It has been 12 years of my journey and I am yet to see a dime as well. There is nothing to be embarrassing about. There are limited amount of people who actually succeeded in this forum.
Don't take it to the heart as I don't know your financial situation, and how much time you spent in front of the screen.
Let me indicate few things and you can go from there.
First thing, you've mentioned that you've tried 9 different approaches. It is good to experiment but it is good idea to pick that one thing that the most relates to you. (Personally i tried all things and they didn't make sense to me and I stacked with Jigsaw because it was more meaningful to me)
Once you've picked it, It is good idea to learn anything and everything about it. Be it an indicator or what ever you use it. Once you've learned and can explain to the kid in simple terms what it does, how it is calculates(if indicator), and when to use it you are 20% there.
So, how to get there. Set up youtube channel and stream your screen as private so only you can access to it. If you are working, review you recording after work. What I found helpful is during recording review, ask yourself a questions. What am I missing.
Now you are moving to stage two. It is execution with documentation. You need to document what was market condition, how fast it was moving, what was the volume like, etc. (Most people lazy to do it, including myself) this is why it takes so long to progress. If you do it everyday in one months you will have good stack of data (if at least you do 10 trades a day)
By now you done your 40% already.
Last 60% is the hardest one this is where most of the people seating. It is psychology. Every individual is different. Some straggles with Entry, others with Exits, some married to the trade, some like to be right (me).
There is a saying if you want to know who you are start trading. Trading opens a cane of worms and you discovering how miserable you are, and how much you need to do to break yourself.
The biggest question is how much work does trader want to put in to be a successful. People are lazy and we hardly do first and the second thing.
If you read the journals here you will notice the same pattern. At the same time you can find chimps journal where he past the prop evaluation with just simple MA strategy because he was sticking to it.
I am sure you can make that 1 point in no time just pick one thing and stick to it. You can publish here what you are doing and people will help to clarify it for you.
P.S - I've met many people who applied to local prop shops. Most of them were young they lasted a year some 2. Most of them don't even look at market now. You done it for 7 year's and haven't give up. It is already something.
It is about time to pick up 1 closely related (indicator or strategy) to you and dig dipper.
I'm looking forward to hear how you progress.
God bless you and good luck.
The following 14 users say Thank You to tr8d3r for this post:
Your journey is all too common. May I recommend you try Al Brooks Price action? Maybe you have in the past, but it is different now. He has a new person in his room, Rose. She loves to teach. They are trading the ES/MES. There is a discord but you'll have to find it yourself. Rose will answer ANY questions you have. She has several methods that she uses that Al doesn't, at least not like she does. I would like to say with your experience, you'd enjoy some mentoring from Rose in the Brooks Price Action (BPA) discord. I've had many "ah ha" moments. I subscribe to the webinar. Discord is free. Rose can show you how to catch those 10-15-20 point moves every.single.day! It's not easy and takes work, but it can be done. Rose is in the webinar room 3-4 days each week. Hope this helps and offers some encouragement.
The following 3 users say Thank You to sunshnpeg for this post:
Normally Houston TX but in Ecuador/Galapogos today
Experience: Advanced
Platform: TT and Stellar
Broker: Primary Advantage Futures. Also ED&F and Tradestation
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Posts: 4,797 since Dec 2013
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It's honest but not embarrassing.
I'd love to play in the NFL. It's never going to happen.
Passion to be successful at something isn't enough.
My advice. Follow another passion.
The following 5 users say Thank You to SMCJB for this post:
My suggestion would be to take a step back. Breathe. Don't give up, but stop trading for a bit. Focus your time and energy on observation, study, and research. Also, consider zooming out. Your focus on scalping is most likely your biggest problem.
The reason that scalping has such appeal to traders is that if you're good, the law of large numbers helps you build a smooth equity curve without carrying any risk overnight. As you said yourself, you want to "make one profitable point every day." Well who wouldn't want that?
The trouble is: the shorter your time-frame, the more intense the competition. Markets often behave much differently on these ultra-short time frames than they do on longer time-frames for precisely this reason. Highly advanced HFTs, market makers, and other experienced and well-capitalized scalpers (including institutional prop traders and hedge funds) have enormous capital, informational, technological, and experiential advantages over retail traders like you and I. We have very little hope of beating them at their own game.
