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Living in China, trading for a living 18 replies

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Trading for a living

  • #361
  • Oct 27, 2025 4:27pm Oct 27, 2025 4:27pm
Hello

I am a new day trader, I want to work to profitability and have this become a new source of income so I don't worry about money that my goal with day trading.

I'm currently trading with prop firms but I can't simply get good setups and just struggle sometimes all around, I know that is what comes with trading but I feel like I can put myself at a better advantage of I get some guidance and help with understanding a bit more

I try and look up other things but get bombarded with information and at times it can be overwhelming and just to much and it feels like everyone is talking about something else that will make you money but It feels like they are all just selling me courses

I know pretty much the basics going into advanced, ive been trading for about almost a year I just feel like I'm not doing it properly
  • #362
  • Oct 27, 2025 6:56pm Oct 27, 2025 6:56pm
Man let me tell you this. its everyone's dream to trade make lots of money so they dnt have to work and worry about money. thats the dream that get suckers into the market so that the stock market can remain a trillion-dollar industry. without proper guidance u are going to fail a lot. I see you said u couldn't find proper setups... I dnt know what you are looking for but setups have been happening every day. trading is not for everybody, but people want easy so bad that they will lose everything to get it. this market will suck you dry man I lost a lot of money before I became profitable, I was broke I had to take a break and come back. so let me tell u this practice practice practice until u become profitable on demo then practice practice practice until u become consistent in demo, it's the only way there is no golden key every strategy works it's the user why it fails u have to really have your mind trained for this and your emotions in check only way to do that is practice and be consistent then u will be ready practice in mt5 and trading view every single day no days off until u get it because the only teacher that is going to teach you this is FAILUR. And last thing the only time you ever really lose in the market is when u give up.
  • #363
  • Oct 28, 2025 2:21am Oct 28, 2025 2:21am
Quoting Thtpro
{quote} Of course it is - if professional fund managers would massively struggle to actually trade for a living and they are meant to have all the up to date knowledge on markets - it tells you you don't need to know a jot about anything...
I completely disagree, Managing a fund or a trading desk are completely different skill sets from what is required for day/swing trading. So the comparison is pointless.

And I recall a personal acquaintance and manager of an fx desk who readily admitted he wouldn't be able to day/swing trade, but made lots of money for his firm. He just never had any need to develop the skill set needed to be an individual trader. But in many ways he knew more about the markets than you or I.
  • #364
  • Oct 28, 2025 2:49am Oct 28, 2025 2:49am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} I like the mousetrap metaphor, and I would definitely support the five points mentioned. Unfortunately, my life is anything but balanced. From a purely objective point of view, and given the given circumstances—especially the lack of capital but also a profitable trading strategy—this does indeed seem to be hard to do.
I am glad, for your sake, that you are starting to realise how challenging "trading for a living" actually is.
  • #365
  • Edited 3:31am Oct 28, 2025 3:01am | Edited 3:31am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} Could that be it? https://youtube.com/shorts/LGJFCt5Nt...Mufoz8DRE0dEyY
Tom Hougaard's teachings about trading psychology are really valuable, and I really enjoyed listening to his Best Loser Wins as an audiobook.

At the same time he is a good example of how challenging trading can be. He trades big size, and has made lots of money over the years. Yet an independent analysis of his 2025 live trading (on Telegram for free) reveals minimal profits ($3956 over 9 months), while somebody who copied his every trade claimed 8% return.

So read/listen to his book (downloadable for free as a pdf), and learn from his psychology principles, but stay away from his strategies and trading.

