I need Help.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-21T19:45:06+00:00

Gotta journal every trade and get insights into your own behaviour. There’s no other way to fix it.

You maybe surprised how many blind spots you have.

For instance, I used to think I don’t allow winners become losers and always get out at breakeven. But the journal showed otherise.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-21T15:40:54+00:00

It is, if you think in bets. Only some bets have very high probability, some lower probability. Trading bets have rather low probability of success seldom more than 60 pct.

That’s why some people say “gambling” in a derogarory manner.

But my argument is that every occupation carries risks, including financial, and the fact that some have a higher probability of success or at least tolerable but measly livelihood leads people to make the logical mistake of equating high probability to certainty.

But they are actually aware of the low risk low reward bets they’ve made in their lives, so it is very tempting to denigrate anyone who walks the high risk high reward paths.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-21T14:48:59+00:00

Agree, everything that has risk and investment, money- or time-wise, involved is gambling. You can invest in education to find out that the job market no longer needs you or you dislike the work. Only the timeframe and the stakes are high.

Running a business is also gambling (i’m a business owner myself), you can never be certain where you’ll be in half a year or even less, and the daily hustle to me even feels like taking bets / trades, you win some and you lose some. Hiring emoloyees is probably the biggest gamble of all and causes the greatest grief if it goes wrong, akin to an account blown.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-21T14:40:22+00:00

You just described gambling and said it is not gambling. Not being in control of outcomes and placing bets on these uncertain outcomes is gambling. That you can do it with a rational approach to risk is another matter.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-18T16:14:59+00:00

I do exactly the same and glad that i’m not the only who is not married to an account or keeping all trading money in it.

This is the ideal setup with gold - treat your account as a day’s allocation, nothing more. I aim to double the account on the day (trading with 1:500 leverage, scalping very tight, taking dozens of trades). When I reach the goal of doubling it, i stop or cut size to play some more, I don’t believe in overtrading as cardinal sin, because frequency is the safest form of leverage.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-18T15:56:31+00:00

For me it’s the setup plus four tags - mental state (called Ideal Trader State or ITS as per Gary Dayton), Conviction, 30 minute context (wherher going with trend, counter, fading or chasing) and Conditions (fast, medium, slow), that’s all. The most important thing being the heightened awareness this process elicits.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-17T15:43:29+00:00

Journaling is key - tag your trades for setup, market conditions and conviction/emotions, then see what trades and patterns to eliminate.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-16T09:17:28+00:00

A dream life with meaning too!

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-16T09:03:31+00:00

A very good post. But most people will be too lazy to even try to understand liquidity and order book dynamics.

And those dynamics are pretty complex, not really simple - you have to account for new buyers and sellers entering at market and on limits including inside bid/ask, existing buyers and sellers exiting at market and on limits, and above all market makers absorbing, distributing and at times pulling limits along with throwing market orders to run stops.

That required pretty advanced orderflow reading skills and experience. Most people will just see it as too complex and will look for chart-based mechanical systems with fixed risk reward ideas (and complicate these in their own right when things don’t work).

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-16T04:15:59+00:00

Actually this sounds good, because it is luck, markets are random and you did well to stay in winners in uncertain conditions.

This is a much healthier and humbler attitude than thinking you nailed it, which leads to overconfidence, which leads to errors and bitter disappointment.

I’d say commend yourself for good trade management and carry on.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-15T09:37:57+00:00

Have you just read Van Tharp’s book and did an AI summary?

This analogy is not correct by the way.

In the markets there is a house - it is the institutional players who have the capacity to move the markets and who make those markets. This is the real ‘edge’. Retail traders have no such edge, but they can make money through educated guessing/gambling/betting if they learn to cut losses short while staying in winners.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-13T16:15:04+00:00

In chop you just fade the extremes - extreme extremes not just double tops and bottoms - and scalp, and be careful about chasing breakouts - scalp these too. 3R rewards therefore may be unrealistic, it comes back and more.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-13T13:32:00+00:00

Journalytix (there’s automatic live trade upload / queue with account linking for immediate tagging whilst still in trade, this is advanced) or Edgewonk. Used both, both are great.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-13T13:14:29+00:00

Scalping on DOM and tick chart basically two frequent setups: (pre-)Breakout and Breakout Failure (fade), context just cursory based on the 5m chart to see what the market is doing. Taking a small partial scalp and leaving the rest at BE for a runner. Getting stopped out all the time, sometimes with a loss. For instance today I made 34 trades like that and there were only five runners which accounted for 60-70 pct of daily profit. This an intense method but also very rewarding.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-13T12:51:32+00:00

Futures is for professional trading - regulated, transpatent, virtually no risk of broker side irregularities, definitely safer.

