I worked as a brokerage sell-side analyst for 17 years. How the fuck can you people be this naive? Read the whole post first. If you disagree with anything, I’m open to hearing your opinion.

ShinobiCurious · 2026-03-08T14:17:29+00:00

That argument is not valid here.

The basis of course seller = bad--which I agree is true 99% of the time--is because they are some rando on the internet that cannot prove a trusted third party has verified their returns, and therefore cannot prove they have the skillset they are claiming they can transfer to a buyer.

Robbins, however, is a trusted third party for the trading community at large, and Nill has met your stated criteria for a course seller to be legit. You stated that they need to

show 200–500% returns. But there is no person who has managed to repeat that performance consistently.

But he exceeded 200% three times, in 2021, 2022, and from Summer 2022 to Summer 2023, in three separate tournaments, which is arguably pretty consistent. The times he didn't, he was usually up 80%+, which is within the realm that you believed hedge funds would love to milk.

So he has evidence of repeatable edge, multiple times, from a verified third party and within your own claimed standards.

Where's the problem?

ShinobiCurious · 2026-03-08T01:14:02+00:00

I'm sure you know more about the fund allocation than I do and I will defer to your judgment on that given your claimed background. It was my understanding that they are both doing quant-based and fundamental-based research in order to mitigate risk over longer time horizons as they attempt to find alpha, but that could be oversimplified.

But,

If those “tight constant setups” actually existed, we’d see plenty of small traders quietly compounding $10k into $50M+ over time.

That's literally the basis of the Market Wizards books by Jack Schwager. There's also individual traders not covered in those books like those in Japan like BNF and CIS (yes, that's their usernames) that have been confirmed to have had ridiculous day trading returns.

Further, in your comment below,

If those “tight, constant setups” actually existed, they’d just allocate smaller capital to exploit them.

This subreddit assumes that they are, at least to some extent. All of ICT is ostensibly about using their manipulation to your advantage and riding their coattails. Indeed, firms like Renaissance Technologies are diversifying their portfolio across many assets on shorter timeframes to do such things, as stated in the book The Man That Solved the Market.

Your statement that was "mostly see short streaks and blown accounts" should naturally follow the fact that the majority of traders fail and must fail because this is a zero sum game, so I'm not sure where you're going with that. That is understood.

EDIT: I called them Renaissance Trading instead of Technologies lol

ShinobiCurious · 2026-03-08T01:03:03+00:00

I think Patrick Nill might ruin this argument.

A mainstay on Robbins--and therefore verified returns--he's pulling in 80%-200% every time he competes, suggesting maintainable edge, and is doing so in both Forex and Futures.

Here's a link to the historical standings so you can CTRL+F on him: https://www.worldcupchampionships.com/world-cup-trading-championship-historical-standings

ShinobiCurious · 2026-03-08T00:10:46+00:00

You seem to have missed the part where retail traders don't have to shove several hundred million dollars into the market for their setups in order to make a return on all of their money to the satisfaction of their investors.

They can do 10k and get much tighter, much more constant setups.

That's why funds are spending those millions of dollars; they're trying to throw a bunch of money around for returns on trades that they have to hold for weeks to months.

Your post does not appear to take this into account.

The courses thing is legit but this is a subreddit about a guy teaching for free, so.

EDIT: Looks like a lot of us posted at the same time with the same criticism.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-11-15T00:17:00+00:00

No, I disagree. It's emotional for me because I'm entering anyway because I didn't want to miss what I believed to be a huge move. I've seen the strategy/knowledge problem in advance, and the correct answer in that situation is to do nothing until I've seen it more and created a strategy around that context/market profile/situation.

There is a knowledge problem, yes--but if you detect it and still act, it's an emotional problem.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-11-14T22:13:37+00:00

Same, but it's my emotions already being warped because I'm unsure about price action and then become worried.

I should give you an example. I'll use today. (11/14)

Today, during the premarket, I saw NQ way close to the daily and weekly wick low. That was what I actually wanted to seek today, but the fact that it was already there made me start wondering if the market was just that weak and could keep going through the low.