But the real bottom line is: if someone with decades of experience and exceptional psychological training struggles to show consistent profitability in transparent live trading, this tells you about how difficult trading actually is.
  • #366
  • Oct 28, 2025 3:19am Oct 28, 2025 3:19am
Quoting medici
{quote} I completely disagree, Managing a fund or a trading desk are completely different skill sets from what is required for day/swing trading. So the comparison is pointless. And I recall a personal acquaintance and manager of an fx desk who readily admitted he wouldn't be able to day/swing trade, but made lots of money for his firm. He just never had any need to develop the skill set needed to be an individual trader. But in many ways he knew more about the markets than you or I.
I'm not comparing them - I'm saying that if we forced all finance professionals in the world to trade most would end up failing as per the stats of the retail failure rate

The point I'm inferring and making is that it doesn't matter how clever a person is, how many degrees in this that and the other they might have - when it comes to trading, EVERYONE is on the same equal footing and only those that figure it out survive, hopefully before their money runs out

To be honest being intellectually smart is more likely to be a major hindrance, because they try to outsmart
  • #367
  • Oct 28, 2025 3:30am Oct 28, 2025 3:30am
Quoting Thtpro
{quote} I'm not comparing them - I'm saying that if we forced all finance professionals in the world to trade most would end up failing as per the stats of the retail failure rate The point I'm inferring and making is that it doesn't matter how clever a person is, how many degrees in this that and the other they might have - when it comes to trading, EVERYONE is on the same equal footing and only those that figure it out survive, hopefully before their money runs out To be honest being intellectually smart is more likely to be a major hindrance,...
Yes, but the problem is that you are dressing personal opinion up as if it's based on evidence. But could you please present some dependable evidence that is actually relevant for the point you are "inferring and making"? I can certainly think of counter-examples to your claims.
  • #368
  • Oct 28, 2025 3:30am Oct 28, 2025 3:30am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} Could that be it? https://youtube.com/shorts/LGJFCt5Nt...Mufoz8DRE0dEyY
Part of it - I'm not a fan of Tom's - but he is right about how you think, most people panic or make irrational decisions

You have to have a method that works, that method has to have a positive expectancy and you can pyramid positions for greater gains that is true - If you think about what I've been saying, what he refers to there is being position on a price move and riding the price move which will be some sort of trend and cycle

WD Gann did that

Tom states its not about charts, yet he uses them lol or last time I looked at his work in the 2010's he did
  • #369
  • Oct 28, 2025 3:56am Oct 28, 2025 3:56am
Quoting medici
{quote} Yes, but the problem is that you are dressing personal opinion up as if it's based on evidence. But could you please present some dependable evidence that is actually relevant for the point you are "inferring and making"? I can certainly think of counter-examples to your claims.
Well I can't do that - unless for the next 2 years we forced everyone who thinks they can trade to trade and then we'd be able to see the results

But I'd be willing to bet that the 90-95% stat exists in that group too
  • #370
  • Edited 4:36am Oct 28, 2025 4:19am | Edited 4:36am
Quoting Thtpro
{quote} Well I can't do that - unless for the next 2 years we forced everyone who thinks they can trade to trade and then we'd be able to see the results But I'd be willing to bet that the 90-95% stat exists in that group too
Now you are really confusing things - people who think they can trade with finance professionals. What's the point? Most finance professionals don't have trading on their job description, and so wouldn't claim to know how to trade. And those who do have trading on their job description do, in my experience, really know how to trade.

In other words, the point you are "inferring and making" even lacks logical basis as an evidence based question. If you had been awarded one of those degrees you claim irrelevant, you wouldn't be wasting your time on such nonsense.

But I'll fill in the gap for you:

Karl Popper's falsification is a principle in the philosophy of science that states a theory must be testable and able to be proven false through observation or experimentation. This approach distinguishes scientific theories from non-scientific claims, emphasising that scientific knowledge is provisional and subject to revision based on new evidence.

In other words, your claims are not falsifiable and therefore not possible to be substantiated by anything else than unfounded opinion.

