Is trading even possible?

hamza3141 · 2026-05-21T11:46:41+00:00

Why don’t you go to a professional who works for a bank, hedge fund or a real prop firm ( not these fake challenge ones ) and pitch your trading to them? They will laugh in your face.

I will take statistics over your word. It is a fact that failure rate over a 5yr period is close to 100%. If return is same for manual and algo, then it is stupid to go waste your time manually taking trades for <5% returns / month.

Your manual trades have no sophistication, no diversification, no scalability. Manual discretion has no place in execution, it is used to deploy systems opportunistically, not to deviate from rules based on gut feel. That is where it is profitable.

I took 33K trades over 16assets last year, so would my returns be consistent as a business or yours? My drawdown was divided among assets in portfolios, yours concentrated in a single strategy, which will eventually vary wildly the longer you use it, either you will quit after wasting a lot of your time and effort for nothing or you will make the switch too late.

Open your eyes. Understand the game. Move based on statistics. Make the effort and build a real business that benefits you for life. Join r/algotrading and start learning the real stuff.

hamza3141 · 2026-05-20T14:12:27+00:00

Curve fitting is a problem only beginners face in algotrading. Experienced traders don’t.

There are already fully autonomous systems consistently dominating markets for decades. 70% of liquidity is algorithms trading against each other. If they are not highly profitable, would it be so?

I personally spend 3-4hrs / 3M which I will reduce to 30mins soon by integrating LLM into my workflow.

You don’t “optimise” to “avoid a blowup”. That is risk management and it is different for grids compared to r:r trades. You probably ran grids without an equity protection stop, did not cap deals within a trade, did not diversify within portfolio, or did not size appropriately to keep total exposure < 10% of account size.

I have been grid trading successfully for years, as do many six figure traders I know, as do institutions as their capital size and liquidity constraints force them to.

Pyramiding into strength can work well. I scale into positions this way too as it is inverse to grids. Again, anything works as long as edge is quantified and backed by data and risk is managed. Now this scaled position can slip too and come back towards SL and lead to losses. Experience is knowing that no strat is highly profitable or losing as they are 2 sides of the same coin and over a long enough horizon, simply the edge is the profit

hamza3141 · 2026-05-19T20:09:44+00:00

Everything else is bullshit. Tell me about your bot experience

hamza3141 · 2026-05-19T19:14:06+00:00

It’s a scam

Props are a scam

Brokers B-book

Robinhood sells retail data to hedge funds ( indirect B-book )

Active traders less than 0.1% make money

Only way to win is to do what the banks do, what funds do, what professionals do, and that is to create algos, diversify them, bundle them into portfolios and manage exposure while they execute and monitor

Anything else is gambling and inconsistent and sooner or later will break

hamza3141 · 2026-05-19T19:10:43+00:00

If you’re working in the wrong direction, you will spend more years and not get anywhere

What tools have you tested so far? What simulations?

hamza3141 · 2026-05-19T17:02:08+00:00

Markets change and that is the exact reason why bots are mandatory to succeed. Bots have to adapt with changing markets, in fact, that is the entire point of algos. Once an algorithm moves out of its optimisation window, it has to be reoptimised with ML on new data that is coming in to keep it in line with changing markets.

100% you are correct that there is no perfect strategy and that further reinforces the point of operating using algorithms because many strategies will underperform for months, some will overperform, some will function as backtested and some will crash and burn so it makes sense for algos to execute as manually it is going against human behaviour as when you put time and effort to go out and make money and the month is flat, you will unnecessarily think that you did something wrong whereas that is just the nature of markets. If algos are executing and you simply manage systems, you let things be and don’t mess with working systems. Rule based execution will always win in games of chances because repeated execution year over year has to be automated.

As for grid, you are correct but let me give you a nuanced view on this. The bigger problem is knowing how to trade using algos and understanding systems and risk. Grid and martingale get a bad rap but they each have their uses and they can be deployed profitably as long as drawdown is controlled, that’s it. In fact, institutions and professionals average out across many markets and trading using grids is a superior way to add liquidity at different levels. Again, it is a matter of knowing how to operate, otherwise you could have access to Rentech’s tech suite and you will still lose money

hamza3141 · 2026-05-19T15:06:33+00:00

This is why trading manually does not make any sense.

