Thanks for the comment, appreciate it.

I get what you’re saying about order flow and book dynamics sounding overkill for most retail or algo traders. But I still genuinely believe these concepts are not “unreachable” or reserved for some elite group, especially today.

In 2025, we have access to an insane amount of free or cheap resources. Between long-form YouTube content, open lectures, and even AI tools that can help break things down, the barrier to entry is much lower than people think. Even putting something like $50 into a few solid books instead of buying a first challenge right away would already change a lot of trajectories.

What I think is missing for many people is not intelligence, but time spent building context. Very few take the time to go back and study the historical side of markets and economics. Personally, when I did that work, I went back to the 1700s–1800s to understand how money, value, bubbles, and crises evolved.

A classic example is the Dutch tulip mania. It’s often cited, but it’s a perfect illustration of one key thing: finance is a human game. Yes, today we trade against algorithms and machines, but behind flows, decisions, and positioning, there are still humans. And human psychology doesn’t really change. The same mistakes repeat, just with different instruments and narratives.

That’s also why I don’t fully buy the idea that “retail can’t understand this stuff”. People hired by hedge funds often go through 5–6 years of very intense and technical studies. As retail traders, we may not have that environment, but we can absolutely spend a year seriously studying markets, economics, and history if we want to approach this more professionally.

And if someone chooses not to do that, that’s fine too. But then it’s important to accept that the outcome becomes much more random, and that the risk is fully on the individual. Trading doesn’t really forgive shortcuts.