Unless, of course, you are claiming that a substantial part of those who trade for a living as employees and earn substantial six or seven figure salaries for it actually can't trade!?
  • #371
  • Oct 28, 2025 5:04am Oct 28, 2025 5:04am
Quoting medici
{quote} Now you are really confusing things - people who think they can trade with finance professionals. What's the point? Most finance professionals don't have trading on their job description, and so wouldn't claim to know how to trade. And those who do have trading on their job description do, in my experience, really know how to trade. In other words, the point you are "inferring and making" even lacks logical basis as an evidence based question. If you had been awarded one of those degrees you claim irrelevant, you wouldn't be wasting your...
No those that trade for a living can trade - you are misrepresenting what I wrote

You take EVERY single academic who works in finance, including economists and you'll find 90-95% of them crash and burn just like Joe Public does in retail land

I was never talking about professional traders at Institutions - I was talking about all those people who think they understand the markets, yet do not trade them

People tell you you can't trade with Indicators, yet I can prove them wrong with one chart example - again those people in the Industry who claim that, most likely don't trade

Just because someone can quote this scientific paper or peer approved paper doesn't make them an expert trader - it makes them knowledgeable, but there's absolutely no guarantee that can be transferred to successfully trading the markets

There's traders out there - because I have their published work - who have far outsmarted the world of academia, will they ever get recognised? most likely not, but the crucial thing is they can actually trade too - so not everything needs to come from the world of academia
  • #372
  • Oct 28, 2025 6:09am Oct 28, 2025 6:09am
Quoting medici
{quote} Tom Hougaard's teachings about trading psychology are really valuable, and I really enjoyed listening to his Best Loser Wins as an audiobook. At the same time he is a good example of how challenging trading can be. He trades big size, and has made lots of money over the years. Yet an independent analysis of his 2025 live trading (on Telegram for free) reveals minimal profits ($3956 over 9 months), while somebody who copied his every trade claimed 8% return. So read/listen to his book (downloadable for free as a pdf), and learn from his psychology...
Yes, I know the book, I've read it. I followed Tom H.'s videos and Telegram channel for some time. I never found his trading style replicable. He seems to me to be a discretionary chart reader who mainly focuses on day trading stock indices. I never tried to copy his “signals” because my primary interest is to find a trading plan that works for me and is sufficiently profitable, and I am less interested in a signal service.

He has published a few strategies with fixed rules that are more mechanical in nature. One of them is also an ORB approach: https://www.tradertom.com/resource/b...ow-index-open/

I backtested it 1-2 years ago but didn't get any profitable results.

His psychological/mindset lessons are indeed good, but without a profitable strategy, they don't seem to help me much. I've also read all the stuff by Mark Douglas, etc. For 2-3 years, I absorbed content on trading psychology and mindset almost every day. For me, therefore, the cornerstone of everything seems to be less psychology and more a profitable strategy. A strategy that is not sufficiently profitable will not improve with even the best psychology.

Then, secondly, there is the question of how much capital I need and where I can get it from. Prop trading seems to be the only way for me to get the necessary capital. That means I would also need a reliable company and a strategy that works with it. At least until I could pull enough money out of it to put some into my own account to build up capital and at the same time still have my fixed costs paid. As I said, I want/have to earn at least 5-10k gross per month from trading before taxes, otherwise it wouldn't be worth it for me at all.

I know how difficult it is, but I don't see any suitable alternative. A regular job is difficult for me (I suffer from recurring depression and panic attacks since my early 20s). What kind of employer needs such people? A regular job with a fixed salary would also not provide the financial independence I am looking for, let alone enable me to live a reasonably good life. I have no university degree and would perhaps get a little more than minimum wage if I were to apply for a job in the traditional job market here. I'd earn maybe €2,800 gross or so. That wouldn't even be enough for my current standard of living, let alone the life-upgrade I actually want. I'd still have debt, still wouldn't be able to go on vacation. As a retiree (assuming I could manage to work somewhere for the next 27 years), I would be financially more concerned with surviving than living. It's kind of frustrating.
  • #373
  • Oct 28, 2025 7:27am Oct 28, 2025 7:27am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} Yes, I know the book, I've read it. I followed Tom H.'s videos and Telegram channel for some time. I never found his trading style replicable. He seems to me to be a discretionary chart reader who mainly focuses on day trading stock indices. I never tried to copy his “signals” because my primary interest is to find a trading plan that works for me and is sufficiently profitable, and I am less interested in a signal service. He has published a few strategies with fixed rules that are more mechanical in nature. One of them is also an ORB approach:...
I understand why you're looking at algo so much now. If you suffer from anxiety, depression, stay well away from trading, you're doing the right thing, as far as that is concerned. To acknowledge your personality is not suitable but still need money, must be tough for you. I'd like to help you more but I know next to nothing about algo and what works. All the purchasable, on the market algo options are rubbish, no refunds?
  • #374
  • Oct 28, 2025 7:39am Oct 28, 2025 7:39am
I know you're not ctrader but his gets talked about on ctrader discord a lot.

