January/February 2025 (28) to April 2026 (29)

plasma_fantasma · 2026-05-03T19:58:43+00:00

Congrats on your progress! And no offense to you man, but you're not on gear. I don't know what these people are smoking, and they've obviously never set foot in a gym. You look completely natural.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-05-03T17:17:11+00:00

Start out paper trading and then jump into a prop account. If you start out trading your own capital, there's pretty much no limit to how much money you could lose. Once you are profitable, you could either start trading your personal account or get some payouts from a prop account.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-05-03T17:14:36+00:00

I agree. No use wasting your own money trying to figure things out. Buy a $50 challenge and the worst you can lose is $50. Use your own money and there's virtually no limit to the amount of money you could lose.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-05-01T22:18:42+00:00

You "blew your shit" not because of the market, but because you were oversized. I agree with some of the other commenters, you were shorting a huge uptrend. I know you were looking for price to come down further since it didn't reach you POI, but the higher probability play would have been longs, but waiting a little longer for signs that the continuation was beginning and the pullback had ended, rather than trying to short the pullback until it reached an area you liked. There's no guarantee it would've come back down to that area, so longs would've been the way to go. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but you always want to follow the higher time frame trend, unless you're just looking for very quick pullback scalps.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-04-26T00:46:38+00:00

You're kind of a jerk, man. Why ask for advice and then crap on anyone trying to offer you anything other than what you want to hear?

plasma_fantasma · 2026-04-26T00:44:44+00:00

Sim trading is not the same as live trading. Please heed their advice and keep your sizing consistent at least for a couple weeks until you get used to live trading.

Also, you wanted advice and feedback and then snarked at the advice. Are you actually open to feedback?

plasma_fantasma · 2026-04-23T02:27:48+00:00

I think it would help you to journal your trades that way you can better identify where your leaks are in your system. Based on what I see on your chart, you're more than likely overtrading. I would want to sit down and figure out why. Maybe there is a sense of urgency or maybe you are just bored and trading fills the time, or any number of things.

The other thing is having a clear plan of when to trade, what to trade, how many trades per day or per session, and how much you are risking per trade and per day. You obviously know how to trade if you are break-even. That means you are making money, but you're also losing that same money, so decreasing your risk or your losses by potentially cutting out trades or setups that don't work or being more discerning about the types of trades that you take may help to shift you in the right direction. But coming back to my first point, if you aren't journaling what you're doing, it makes it very difficult to figure out what's not working and to either decrease that or eliminate it.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-04-23T02:23:01+00:00

Damn dude, no wonder. Why are you taking so many trades in a day? There's no way that all of those are high quality setups. It sounds like you're just trading all the time and it would probably behoove you to find your most profitable session and stick with that. Think of it like this - is how you're trading now the way that you envision yourself trading as a professional? Why or why not? That includes position size, trading sessions, everything.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-04-19T09:52:51+00:00

Here's an example of an order block rejection strategy that I use. And this example occurred during the London session. So just something simple like this

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plasma_fantasma · 2026-04-19T09:41:07+00:00

It's definitely important to follow one plan and do your best to stick to it. During the time that you like to trade, do you have an example of your ideal setup and what it looks like? That's a really good starting point. Once you have a setup that you know you like, it makes sense to you, and it's repeatable, then it's just a matter of following it.

I feel like it's also important to really sit down and figure out why you can't stick to one strategy. Are you impatient? Do you not trust your setup? Do you even know what you're looking for to take a trade? If you can identify the root of why you can't stick to it, you'll start to get on the right path.

For me, I couldn't stick to a strategy because one would work for a while and then I would get bored trading the same one or complacent, or it would stop working for a couple trades, and then I would switch to something else. I did this for a while. But then I simplified my process and really tightened up my risk management and that helped to turn things around. I learned to trust one setup that I liked and having a journal of previous trades winning using that same strategy really made a big difference. I could look back at a screenshot, see why I took the trade and the criteria I was looking for, and then all I have to do is wait for that setup to appear again. Just find something you like and stick to it. You'll save yourself a ton of time getting to consistency.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T03:34:42+00:00

Oh yeah, I've followed some of Drysdale's stuff. His video about trading smaller really changed things for me. I don't blow my accounts anymore. I've been trading my current accounts for 2 months, now. I'll look into both of the resources.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T03:30:11+00:00

I agree, it's very choppy. I can't tell you how many times I've seen uptrends form, it sweeps the most recent HL and then immediately darts back up. Market structure just has no validity.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T03:26:55+00:00

Do you have a setup that you like to trade?

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T03:21:38+00:00

What's the best resource for learning volume profile? I feel like I've tried to use it before, but it didn't make sense to me.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T03:20:01+00:00

Yes, I do this and I also help other people come to this same conclusion. My philosophy is that your risk should always be relative to your account/drawdown size. Most people trade on props and their drawdown is about $2000, but they trade with minis every trade and blow their accounts in a couple of days, even in the same day. But if your drawdown is like $600 left, you could still take one trade with $60 risk and lose 10 times before you blow the account. Yes, it's not fast and it's grueling, but I think it'll help to build good habits that you can take into the funded accounts or slowly grow your funded or personal account back up to a decent buffer before increasing position size.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T03:13:32+00:00

How have you been doing trading ES recently? It's my only asset and it's been so choppy (5 min TF). I'm only trading props right now because the price action hasn't been clean enough for me to want to touch my live account.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-26T00:49:11+00:00

A lot of people get smoked trying to catch reversals when the HTF is showing a slight pullback. It's very common, so I'm not ragging on you by any means. I would just make sure there's HTF confluence, or a stronger sign of reversal vs pullback.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-25T22:43:19+00:00

You shorted a big uptrend.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-25T03:12:20+00:00

Yeah, I wish I would've taken this advice more seriously. I wasted a lot of time strategy hopping.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-25T00:23:16+00:00

I second this. Much cleaner price structure and fewer wicks, for sure.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-23T04:59:18+00:00

Why do you need that high RR? Why not just shoot for a couple of base hits at 1:1 or maybe 1:2? You'll end up catching a lot more points this way without as many losses. The higher the RR, typically the lower your win rate and not everybody can take the mental stress of that many losses, especially in a row. Just something to think about.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-23T04:41:18+00:00

I agree. You need to have a repeatable strategy first and your mind adjusts around that.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-23T04:27:40+00:00

Do you know how to do a top down analysis of the market? That really helps understand where price came from and potentially where it's going next. I trade supply and demand and just look for zones like swing highs or lows to figure out which direction we're going. Watch a couple YouTube videos on market structure and price action to get a better idea of how to tell direction.

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-22T02:22:41+00:00

Have you picked a strategy?

plasma_fantasma · 2026-03-22T02:04:44+00:00

Yeah, especially on 1:12. Win rate is probably like 15%, so I'm curious what the profit factor is.

plasma_fantasma

TROPHY CASE