Another problem with scalping is the self-defeating psychology that plagues so many traders. Again, the idea of minimizing exposure (risk) and making just a little money every day, every week, has a lot of emotional appeal - especially to poortly capitalized or risk averse traders. And this emotional appeal is often the your greatest vulnerability. You want to keep losses small, so your uncertainties and fears become exaggerated to the point that almost all you do is take small losses!
Do you often find yourself stopped out of a trade only to see it reverse almost immediately after? This is what happens to scared money, over and over and over again.
Again, step back, zoom out, look at bigger time horizons, observe, study, develop and test new methods that you can backtest and sim trade for while. Keep learning. But don't keep diving into that scalper shark tank.
The following 11 users say Thank You to Schnook for this post:
First I'd focus on improving my weaknesses,
Create exercises (Trading drills) around them.
Fix what's broken by creating new habits (repetition).
You need to have a journal,
Keep track of your rules and mistakes.
What did you violate ? What cost you the most ?
Limit your loss per trade,
Limit your loss per day.
Don't lose your mind over markets.
Often I just throw the towel and make things worse.
You really need to take it seriously. Trade only to the perfection.
If you can't control yourself and obey your rules ... You're not being professional.
Take breaks.
Be 200% focused.
Record your trading session,
Review the price and your own actions.
It's about getting better everyday, Doing things better.
Not money as it's about the next 1000 trades.
But about qualitative risk taking !
Is it even worth the risk ?
The best trader don't take the best trade,
They simply manage their luck better.
They avoid giving away on mistakes.
Give the least from the worst.
Take the most from the best.
Remove gambling behaviors.
Take it very seriously.
Be your own coach.
Heard the best traders are the best losers.
Are you fine with taking small losses ?
"The best loser wins"
For 1 point scalping I'd recommend you use the DOM,
No need tons of data for 1 point scalping.
That's actually what I am doing.
"Tape Reading"
Find a setup,
Risk 1 point to make 1 point.
Then learn to protect your breakeven.
Raise your stop, improve the worst case.
Well ...
I am looking for 1 or 2 points risk
For 2, 4 or more point rewards.
A simple 1 or 2 point trailing stop can do marvel.
2 points trailing stop on the ES is enough room to ride 10 points move.
...
Get rid of the bad habits.
You can't do the same thing and expect different results.
Minimize your losses and maximize your winners.
Buy higher low ... Sell lower high ...
Keep it simple !
Try to improve day after day.
Get rid of the emotions.
Have a plan.
BECOME A BETTER TRADER.
Get better odds over your edge.
...
One point per day isn't a viable strategy,
Because most day you'll lose maybe 3 or 4 to make 1.
Your maximum drawdown better be less than your target.
...
Rule #1 Don't be a sucker
...
If you constantly make value bets,
You'll be a profitable bettor in the long run.
...
You must minimize the losses in unfavorable situations,
and maximize the gains in favorable ones.
...
The market does not beat them,
They beat themselves !
...
Do less of your worst trades
Do more of your best trades
...
You will never change your life,
Until you change something you do daily.
A lot of your mistakes can probably be founded in the data from your statement. Just like if you're trying to solve a problem with your computer you don't just guess you look at the log files.
The following 2 users say Thank You to Garris for this post:
I would 2nd the AL Brooks suggestion. Get the course - 399 USD and just keep a basic black and white bar chart open and watch his videos. Unbelievable compared to any other 'teachers'. A lot of people have methods they can trade and others can't, but Al teaches what is going on with the market - bar by bar.
The following user says Thank You to shortski for this post:
Unless you can personally arrive at understanding what the market really is, no amount of 'strategies' nor a legion of gurus (one already being actively peddled in the thread) will ever help. You need to have a conceptual grasp on what the hell is going on to eliminate most of the noise before getting into specifics of a tradable methodology.
Wyckoff's general approach to viewing the market as a largely controlled mechanism of transferring the inventory from the uninformed to the professional insider core helped me tremendously. It might be a place to start educating yourself, or not, if it doesn't resonate with your own universal belief system.
And unless you're a genius or have been deep-mentored by a pro, making it within 7 years looks like a pipe dream anyway, given the amount of garbage we have to dig through both outside and inside to see the first light, let alone to become rather profitable than not.
The following user says Thank You to speck for this post:
