive source of income. We are struggling, losing money, losing that dream. We are individuals and can be very easily manipulated, sold the ICT style principles. This is not to bash knowledge of market structure and principles. It's a more be aware of the psychology that leads you here. Our brains, protect us, we don't like the loser feeling, being bad at something, we naturally protect ourselves and look for other causes. Opportunistic sellers/marketeers are well aware of this and target you. "The reason you lose is because of the nasty market movers, taking your stops" but, together "I can show you how to defeat these nasty people and we can rise Up together"...deposit a non refundable btc payment to this address

This type of thought process is longterm damaging to your development, you need to be self-reflective, you need to review your losing trades and ask yourself truthly why? You haven't been stop hunted, your trade is tiny and most likely, you put your stop in a bad position with a bad entry. Once you accept the problem might be you, you will, with time succeed at this!

I've purposely worded that first paragraph about ICT, to stir a reaction in you and if you're honest with yourself, you might for a second, had a bit of hatred towards ICT - this is an example of how I am targeting you and your emotions.

The market moves in the way it does because its a chaos system, reflecting millions of humans and ultimately, you are seeing a chart of human psychology. The Bulls walk up the stairs and Bears jump out the window.

When in an uptrend, buyers out number sellers, sellers are still selling, at some point buyer numbers reduce, because we are waiting for a pullback. Price starts to fall, the balance has shifted to selling, but buyers are now waiting and once a value area is reached buyers return in force.

I target this, I'm targeting a fast impulse move with volume, I aim to have a position open for ideally, less than an hour and I want to do this once a trading session and at max 2-4 times a day. I can afford to wait, I'm in no rush. The market can do whatever it wants before or after this, I am not at risk, I don't care.

Thank you very much.
This is exactly what I was looking for, a place to study in a focused way, and I feel it suits my trading style very well.
I've read your posts on other topics, and it was quite difficult for me to summarize them. Moreover, I used a translation tool because my English isn't very good.
Hopefully, this will be a source of motivation for you.

Thanks for the reply, and yes I will be keeping in mind that translation will be used. Sentences will be full and descriptive. If you don't understand a sentence or post, bring it to my attention, so I know what words are difficult for the translator.

I'll get first post in with an example of first setup. I have an ultrawide monitor, so, I'm going to snip sections.

I've numbered the image for the translator. I'll go through the thought process and things I'm looking at. some of these are coded indicators but they're not doing anything fancy and I didn't start with these it just helps me make decisions a bit quicker.

1. The candle has closed as a 3 Line Strike - this is a bullish, reliable, fairly high probability signal.
https://www.google.com/search?client...uefhbIPz5Oh2AQ
2. Red diamond is symbol for highest volume candle of the day - but you can also just look at tick volume, you can see its highest so far.
3. That is the current 'Point of Contro'l for this Hour 8 candle 'volume profile', its slightly under the line (not ideal).
4. Previous Friday last closing session Hour 8 candle volume profile 'Point of Control'. It's at this level and its not a coincidence it is now moving away from it.
5. The lines are faint but the green horizontal line is Asia Session, we have just passed the first hour of Tokyo open and at bottom of this range.
6. Engulfing bullish candle, small wick on bottom, a wick on the top reaction to the 'Point of Control' volume. (not ideal)
7. Bottom of the previous day range, Previous Daily Low, we haven't gone under this.
8. Volume is going to get a bit technical, I will follow this up in post below See Below post#8.
9. I track ADR, I base my target with this figure divided by 6, in this case 12000 / 6 = 2000 this is my target profit pip or maybe my first take profit partial. I also look at ATR, ideally I want my stop to be at least close to this figure. But I always aim to set my stop loss under a previous low or high, rather than a pip number.

My broker pipesize is 0.01 for XAUUSD, ADR reporting at 12000 is actually 1200. When I open an order my stop will display as 1000, I don't convert to 100, even though it is actually 100. (To keep it standard on my system)

Volume- Again I use a bit of code for this but it is not doing anything essential, the volume coloured at the bottom has a 500 period moving average. All you need to do is make sure it is higher than this and there is an increase in volume for either the just closed bar or the previous bar.

For description purposes I calculate a 500 period moving average of tick volume and I compare with a 3 period average of tick volume. If the fast period average is greater than the slow, then the text turns green. The fast average value is then compared with previous fast average to get a delta, this is the number I'm most interested in.

It is the final polish, it is not important, it may prevent 1 or two bad trades a week.

The main thing, is you are are displaying volume, you are moving away from a previous 'Point of control' and the current closed bar or previous closed volume is above 500 period average and increasing.

Trading view can show this, mt4/5 Ive never used but I'm sure there is an indicator mode for this.

Ctrader is what I use, go to viewing options and enable tick volume.

1. There is a break

What I mean by break is important.

For you to determine a high, or an internal minor high. You need price to start retracing to a point sufficient enough for you to objectively draw a straight horizontal line from the previous high. You keep the line in place, or set an alert and once price closes above the line (below for downtrend). Like in this case the previous high is broken and we are in the process of making a new high.

Now you wait for a pullback

2. Fib reading of 0.63 (63%) you can use a fib tool but my chart is a bit cluttered to begin with and this tends to be quicker

3. Fib I'm looking for ideally more than 38%, but sometimes with gold all you will get is 23% and this will be a real test of FOMO

This is where judgment and experience comes in, but an engulfing / 3 line strike, bottom of previous day range, out of the first hour of a session, on a session's low range, moving away from a point of control, shooting for a take profit scaled with ADR is almost a Royal Flush.

The only doubt I have is the engulfing candles slight wick reaction to the current POC (point of control) and the fast volume average less than the slow, with the delta increasing I am happy with the risk and take the trade.

Point of control is what I would call essential but you could probably use vwap or anchored vwap and achieve close to the same results. Volume profile in this case is using parabolic distribution and is an open source ctrader indicator.

https://github.com/srlcarlg/srl-ctra...readme-ov-file

Parabolic - Each bar’s internal weighting in Parabolic mode gives the highest influence to the midpoint of trade (where both buys and sellers were active)
and rapidly decays the further you go from it (where one side dominated and got exhausted).

So, when a move accelerates, tails get thinner and less weighting.
When value shifts the POC migrates along the curve.
When exhaustion hits the POC stops moving; price overshoots and returns (buyers are now waiting pullback, sellers take over” moment).

Parabolic is the accelerating part of move, which you often see from uncontested buying/selling, towards the end of a move. With parabolic, you will often see the market mover conspiracy, its 'accelerating on purpose to bait' theories. I don't believe this to be the case, I believe it to be apart of human psychology, there are less and less sellers willing to fight buyers, as it gets closer and closer to take profit (a recognized higher time frame fib number) it accelerates due to uncontested buying, in greater and greater numbers. The quant style explanation of high-frequency algo trades, creating liquidity ready for a reversal, only makes sense in lower timeframes. A long-term swing move approaching a take profit - I don't believe the acceleration can be due to this.

It can be viewed quite recently with gold, this parabolic acceleration, with the daily, or day 3, weekly chart. (attached below) Due to the fractal properties of markets, the Day 3 chart below is a break and now in a pullback type scenario and is tradable using the same principles above. the colouurs are englufing, inside, dark cloud, piercing line, candle detection etc..

You don't have to be aware of this but, it may help with understanding what this is targeting.

This ctrader indicator is based on
FXcoders Volume Profile + Range v6.0 for mt5/4

Trading view has volume profile too

1. Take Profit is 400 pips.
2. Stop is underneath the low and is 209 pip.

I have a scaled ADR partial set, I will close 25% at 200 pips (ctrader has advanced profit mode for this, makes it really easy)

Once this partial profit is taken, I'm now at a reduced risk, and at 1.25%, if I originally scaled 209 pips to my account equity / balance of 2.5% risk.

This is where this strategy can divert. I trade full time, I am at risk whenever and only whenever I have a trade open, I'm not hobby trading so it is risky for me to be waiting for a 1.25 1.27 1.5 1.61 fib for target. I have bills due, save for emergencies, grow my capital, I've gone for a steady flow of pips.

This is where you can divert and follow any manner of take profits, trailing stops, partials, you can ignore the ADR partial.

The key thing:

1. Stop loss under the low, or over the high for a sell, with preferably a small buffer.
2. Take profit greater than your stop pip value.

I try and get at least 2:1, I never let profit go over 1.50% fib extension for a buy, or 1.25% fib extension for a sell.