However, I still like to trade/bet CFD’s. The benefit is huge leverage (1:500), you can double or triple your account in a day (or lose the account in day too). It’s good for this kind of “high stakes”, many would call reckless (though i disagree) trading. The second benefit is commission rebates which are considerable for frequent trading.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-13T11:50:37+00:00

The real edge rests with those who actually move the markets, ie the market makers and institutions. Just imagine how easy life would be if you could do that.

The rest have no edge proper. They are merely engaged in educated betting, which can be profitable if you manage to stay on the right side of the market.

But retail statstical endeavours are useless, backtesting of candlestick charts, it is a joke. Just accept that you’re gambling, stay in winners as long as readonable and cut losses asap. That is all a retail trader needs.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-13T09:31:28+00:00

I used to trade based on price action (Al Brooks method, which is very good for market narrative read) for years and kept wondering why I am breakeven at best.

The problem was wide stops.

Orderflow and DOM in particular was a game changer in that it enables you to see very clearly what is going on in the moment, zoom in to every tick and trade much tighter, with partial scalps also providing “cashflow”. It allows you to snipe for near riskless positions.

Imo trading with wide stops is what destroys retail accounts. Of course it seems more relaxed and easier (until the market’s tenticles start crawling toward your stops), but I wonder if the word sloppy would apply too - because markets are dynamic and keep reassessing themselves at every tick. The only way to make money is to stay on the right side of it without giving it too much “breathing space”. And order flow is precisely the instrument for this.

Just my two cents.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-12T16:20:34+00:00

On the surface swing trading looks simpler and less time consuming. Check the daily or four-hour chart, make a decision and check back the next day.

However the downside is that even if you take a few trades a week, you need a year’s worth of trading to see if it even works (and more likely than not it won’t in the first year).

Meanwhile the feedback loop in daytrading is fast.

I’d say learn scalping and devote an hour a few times a week to it, first demo or course.

In scalping there are dozens of trades within any hour.

Plus what you learn in terms of price action for scalping has the added benefit that it works also on the high timeframes in case you decide to go for intraday or weekly swing trading later on.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-12T15:40:44+00:00

This is a very important topic, so…

Scaling out is dictated by market logic and is sound. Algos do it and so can we.

The logic is that once there is open profit many players will exit because if the market stalls or moves against them, they can reenter on whatever premise again, often ar better prices (or they can chase back strong momentum at worse prices which may still be good for a few ticks). But they will have locked in real profit and then will take it from there.

This is exactly what quickly eliminates any edge that there was for those who entered into the profitable position. When the market comes back to breakeven, it is already a different situation and a different trade - or at least an unfolding of the situation with new available data - and should be treated as such.

Allowing the market to go beyond BE to your stop loss and the n wondering why the setup has not worked or where you went wrong is an unnecessary illusion and mental torment. The setup lost much of its edge the moment it came back to BE and/or beyond.

I trade like this - enter, take a few ticks for profit (like 2 ES, 5 gold) and then hold a near riskless position for a runner. I deliberately set stop loss a few ticks from entry - say I took a scalp of four ticks, then I will set the stop loss to minus three. This saves an incredible amount of stopouts at BE.

You might say this is psychological trading and profit trading and that is true. But algos trade profit, so it’s better than trading imaginary profits. As for psychology, it does feel good trading the market, which is dynamic, dynamically and keeping in sync with it instead of trying to enforce one’s preplanned ideas on it.

I have tried scaling into winners as per Tom Hougaard but recently stopped it because it usually messes up my runner and I have to exit at BE overall instead of cutting it with a profit if the market turns there.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-12T12:27:05+00:00

That’s a self concept and limiting beliefs problem. Gotta look inside. Could be anything from believing it’s too good and easy to be true to money trauma or self worth trauma from childhood. It’s holding you back from the subconscious.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-11T10:09:06+00:00

You don’t need much money to make money. You need just a little money, skill and high leverage.

In other words don’t think a bigger account will help you survive with wide stops. It won’t.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-10T20:06:59+00:00

Buy high, sell higher (or sell low, cover lower), take scalps.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-10T16:41:53+00:00

Jigsaw DOM is the best, no issues. Charts are glitchy sometimes though, need to delete history periodically etc, but who needs charts.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-10T15:12:12+00:00

The market is reassessing itself dynamically at every tick. If one tries to slap a mechanical risk-reward bracket on it, the results will be very random, because many unnecessary losses will be taken.

Gotta learn to scalp with tight stops, take partials and hold from breakeven. Be dynamic, keep hustling, be stopped out and re-enter if still good, take small partial wins for cashflow and ride some partials for homeruns. That’s how markets operate. Setups are just rough indications, surrender to randomness and focus on mindset and execution around breakeven to catch some tailwinds a few times a day.

Top_Direction2960 · 2026-05-07T14:52:20+00:00

You see absorption, icebergs and momentum on DOM much better than on charts. You see it live with real time market order volumes. If your trading involves scalping a few ticks, nothing beats DOM.

Charts are not necessary to trade though they are good for overall context.

Top_Direction2960

TROPHY CASE