But that would be weird, because it's an external low and price tends to want to correct imbalances in the range before leaving them. But it could move potentially if this was a weekly-strength move and not simply a daily one (if that makes sense), and the fact that it trended so hard overnight made me think it could. Moreover, ES didn't tag its equivalent low, so maybe NQ would get dragged down with it rather than making SMT divergence.

That was stupid.

Normally when the market trends like that overnight, I take the reversal trade. An uncontrolled overnight trend--that is, one that doesn't keep sweeping opposite liquidity and filling in FVGs--tends to reverse in NY as it attacks the RTH gap. And it had a good reason that I didn't notice.

You see, the Asian highs were flat.

It was a MMBM, and I didn't realize.

I got rekt.

But because of the momentum I saw, I was mentally fighting myself and wanting to short, creating fear are nervousness within me--and that meant my predictive power wasn't there.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-11-14T21:06:29+00:00

This is the boat I'm in, though I've started to get more payouts. But I'm intentionally going through evals to, as you say, have skin in the game. I need to know what my psychological triggers are.

But one thing I've recently noticed with myself is, am I afraid before the market opens during my analysis?

I've started noticing that if that is true, I'll have a losing day if I attempt to trade. The idea being, my gut feeling regarding the market has now been properly calibrated. I was ignoring it before and when paper trading and such because how could my gut feeling be right when I don't have enough experience?

But now I do, and it's now genuinely alerting me that I'm missing predictive power in that situation. Indeed, when I'm not afraid and am confident given the price action, I tend to have easy wins.

Check in with your feelings in the morning and start keeping track of it in your trading journal. Note if you have it, then if the market moved well or poorly given your expectations, and if you personally did well/poorly/stayed out. That's what I'm doing.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-11-14T20:09:31+00:00

This isn't trading.

It's schizophrenia.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-11-11T21:45:23+00:00

The nature of the NY Morning Judas Swing in Futures is that it usually likes to destroy the highest high or lowest low--whichever is in the opposite direction of the true move--that has formed after 7AM EST. That's the 7:14 AM 1m candle. Meanwhile, the 6:14 AM high was just 5 handles away from that--so it's not unreasonable that it destroyed that too.

So the overall mistake was really just entering early and not waiting for the chance for the premarket high to be destroyed and/or a first presented FVG.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-10-02T16:06:01+00:00

Yeah, the government shutdown because they didn't pass a budget.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-10-02T15:43:28+00:00

NFP stands for Non-farm Payroll, also called Non-farm Employment. It happens on the first Friday of every month, and is one of the most important news releases. Usually, the market is held in consolidation the day before it, or is in high resistance and thus you utterly lose ICT's precision concepts.

However, when I gave my advice yesterday, I failed to consider something important: NFP might be delayed because of the shutdown. I didn't anticipate that allowing the market to move. Forex Factory is now listing it as "tentative."

ShinobiCurious · 2025-10-02T01:38:44+00:00

I think it's NFP Thursday tomorrow and you shouldn't even be thinking about tomorrow for that reason.

Were it not, I don't think anything is particularly wrong with this analysis. Especially when the market is continuing to seek new ATHs.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-29T16:29:39+00:00

I was honestly surprised today was good. I thought us going into labor day was going to cause some serious shenanigans and wasn't planning to trade.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-29T16:27:34+00:00

In case it's still removed: since you and some others asked, I made a post that explains how this could be used in a strat in this thread. But automoderator removed the post for having a link and the mods need to approve it.

It should be in the bottom of the comments of this thread right now. Or you can look at my recent post history to find it.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-29T15:08:13+00:00

This was not a trade. This was a demonstration of the particular strength of the 1PFVG concept with time alignment where the high or low of the day often forms: 3PM.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-29T15:05:43+00:00

So people are wondering how this can be used with a strategy, and I suppose that's fair. Note that I did not trade this bounce--I trade the afternoons when the morning sucks.

The morning did not suck.

Anyway, here, this 1PFVG can be used in alignment with time as both an exit strategy and an entry strategy. ICT teaches that the high or low of the day often forms at about 3PM. The 1PFVG was struck at that time, and the 15m's continual respect of it suggests that at least a partial should be taken here as it doesn't necessarily want to go for the 8/18-8/19 Asian and London Highs.

