I’m looking for a proven trading strategy that actually works.. something that someone uses to consistently make real money.

Traderadam1

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I have been studying the financial markets for quite some time now.. done my fair share of trading whilst at it.. Tried prop firms, tried my own accounts throughout all of it.. I have lost money. and not been able to use a strategy that produces consistent results…

Now , I know that trading the stock, futures, crypto and fx market obviously can work because there are huge financial institutions formed around these markets..

My question is.. is there strategy, that is proven to work.. that I can follow, in order to start making money in one of these markets.

Simply, can I follow a set of rules.. apply them.. and start making money?

If so please could you attach a link to the material.. or simply share the strategy..

I have bought course after course.. book after book.

I am just looking for something that works.

Many thanks,

Adam
 
Also..to add. I didn’t get the grades to even get into college or university to then get hired by an institution..

I just love the aspect of being able to master a skill and then profit from it.

With the right material I would be willing to learn and do what it takes to become a successful trader.
 
Also..to add. I didn’t get the grades to even get into college or university to then get hired by an institution..

I just love the aspect of being able to master a skill and then profit from it.

With the right material I would be willing to learn and do what it takes to become a successful trader.
Last message before anyone else replies.. I currently work full time remotely for an insurance company but would like to trade full time for a living
 
I have been studying the financial markets for quite some time now.. done my fair share of trading whilst at it.. Tried prop firms, tried my own accounts throughout all of it.. I have lost money. and not been able to use a strategy that produces consistent results…

Now , I know that trading the stock, futures, crypto and fx market obviously can work because there are huge financial institutions formed around these markets..

My question is.. is there strategy, that is proven to work.. that I can follow, in order to start making money in one of these markets.

Simply, can I follow a set of rules.. apply them.. and start making money?

If so please could you attach a link to the material.. or simply share the strategy..

I have bought course after course.. book after book.

I am just looking for something that works.

Many thanks,

Adam

If you've been searching with what you've described above for a few years. You're not alone. Plenty of us have felt no method or something or the next thing we've tried ever seemed to work to be consistent in our first three to seven or more years. Only after more lessons learned and learning to manage trades and manage and expect losing trades and temper impatient expectations, usually after more years can some of us manage a break-even year, or even one or two years (never guaranteed successive) of actual decent profits (avg 10's of k's) to have to report to the IRS for the tax season.

So sharing a bit how it went for me after seven years before finally having a break-even year and multiple past busted accounts. Like another post above mentioned, no one is ever going to share something that works. If it worked consistently so well for them, they wouldn't even posting on forums anymore (except maybe vaguely to inwardly gloat perhaps). And 99% of those who claim success after a few months are either wishful who want to believe they reached consistency that fast, OR in actuality the next new failed retail traders who become another the plethora of snakeoil gurus and shady vendors who make a show of it and sell products and subs, but have long since stopped trading live for themselves and prey and depend on the next month and year of fresh new dupes to retail trading. Anything that actually works would be so personally or company guarded (real prop firms and hedge funds' strategies kept under "proprietary" corporate secret privacy and not the stupid ads and snakeoil in the general retail trading public) and of course working ideas and edges never last long if exposed, like if thousands of retail traders were trading the same method entry, of course in today's massive instiutional HFT cheating, it would be quickly eroded due to frontrunning and stop hunting as the locals of the markets recognize the sheep driven crowd of retail volume trying the next publicly "revealed" working idea. That's why several popular ideas have failed in past decades eventually, even without hft until post 2008. For myself after over a decade perusing forums such as here, bigmikes/future.io, elitetrader, etc. no one really shares and are usually daydreaming about future consistency, or what they share hasn't been self-tested enough. Even those one or two successful if they really are, they don't share details. It's a rulthless and competitive world even outside of trading in business and that carries over into the trading world. All the chicanery and fraud charlatans vendor snakeoil "industry" selling to newbs have always seemed to misinform that trading is somehow "community" shared or minded for decades, when in reality, while I don't believe daytrading is immediately real-time "zero-sum" in any given trading session day, the overall motivations of trading is after all, close to 'zero-sum' like most business in the real world - and it's even more individual where daytrading is hardly ever like a team sport and always more of an individual competitive sport in the closer analogy , in my opinion.

So what I'd suggest is to look over your books and courses whether you went through 40 different ideas or a hundred books and courses. And pick up pieces here and there that seemed solid or more proven then the others. Mix some ideas together if you can, maybe 3 to 5 ideas and THEN work on your losses and trade management. If your edge(s) are 55% w/l, even working on your trade management, with examining and improving stoploss or take profit strategies and "discipline" to not break your rules, you can leverage your edge(s) w/l % to possible average 65, 75% which can then be workable depending on your performance consistency for the day. So this is basically "creating your own system/strategies" from other ideas or coming up with a few of your own with ideas that may pop up in your head creatively during your trading journey. And of course I don't need to mention the self-testing of one's strategy and ideas before putting big money for your account on the line. smallest or miniscule leverage to start with until you truly feel and trust your working 'self-made' systems.

A good modern recent book on trade psychology and the reality of daytrading outside of the fraud and hype is "Best Loser Wins" by Tom Hougaard, I would highly recommend and I prefer it far more than the "trading in the zone" book which I always felt wasn't that practically or experienced justified to be that popular a book in the past. There is also the 'daytrading' subreddit on reddit which has a lot of active discussion, which may have taken over older forum sites of the past in activity. Good luck.
 
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Victor Niederhoffer- Frase celebre.jpg
 
i don't believe there is such strategy. Some strategies works in bull market, some works in bear market, some works in range bound market. also strategy is not the only thing you should be worried about, risk management is the most critical component in my view. I won't say, i am profitable but hanging there as i don't trade full time and have full time job to pay my bills.

Also psychology is important aspect. I have faced this multiple times and what works for one thing might not work for other. for eg. I mostly trade in options. I had CVNA options and UPST options. CVNA is going to have profit from this quarter and this earning news drove CVNA price higher. I was worried that this price will come down and sold calls against my calls to create vertical strategy. But i did it too soon and missed more profit. Few days later, same situation happened for UPST and i thought lets wait for 2 days to sell call against my call but i wasn't able to sell as price didn't came where it opened on the day of earning report. So what worked for one instrument, didn't work for other. Its most important to see how market is taking news and then act alongside of market.

hope this helps, hang on
 
Adam

My college degree was in Accounting. I did that for 20 years then I programmed computers for 20 years. I wrote a program to back test trading systems with years of 5 minute quotes loaded into a database. I spent hundreds of hours trying different systems using different symbols and even forex and options. I never found anything that worked consistently for years. It always came back to no edge for me. Academics have studied the markets and they claim they are a random walk. My experience says they are correct. Lots of people will tell you there is a system that works and they will show you if you pay them money. They say a sucker is born every minute.

Regards, Steve

I have been studying the financial markets for quite some time now.. done my fair share of trading whilst at it.. Tried prop firms, tried my own accounts throughout all of it.. I have lost money. and not been able to use a strategy that produces consistent results…

Now , I know that trading the stock, futures, crypto and fx market obviously can work because there are huge financial institutions formed around these markets..

My question is.. is there strategy, that is proven to work.. that I can follow, in order to start making money in one of these markets.

Simply, can I follow a set of rules.. apply them.. and start making money?

If so please could you attach a link to the material.. or simply share the strategy..

I have bought course after course.. book after book.

I am just looking for something that works.

Many thanks,

Adam
 
Hello Adam!
I think it is really hard to suggest a strategy that suits all your needs and your personality as well! If someone suggests you a strategy that suits his calm personality, how are you going to deal with fear while trading that strategy? You need some clues, and then you can develop and correct that strategy for yourself. I also suggest you avoid buying these clues; they are all scams. Search again for strategies (even though I do not name one since you need to do the process yourself) and just personalize one!
 
Take a look at the approach followed by such youtubers as The Transparent Trader. This guy demonstrates simple conventional strategies, then back-tests them with criteria varied to find optimum set-ups and trade management rules. Many of these don't work as well as the books say they should but some do - and you only need one after all.
 
Trade options, the only place where you can have an edge as a retail trader. Do the hard yards, and don't trade like most people who just guess. All the charts and supposed methods they try to sell you, will not make you rich. Why doesn't Greg Secker have a load of millionaires that he's trained? Greg's a nice guy who I respect but he makes his money from people paying to be like him.
 
I worked for some of the big trading houses and in hedge funds as a prop trader. I left all that behind and have traded for myself for many years. Here is what I can offer.
Trading profitably is very different depending on the environment in which you sit. The best place to sit is where you see deal flow as this offers great information from which you can derive an edge. If you see no deal flow and only have price and volume data then immediately life is a bit harder. However, it is certainly not impossible to make a nice living from trading so long as you get your risk/money management parameters right. You need to be very honest with yourself about how much you can be down before you are damaged enough to make non rational decisions. Once you know this and are very sure you have been honest about it you can think about a trading approach.
The longer I have been in the markets, the simpler my approach became and the longer my timeframe. I no longer scalp ( I did for years). Some positions I ride for months. What I find successful is to categorise markets into mean reversion or trend. It is subjective but it determines what approach you take with that particular market. If you decide something is in an uptrend then you want to wait until it has a countertrend move and then take a long position in the trend direction. Never short an uptrend, patience is often the hardest thing here but a good entry is important for riding the trade for a longer time frame. You set a stop level before you take the trade and you always take that stop if it is hit. You do not go all in on the first trade, you split your risk so you can have multiple buys as the price action unfolds. When prices revert to trend and accelerate you also take some fraction of your long off the table. You end up with a core long and a cash or long swing position around it. You do the same on the short side for downtrends, although short side is always more tricky and over many years shorts have been far less profitable for me than longs as the hit rate has been lower. Maybe that is just my poor perception of downtrends.
That may all sound pretty simple, it is technically but not always psychologically when it is your personal money being risked.
There are a few simple mistakes to avoid. Never fall in love with your open position, always take the stop and re-assess. You can be right and still lose money because your timing was off, or you set your stop poorly. Never set a stop directly under a major support or resistance, price will always spike to take you out. If you get stopped out and then the price reverts to trend, make sure you have orders to get back in. Nothing worse than having a position, getting stopped and then sitting on side-lines watching the market trend without you in it anymore.
With the markets that are in the mean reversion basket, sell the range highs, buy the range lows. I made a fraction of what I made in trends from playing the mean reversions. It's a harder trade imo.
It really is worth having a portfolio of different strategies. I run systems which look at momentum and other factors in the TAA toolbox, monthly price tendency, ML based rules that make no logical sense at all, lot of discretionary trend following by jumping on good story and seeing chart in obvious upside. Remember the trend is your friend, do not think you know when to short an uptrend or long a downtrend, you do not. Go with the flow always, do not fight it.
A lot of what I do today is different from what I did years ago, I think it is less complicated in terms of deciding which way to play but the money management is definitely much more disciplined in terms of sizing, stops and layering in and out. Always know the downside and always know the outs, do not trade illiquid markets unless you have a tangible information edge.
Hope that helps.
One other thing, I look to generate ~12-15% return and never draw down >10% net. but I am older and risk averse. You can leverage 2* 3* whatever you want but it is all about whether you can still function at max drawdown. I do not look at charts shorter duration than 60min and mostly look at daily. Currently I have historically small directional exposure and cash in treasuries, markets are not easiest right now and will remain so until the inflation/rates/recession question clarifies.
 
I have been studying the financial markets for quite some time now.. done my fair share of trading whilst at it.. Tried prop firms, tried my own accounts throughout all of it.. I have lost money. and not been able to use a strategy that produces consistent results…

Now , I know that trading the stock, futures, crypto and fx market obviously can work because there are huge financial institutions formed around these markets..

My question is.. is there strategy, that is proven to work.. that I can follow, in order to start making money in one of these markets.

Simply, can I follow a set of rules.. apply them.. and start making money?

If so please could you attach a link to the material.. or simply share the strategy..

I have bought course after course.. book after book.

I am just looking for something that works.

Many thanks,

Adam
I have many strategies but find it hard to always stick to them. Most have positive expectancy. Others I am testing still.
I was working on a strategy recently 2 hour bars for DAX. 1200 pts per month average in backtesting 17 months. 600 trades or so. So I thought good backtesting in differing market conditions. However, May....which was my 1st full month of live trading....hit me with 2500 points loss. So even with So much backtesting, strategies can catch you out. Either it's broken or it's a regular drawdown. I will look at the past 17/18 months and relatively market volatility as this could be a factor. In other words, low volatility = poor results. Not sure yet. Need to look at it. So now, live testing but not trading it! Need to see next 3 months on paper.
 
I have many strategies but find it hard to always stick to them. Most have positive expectancy. Others I am testing still.
I was working on a strategy recently 2 hour bars for DAX. 1200 pts per month average in backtesting 17 months. 600 trades or so. So I thought good backtesting in differing market conditions. However, May....which was my 1st full month of live trading....hit me with 2500 points loss. So even with So much backtesting, strategies can catch you out. Either it's broken or it's a regular drawdown. I will look at the past 17/18 months and relatively market volatility as this could be a factor. In other words, low volatility = poor results. Not sure yet. Need to look at it. So now, live testing but not trading it! Need to see next 3 months on paper.
17 months of back testing is nothing, you have to test at least 2 full market cycles, for US stocks, this means back to before the dot com bust, usually I test further back to see what is happening during Black Monday for example, etc...
 
My advice is backtest on only 2/3rd of your historical dataset which should be as complete as possible. Once you think you have something usable, then see how it does on the remaining 1/3rd blind. There are a number of ML systems out there which will do this very well and even build systems for you giving 100's of possible combos. There is always a portion of systems that also test well on the blind 1/3rd and some of those may be robust but then again sometimes a coin toss comes up heads 10 times in a row. I always let any system I think looks good run for a while real time without money behind it to see if I could live with it or not. It is a slow process getting to something that is reliable and profitable and even some of those ultimately fall over.
 
Yes I want to test further. All of my other systems I have tested back 20-30 years. However, I am having problems coding this strategy into Pine as it's quite complicated to code. Easy to follow and trade but harder to code.

Still trying to debug coding but in the meantime, will paper test
 
Adam

My college degree was in Accounting. I did that for 20 years then I programmed computers for 20 years. I wrote a program to back test trading systems with years of 5 minute quotes loaded into a database. I spent hundreds of hours trying different systems using different symbols and even forex and options. I never found anything that worked consistently for years. It always came back to no edge for me. Academics have studied the markets and they claim they are a random walk. My experience says they are correct. Lots of people will tell you there is a system that works and they will show you if you pay them money. They say a sucker is born every minute.

Regards, Steve
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4166845
Here are a couple that works quite well although probably a bit long terms for many on t2w that like big % returns quickly.
 
Make a Google with "Dr. Wish " and "wishing wealth blog" He buys ATH stocks, like Nicolas Darvas did. It is all free. He sends you a mail every now and then. Funny thing is I noticed the top gainers are very often the ATH stocks. No need to do exactly what Dr. Wish does, but it is a very good starting point.
It certainly gives you the edge you are looking for. Today in a declining market my SYM, MOG.A, PLPC stocks are up 12%, 6% and 4% for the day.

You may thank me later. All the best.
 
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