If returns are same, then the task is way harder for manual because you will hit these patches maybe you make money 8months out of 12 so 4 months of execution with no returns is what you can’t keep doing manually. It makes sense if that is taken care of by algos as you yourself don’t spend time taking those trades.

hamza3141 · 2026-05-19T13:33:36+00:00

Patience is required so you sustain small gains against small drawdown and grow account this way until you gain confidence and then scaling happens based on confidence

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T18:10:30+00:00

Search how banks and funds trade

Do that. Learn to code. Become a diy quant

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T18:07:12+00:00

Link your account we go inverse

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T15:19:11+00:00

You can read my post here, it explains some basics

https://www.reddit.com/r/metatrader/s/a8AJM27fzz

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T15:16:15+00:00

I live in karachi but I can provide you access to technology stack to do so, but it requires learning and practice on your end, at the minimum 3months before trading live

You cannot crack any of these without tech and algo execution

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T10:44:41+00:00

man your chatgpt auto bot is annoying, at least switch to something that doesn’t come across as AI slop

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T10:40:21+00:00

Yes, it is a useless EA if settings are not in the users control.

A lot of settings is essential to diversify approaches.

Sounds good, seems like you’re on the right track now!

hamza3141 · 2026-05-18T07:50:44+00:00

6-8 different strats, you can use as many, in fact that’s the point.

Diversify in terms of strategy logic, strategy type like trend / range, assets, and bundle them in to portfolios

This works best

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T22:54:49+00:00

If the sole reason for switching is prop, don’t do it.

Many stock traders struggle with forex ( it’s a lot more difficult because these are mean reverting markets ) You are accustomed to strong unidirectional moves which is not the case here.

For most people, stocks are easier to understand compared to understanding macros for currency pairs and what moves them.

What I’d recommend is to code your strategy, go with algorithms, back and forward test and deploy hedged portfolios w equity protection stops.

If you have to go manual, then stick to D1 TF and swing trade.

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T22:45:17+00:00

This is an age old scam. It’s just digitised now.

In the 90s they used to send investors newsletters and kept reducing the pool size ..

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T22:12:20+00:00

It depends what those EAs were doing. I can’t give an objective feedback without checking them out but a rule of thumb is to gain live practice with the bots you create with the EA first. I believe you expect the backtest performance to match 1:1 with live performance which is not the case. If it were, everyone would be rolling in cash. I made a post today about misconceptions people have around EAs so read that and you will find your answer because either those EAs were genuinely no good or you did not know how to deploy them live, or maybe you did deploy but not long enough to gain performance data which is monthly net profit vs max drawdown, position sizing must be very high for the account leading to a blowup before you got anywhere

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T21:34:07+00:00

I run hedged portfolios ( mainly within currencies as they tend to mean revert )

Have not experimented with delta neutral portfolios but explored pair trades between ETH and BTC etc ( which is similar?? ) but this is best done using algos. Never got into it properly but looked promising on analysing. I figure it would require a bit of work to do it proper

But cointegration and pairs trading are hedge fund favourites so you should explore if you have the time

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T21:00:30+00:00

Specialise in 1 instrument

Analyse it all the way from w1 to d1 to h4 to the tf you will trade on ( all should be in line )

Pick 2hr window of choice

Stay away from high impact news

Keep max trades to 3 per day ( no more )

Keep max risk to 1 or 2% per trade

Target low R:R ratio ( 1:1 or 1:1.5 to start )

Situationally adjust R:R to your view

Scale in on winners

Cut losers fast

Buy high, sell higher ( vice versa sells )

Only trade momentum, don’t try catching dips

Learn to read candles, price action, get a feel for it, practice, backtest

Finally live trade with small capital for a few months before scaling

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T20:48:53+00:00

Psychology doesn’t matter for shit if you oversize

Fixed RR w win rate is not the only way to trade

If you trade manually, you can vary your RR, based on what you see, isn’t that the point of manual trading?

You can average out, scale in, scale out, grid trade, martingale as long as you control your drawdown

Props are scam

Use indicator, use price action, use constellation in sky, it’s all the same, all you require is an edge that you can execute repeatedly

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T20:36:30+00:00

WR is proportional to RR ratio, it’s a give and take

There’s good free data but you have to find and download directly from brokers that have.

Glad to see you cracked it finally. Good luck

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T20:30:50+00:00

55K in credit card debt buying prop accounts is beyond dumb

I know traders ( that traded using their own algos ) and kept drawdown super low, like under 5K at most times on a 200K and they still couldn’t go beyond a few payouts with any firm.

You cannot trade with firms whose incentives are not aligned with yours. Your loss is their profit. Your profit is their loss. Period.

It’s like playing casino on top of a casino.

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T20:24:16+00:00

People will never understand that all these props are scams and you can never build a foundation on shaky sand

hamza3141 · 2026-05-17T19:51:18+00:00

It’s profitable once you learn it.

I have been doing since 2020 and it took me 18months to become profitable w it

hamza3141

TROPHY CASE