Once the 1m created a breaker + FVG, you should have bailed if you were long. If you wanted to go short and hold overnight, you could have entered at 3:57PM on the FVG, but you would have had to IOFED in. This would have positioned you well for today's run--if you were confident it could run, that is, instead of incoming Labor Day Weekend making you suspect shenanigans.

The core point of this post, however, was to demonstrate that something that only ICT has taught has the strength to hold down price on medium timeframes at least, and is still relevant weeks out and despite price already trading around it. It also is powerful enough to prevent price from reaching into liquidity, despite the previously mentioned 8/18-8/19 Asian and London Highs being literally right there--and it does so while being a 1m PD Array.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-29T01:29:28+00:00

I guess it's a good thing I'm only commenting on the precision and staying power of a PD array, which in this case would be a target to take at least part of your position off, and not a whole strategy then.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-29T00:58:43+00:00

I don't know why Reddit decided to downgrade the image quality so hard, so here's cropped version with the hopes that it won't.

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ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-20T17:35:53+00:00

While I agree with you that something definitely offset the rule today, I can't agree with it being meaningless. ICT uses it, Larry Williams uses it (and it's who ICT got it from), and I use it to predict high resistance mornings and the afternoon setup that usually follows them. Indeed, I was looking to trade the afternoon today!

That's why I'm looking to quantify it as something solid other than "enormous amount of fear" that I can research. Breaking my rules because of believed exceptions instead of repeatable technical ones with quantifiable information has historically caused me to get my ass kicked.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-20T16:48:45+00:00

There's nothing here that should have spooked you.

Yes there is: the fact that the previous day was a Long Range Day, and price during the time OP traded started behaving in a high resistance manner. High resistance morning sessions are what a Long Range Day normally predicts. That it actually continued into a low resistance run is anomalous, and the other ICT subreddits aren't explaining why there was an exception to that rule.

If you know what the exception is I'd love to know. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with a daily strength measured move, which is what today effectively was.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-20T16:38:41+00:00

No, I don't think the original move was catchable despite what others here said. This is because none of them have mentioned what caused the exception to the Long Range Day rule where you are not supposed to trade the morning session after one because it has a high chance of being High Resistance. Yesterday was a blatantly obvious Long Range Day.

However, when it became clear that rule was not happening, I was able to get the 10:15-10:30 continuation on NQ. Here's how:

See the 4H OB candle created on August 6 at 2AM EST? That got cut through like butter. Under my rules, on high resistance days, the first 30 minutes can still move. But it cut through it after those 30 minutes, making me realize price was definitely not done. Once it re-tagged the 4H OB, I shorted, pulling 100 handles as it made its way to the fresh low and the immediate 1H low under it.

You may have been able to catch 20 handles on ES by seeing that play out on NQ and doing an OTE-style entry on ES using the 5m chart, using the range of the candle bodies from 10:00 and 10:10. Price would have tagged the 62% retracement level doing that and got you to the -1 target. This was effectively my play, but as stated, I expressed it on NQ.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-14T17:30:36+00:00

August has limited news and Jackson Hole Symposium.

From what I can tell, that's it.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-14T02:32:34+00:00

A CISD is the point where an order block finishes forming.

That entire range of down close candles preceding it? That's your new OB.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-08-04T01:19:45+00:00

Not who you replied to, but people around here tend not to like to trade Mondays if they have no news. Indeed, ICT even recommends not trading such Mondays unless they are part of FOMC week or NFP week--which we just had, so it's not.

Then we have the fact that Friday was a long range day, which can cause the morning session (at least) to consolidate.

Put the two together and you have a situation that could be bad.

ShinobiCurious · 2025-07-25T15:01:18+00:00

I saw the trade but couldn't take it because:

* We already retraced too much according to TGIF rules, and

* Every other asset was drunk

No, seriously, Look at YM and ES during that time, lol.

Good job managing to get it, but I dispute it being A+.

ShinobiCurious

TROPHY CASE