ctrader you can run cli bots Linux capable, Open Api and Fix-Api

Might be able to copy it, figure out what it is

https://ctrader.com/products/1759?la...843&theme=dark

https://ctrader.com/products/1960?la...843&theme=dark
  • #375
  • Edited 7:59am Oct 28, 2025 7:49am | Edited 7:59am
Quoting Thtpro
{quote} No those that trade for a living can trade - you are misrepresenting what I wrote You take EVERY single academic who works in finance, including economists and you'll find 90-95% of them crash and burn just like Joe Public does in retail land I was never talking about professional traders at Institutions
Yes, you were, because you were making sweeping generalisations.

Quote
There's traders out there - because I have their published work - who have far outsmarted the world of academia, will they ever get recognised? most likely not, but the crucial thing is they can actually trade too - so not everything needs to come from the world of academia

Again, you have no clue what you are talking about. What you don't know, in particular, is the collaborative work between academic institutions and investment firms that never reaches the public eye. And you have no clue about what all the people with PhDs in exotic subjects like nuclear physics or astronomy, who get hired in droves by investment firms, are doing to justify their hefty compensation.

But what I hear, or am I wrong. is that you would like your genius recognised!?

In ant case, why don't you make claims about things you know something about for a change?
  • #376
  • Oct 28, 2025 8:34am Oct 28, 2025 8:34am
Quoting medici
{quote} Yes, you were, because you were making sweeping generalisations. {quote} Again, you have no clue what you are talking about. What you don't know, in particular, is the collaborative work between academic institutions and investment firms that never reaches the public eye. And you have no clue about what all the people with PhDs in exotic subjects like nuclear physics or astronomy, who get hired in droves by investment firms, are doing to justify their hefty compensation. But what I hear, or am I wrong. is that you would like your genius...

I've never met any traders with academic backgrounds, nor any traders without such training, who have been able to make a living from trading long-term, let alone be profitable, so I can't comment on that.

I think what Thtpro was saying is that an academic background is no guarantee of success in the field, and that the majority of financial experts, analysts etc. (think of the people who discuss their forecasts and hot tips on CNBC and Bloomberg TV all day long) with academic backgrounds would fare just as poorly in trading in the long run as the majority of other traders. He may not have necessarily meant the group of academic traders who actually trade for for an institution (think of Hedge Funds, Prop Firm, Brokers, Investment Banks etc.)

I tend to agree. Academic training (in any field) is no guarantee of success. On the contrary, some of the most successful people of our time (if you define successful as financially strong) do not seem to have had a picture-perfect academic career.

Examples of successful individuals without degrees or who dropped out of college

  1. Bill Gates: Dropped out of Harvard to co-found Microsoft.
  2. Mark Zuckerberg: Dropped out of Harvard to co-found Facebook.
  3. Steve Jobs: Dropped out of college to co-found Apple.
  4. Henry Ford: Never finished high school, founded the Ford Motor Company.
  5. Richard Branson: Dropped out of high school and founded the Virgin Group.
  6. Oprah Winfrey: Had a difficult childhood and limited formal education before becoming a media mogul.
  7. Walt Disney: Dropped out of high school to pursue his career.
  8. Michael Dell: Dropped out of college to found Dell Corporation.
  9. Thomas Edison: Had only three months of formal schooling and became a prolific inventor and entrepreneur.

  • #377
  • Oct 28, 2025 8:38am Oct 28, 2025 8:38am
Quoting Thtpro
To be honest being intellectually smart is more likely to be a major hindrance, because they try to outsmart
That's what I meant when I initially wrote, the feeling of knowing so much but all this knowledge has so far helped me little in achieving my trading goals.

I think in trading you are not necessarily paid to know things, but to execute! And what you do execute should simply be profitable (have an advantage). I think that's the whole "secret." Still, it's surprisingly difficult to find actually something like that. (at least for me).
  • #378
  • Oct 28, 2025 8:50am Oct 28, 2025 8:50am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} I've never met any traders with academic backgrounds, nor any traders without such training, who have been able to make a living from trading long-term, let alone be profitable, so I can't comment on that. I think what Thtpro was saying is that an academic background is no guarantee of success in the field, and that the majority of financial experts, analysts etc. (
No, that's not what he's saying, but something completely different:

"The point I'm inferring and making is that it doesn't matter how clever a person is, how many degrees in this that and the other they might have - when it comes to trading, EVERYONE is on the same equal footing."

For that he has no evidence, and has not attempted to present any. it's just opinion, and he doesn't seem to realise that.
  • #379
  • Oct 28, 2025 8:59am Oct 28, 2025 8:59am
Quoting medici
{quote} No, that's not what he's saying, but something completely different: "The point I'm inferring and making is that it doesn't matter how clever a person is, how many degrees in this that and the other they might have - when it comes to trading, EVERYONE is on the same equal footing." For that he has no evidence, and has not attempted to present any. it's just opinion, and he doesn't seem to realise that.
You don't need to be intelligent to trade; if anything, I think you are worse, you overanalyze everything. Markets are presented to you as a visual representation of human psychology; if you are intelligent, this at some stage gets forgotten or ignored.

To trade effectively, you have to behave like a pilot, follow all procedures, checklists, no rules are broken, not emotional, don't panic and be patient and practice, train.


I'm agreeing by the way
  • #380
  • Oct 28, 2025 9:06am Oct 28, 2025 9:06am
Quoting M31
{quote} I understand why you're looking at algo so much now. If you suffer from anxiety, depression, stay well away from trading, you're doing the right thing, as far as that is concerned. To acknowledge your personality is not suitable but still need money, must be tough for you. I'd like to help you more but I know next to nothing about algo and what works. All the purchasable, on the market algo options are rubbish, no refunds?
It doesn't have to be an algorithmic system per se, but if it requires manual execution, it must be executable within the limited time available to me each day and lead to the required results overall.

Yes, depression and anxiety are shit, and you'd probably say that trading isn't the right thing. The thing is, everything else offers little alternative to what I imagine a successful/independent life to be. As I said, a traditional career in a permanent job is difficult in itself because I would have a hard time finding the flexibility and money I need there. It's not like I haven't tried and done that for a while.

I think the systems available for purchase on common retail trading platforms are all more or less junk, yes. The ORB system I purchased and tried to adapt a bit doesn't seem to be as great as I thought. I'm a bit confused at the moment because my backtests are showing even worse results than my forward demo trading results since the beginning of August. In my own backtests of the system on the stock indices (which it's actually designed for), the backtests from January 2024 to today only yield a profit factor of 1.0-1.4 (depending on the parameters used). I think that's not good and the low profitability would be eaten up by trading costs alone. Even though my demo accounts don't currently reflect that. It's actually quite profitable despite the trading fees. But maybe it's just been luck so far, I don't know.

I've now backtested Gold more intensively with it, and it still seems to be performing poorly (also backtest results from January 2024 to today.), despite the paradoxical results I'm currently seeing on my demo accounts, where Gold is actually contributing to the highest profitability compared to the DAX or NASTAQ.
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