With win rate over 75%, I will go as low as 1:1 (plus small amount for commission) but its rare. Depending on scenario / volatility at 1:1, I'm aggressive with stops.

1. e.g. 33% of take profit pips, I go to breakeven, either closing 25% of trade as partial or closing 50%.

Scaling with ADR, means that if this does not make a new high, I am very likely to hit my partial take profit before it runs out of power and turns on me towards my stop.

What decides the outcome of a trades win rate is stop loss / take profit. If you get the trade direction right, no matter the strategy used, If I had taken a buy position on gold, at any point in time since 1997, apart from last week and with a big enough stop loss, they're all winners - 100% win rate!

Terrible, diabolical R:R, don't do it, what are you thinking...but I think you get the point, be sensible with the stop, most bad stop positioning is from greed and the 2.5%, you're looking at that profit.

Its Not what can I win, It's what can I Lose

The finish, takes longer than I would have liked, almost took my stop and that's why under a low is important.

Here is an example of how the ADR tracking and dividing by 6, will almost always keep you safe. Taking a partial at 200, going breakeven or leaving the stop set has minimised my risk and is almost guaranteeing when you lose, you lose small. The turn and run back to my stop, is what it protects.

I usually don't go breakeven in this case, I allow it one touch, it will move away if even for a short while due to it being an equal low and buy limits will be in that zone. Once it moves away, I lock in the stop to breakeven.

The trade progresses, it needs a bit of New York to do the heavy lifting and it hits the target of 2:1. You can see the increase in volume, text going green and how that translates to more speed with direction. Possibly could have taken another entry, equal low, was over the current POC for that H8 period, but under previous Asian H8 POC, the candle is a spinning top, I already have a position open and I'm almost able to equalise the risk, I'm already at a partial and so reduced exposure but I want more space, a better candle or over the previous session POC. I wouldn't and didn't take this, but either case is a win.

You need to be aware of greed and with time you will realise, there are always more opportunities and that never stops.

If you set that stop in the wrong position because you're trying to size your lot for a target cash value and then you reduce your stop to 500 pip because that is now 2.5%, this is where any strategy will start to have problems.

And there you go Daniel Son, I have given you the keys to the world, you just need to practice for 8000 hours



or a small loan of $8 million from your father



I will add more examples, extras in the coming days...

This a small post on psychology; you have to be open to these self-reflection ideas. It takes a long time to adapt, and you never really, truly change. You still have impulsive thoughts but you can control them, because over time, you have trained your way out, and then with results, it slowly compounds itself and you're less likely to repeat the self-destruction. This may be one of your hardest struggles in life and may be your biggest accomplishment. It will change your life in so many ways, not just trading. Gradually, you will feel your thought process and decisions change. I have had moments of full rage at the computer, smashed a packet of biscuits and I've gone to bed miserable; its not scented candles, meditating peacefulness. It is a real test of yourself, an enormous struggle and requires huge levels of determination to see this through, because only you can solve this and this is ultimately why we look for any possible reason other than this to fix because we ultimately, whether subconsciously or not, are protecting ourselves.

There isn't a single word or sentence that can be said that can fix this for you. You have to fix it yourself and that starts with you being open to the idea.

These two videos are an old British reality TV show, from 2009

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Dollar_Traders

It is modeled on the turtle traders, bringing complete beginners off the street, training them, funding and allowing them to trade.

 

1. One trader has a real problem with discipline; impulsive, impatient and emotional, looking for excuses, rather than admit that they might be the problem.
2. There are a couple of traders with ego's, one emotional too. Ego seems to be the common trait, unless the chance to be on the TV attracts that personality.
3. Someone is struggling with fear, lack of self-discipline and emotional.
4. And there is a trader, who is a disciplined, methodical, structured thinker who doesn't appear to have an ego and is self-reflective. There is an opportunity for them to react, but they have enough self control to stop it..

Part 1
Address you may have to enter this manually or vpn to get it to play, or click on part 2, find part 1 from it, or click watch directly on youtube
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXno18pOHgo"

Part 2


After you have watched part 1 & 2, How much did psychology play a role in the success of their individual trades and their performance as a trader? Ask yourself how much of your training time do you think should be spent on psychology? If you broke aspects of your training into categories, technical, fundamentals, money management, and psychology. What role do you think psychology has on the outcome of your success and how much time have you actually spent on it compared to googling 1 minute gold strategy, high win rate?

There is a reason when being interviewed for a job position, the assessment, the questions, the high pressure environment, it is designed to test and gauge your personality and psychology.

And yet as soon as we are an individual at home, we ignore all of this and blame the broker for liquidity sweeps, or the period setting for RSI, is it 14 or 10, whats the best timeframe for this strategy?

This is why only some of us are left trading after 1,2 or 3 years it's not the strategy or indicator.

If you want to watch the end, part 3 is here (FOMO and quite a lot of ego in this one, if you look for it, examples of self-protecting, excuses for your performance, looking for an excuse to quit - and the WINNER really stands out here).


"How many times do you want to be punched in the face"

Like the common sense approach. Looking forward to what follows.

Win Rate

Is a small topic within itself and leads on to other topics, but I'll try to contain it to only win rate. Depending on how new you are to this, the following figure can be quite surprising:

You need at least 33.3% win rate to break even at a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio. You only have to be right 1 in 3 times. With this, essentially we are a gambler playing the casino, we don't have to be right more than we are wrong, we only have to manage risk.

There is a story of a professional gambler spotting a flaw in a roulette's wheel, from their spin direction, over time, wearing the bearings and the distribution is no longer neutral, with a slight weighting to a certain number. He played the game, with a small win rate, sticking to very strict rules and through involving his family, the wins went into the millions. It needed nothing more than a slight mathematical edge, probabilities, and discipline.



With my psychology, I struggle with a low win rate. I start to doubt and hesitate. At one stage, I was exiting trades early, convinced that it would take stops, so I should cut my losses. This is/was the crux of my problems; from this, I spiralled into months of losses, my account was finally blown, and then fear.

My wins became few and tiny, my losses became often and tiny, but with an occasional stop loss hit, slow death by a thousand cuts.

The high win rate, I also prefer for full-time trading and it is to avoid drawdown. At some stage with a low win rate, you're account is going to go into a negative drawdown scenario. This will be fine for hobby trading, but you can see how this is difficult to manage with everyday life.

With a 33% win rate every 100 trades, you can expect to see 8-10 consecutive losses, with a worst-case drawdown of 25-50% equity drawdown. You can imagine that hitting that period of luck, when the boiler just broke down, the car needs a service, and I need to buy food is somewhat less than perfect.

There is a cycle nearly all traders experience when they start out and I'll try and describe how it went for me and see if it is a familiar story for you? I read an article about gold prices in 2011 and a bitcoin article in a glossy Airline magazine 2013 ish, I never did anything about this interest but I remember it, so it must of had an effect on me. I had my first proper financial problems due to my business being essentially a contract employment role, only one customer and I was always vulnerable to this but I didn't plan for it, so I had no savings as a protection, I had stupid cars but no savings.

I googled how to make "money fast", ignored a few of the suggestions and went with an amazon book that caught my eye "How to Be A Hitman"...

no not really I went with "How to Day Trade For A Living" Andrew Aziz - book is trash don't buy it.

But In the book, MT4/5 was mentioned and in another book Forex Factory 'Calender for news' was mentioned. I installed Mt4/5 cant remember which and ran a demo account on an ipad.

Strategy didn't have a clue, absolutely nothing, I think I was in 1 hour and it was GBPUSD, it was about 17:00 UK time so it was London close and early New York afternoon, after lunch. I though it looked like it was going up and I clicked Buy 1 lot, I checked back 1 hour later and I think i was up by £160, I left the trade open, forgot about it because I was staying in a hotel and away with work. The next day was first Friday of the month, I remembered about it the following week and I checked and it was in the thousands. So, I thought well that was easy! (Non Farm Jobs, letting run, retraced, 3 rd wave, it was a massive trade - pure luck)

When I actually got serious about trading I was reading another book Anna Coulling about Fundamentals, which isn't bad and got me into trading quite frequently. Routinely opening trades every day, always leaving trades open for most of the day or a few days, always hour timeframe, GBPUSD and after 9am London open, I would go with the direction, hands off let it run and leave it to play out.

Because I was doing ok and enjoying it, I started reading more, learning more, adding more indicators, going to lower timeframes for better R:R because forex factory / youtube said so, started using MFI (Money Flow Index) apparently its good for exits but also "On Balance Volume" should be tracked, checking MACD for divergence and I need a long term EMA 200 and ATR, don't forget ATR....the more and more I knew the worse I got.

Started to lose, forgot why and how I was winning to begin with, I wasn't tracking why my trades were losing, starting googling, reading how to stop losses, strategies, youtube playlists "1 minute scalping strategy, high win rate" Fair value fucking gap wap waps, reading forex factory frequently, avoiding high news days, avoiding Fridays, avoiding Tuesdays, ultimately lost the account, wasn't that bothered and I got frustrated, bored and gave up...

100% agree with this. You nailed it.

Trading isn’t a weekend hobby-it’s a full-on discipline. People think they can shortcut the process with a few indicators or by following someone’s trades online. Reality check: that’s not how this works.

I’ve been in the trenches for years, and even now, most of my time goes into journaling, reviewing, and slim work. Live trading is just the tip of the iceberg. The market doesn’t care about your hopes or how badly you want it. If you’re not prepared, it’ll chew you up and spit you out.

And yeah, if you find the process boring, that’s your answer right there. This game rewards obsession, not casual interest. Thousands of hours, deep focus, emotional control-that’s the entry fee. Otherwise, passive investing is probably a better path.

Appreciate you saying it like it is. More people need to hear the unfiltered truth.

IMPORTANT - IF YOU READ ONE MESSAGE IT IS THIS

I hope what I have said so far, the message has been heard but I bet there is a large bunch of traders that having visited the trading systems area, popped over to here, saw first year, saw the win rate, scanned through this and thought boring psychology, looks a pain in the arse, theres no arrow/line telling me what to do, no cross, no EMA, no RSI, not carried on and left for youtube quantStrategies EA. Or read all the way down to here and what have they taken from it? All they remember is that win rate and Cha-ching $$$$.

Either the point about my 1 hour timeframe and the MFI post will not be remembered or the point lost. My system doesn't matter, that 1 hour system was doing well and there are any number of systems doing well, mine will not be the best. There will be even better, there will always be better, if I'm honest, my system, it's probably over-complicated but because its a system that has been backtested, a system I trust, a system that I know very well, a system I have used to successfully and reliably to pay bills for a long time and with the changes to my psychology and self-discipline, I'm not going to change, there is no need to.

If you have taken this point from the last couple of messages, then well done - Mission accomplished, you are dismissed, happy profits Trader.

Going to give an example of the importance of rules, and self-discipline, preparing your rules, adding rules from backtests, journals, reviewing trades etc... Whenever you add a rule, they must be respected, just because it's your rule, it does not disqualify the importance.

Your rules should never be broken - no exceptions, you are a machine.

1. We have a break.
2. We are near the previous Daily High and have rejected from it - This is actually enough for me right here, I'm not taking but I'll continue with the example.
3. Fib value is high 3.22, from the last move down the bottom its 320.2%, 2 minor retraces - its prime profit take / reversal.
4. Volume is decreasing, last volume bar is black, its that low I class as minor and doesn't draw.
5. Volume delta decreasing

Not shown but its 20:45 UK time, almost US close.

Its above 'Point of control', it's moving away, it's done 2000 pips today, it'll do that again tomorrow $$$ its a nice tweezer bottom candle, if I had an internal bias and I decide gold is bullish, its going, don't miss it again, that train is leaving again, take the train, take the money train, before the doors shut, you have time, take the trade, just do it, go on take the trade, it could be a win, all that money.

The ADR is 13055 / 6 = 2176, if I instantly took that trade at close, I didn't take more than 10-20 seconds deciding - there is 2318 (231.8). If I was a sleep at the wheel, not doing my job, didn't move the stop to breakeven, then it's a 1.25% loss.


If this sounds a bit aggressive - Even now, the scars from my journey, the memories, the frustrations, from doing this in the past, over and over the same mistakes. It seems so obvious and easy now, just look at it! How many if offered a lottery win, would take the offer of cash, if all they have to do was stay disciplined and follow their employers rules for 6 months, how many do you think would be successful and finish the 6 months as millionaires? So, why do we not follow our own rules, why do watch netflix in our undies?