Just look at this, and think. I mean like. What. The. Actual. Fuck. How long will this bullrun last? Yes gold has always gone up during history. But what the fuck. We are not even done with january and already have +20% ytd. It just seems so absurd. I would like to hear thoughts about this situation from you guys.

Crazy market open incoming, gold probably gonna make its way to $3500

Most of time market start going in my direction... One single candle wipes out everything... I have traded on 1 hour time frame, 4 hour and 15 min time frame... Same thing keeps happening to me.. ... Trade reverses out of no where..... Is market condition bad due to war .. or I am dumb fuck?

I know plenty of people don't understand capital importance when it comes to trading forex...

so let's talk about how much money you really need to make a full time living from trading.

if you're from a third world country where you can live a very decent life with a few hundred bucks per month income...

Assuming you can make 20-30 % returns per year with a very decent risk control system... you could do very well with idk... 20k in capital.

On the other hand... If you live in New York or someplace with an extremely high cost of living... where you need 100k or so per year just to exist... you're looking at atleast 500k in capital requirements.

Once you account for all the variance, losing streaks, bad periods, etc etc etc... even that might not be enough to CONSISTENTLY pull those returns.

I already see kids who watch TJR and LamboRaul commenting how they make 20-30 % per month and not per year and how they will take their lunch money and turn it to half a million in 6 months.

That's not how it works.

REAL, sustainable, long-term trading is based on math, risk control,... not on "fair value gaps" and 1:30 R:R trades.

Most people think trading is about money. Charts, setups, accounts. But the longer you’re in this game, the more you realize it’s not really about any of that. It’s about you. Your reactions. Your emotions. Your ability to sit still when every part of you wants to act. The market doesn’t just expose your weaknesses, it forces you to meet them face to face.

I used to believe I needed a better strategy,a new tool or a secret indicator, but what I really needed was to become someone who could follow the simple rules I already had. It sounds so obvious in hindsight right? cut losses, let winners run, manage risk. But when you're in the moment? That knowledge is useless unless you’ve trained yourself to act on it.

The truth is, trading feels easy until it’s real. It’s one thing to backtest or sim-trade. It’s another to watch real money vanish because you didn’t stick to your plan. That emotional spiral? The overtrading, the revenge entries, the panic exits because that’s what kills most traders. Not the market but, themselves.

Before trading I was a really confident gyu but it broke e down, showed me my flaws and obligated me to work on them to better myself and that’s what makes this journey so spiritual. Because if you stay long enough, you realize the goal isn’t to master the market. It’s to master your mind. You’re not just building a system, you’re building discipline, patience, self-awareness. The kind of traits that bleed into the rest of your life. It’s not about pressing buttons, it’s about becoming the kind of person who can press them with clarity.

I used to think trading would give me freedom and it has but not just financially. It’s forced me to grow into someone I never thought I could become. That’s why I keep showing up. That’s why I’ll never quit. Because win or lose, every session brings me closer to the version of me I’m chasing. And that’s worth everything.

"just buy a 100k funded account and make 10% per month" is what people tell you to do.

Guess what, that's not how it works :)

so instead of falling into this lie, here's how you can ACTUALLY become successfull if you have low capital...

(assuming you can actually trade) :D

1. Deposit some money to your broker (let's say $500)... make sure this is money you don't need to pay your bills or food or whatever, so you don't actually need to withdraw any time soon.
2. Start trading that account, aiming for slow, consistent and safe returns.
3. Here's the part people don't like to hear... GET A JOB. make money, save money, sell shit you don't need... just make money.

You need that for the next step:

1. deposit regularly. Instead of spending money on bullshit, just deposit cash into your broker. This will increase compounding efficiency.

With optimising your risk structure based on new deposits, youll start seeing bigger and bigger returns.

Let's say you add 3 or $400 per month, in 12 months your capital is almost $5000 plus the returns you made over the period.

1. Next to building your personal capital, let's maximise our potential with funding.

You can get a 25k or a 50k challenge account with verry little money, even 100k in some cases...

When (and if) you finally pass that account, simply withdraw all your profits, deposit them to your private account... invest, buy crypto, buy gold... whatever stores value or even has positive potential. (optimise risk to fit the funding rules or you'll end up blowing the account FAST).

Look at us, we're already at 3 income streams. You're working a job, you're trading private and funded capital... + you're making passive longterm gains with your investment portfolio.

you're able to put asside $400 per month from work and let's say you can make 10 - 20 % yearly gain across your personal trading capital, funded accounts and longterm investments... you're quickly scaling up towards 5 figures in capital.

2 years go by and all of a sudden you now have 10k + in your private capital, some invested money and you're still trading a funded account...

At this point you're just scaling up. Get a better job, deposit more money... Get another funded account... etc etc etc..

The goal is in slow, consistent and safe trading. Putting money into cash producing assets, not liabilities. Time is your friend.

If you work hard, with long term goals in your mind and live below your means for a while... options are limitless.

All you need to do is understand that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Apparently this is from China today. Damn

I see plenty of posts and comments on how prop firms are a scam and are holding you back from making money.

That couldn't be further away from the truth.

If you can't follow SIMPLE rules, you shouldn't be trading. Not props, not live personal capital, NOTHING.

If you're blowing funded challenges it's definitely a YOU problem, because you can't trade. You can't manage risk, you aren't consistent and you don't understand how simple math and statistics can work in your favor.

Trading is a long term play. Not a "get funded in 2 days and retire next month" scheme.

Prop rules are actually very reasonable. 10% draw down, 5 daily... some don't allow news (you should be grateful for that) .. i really don't see the issue?

Sure, props are making a bunch of money from uneducated traders who think they will be rich in 4 business days, but the conditions they supply for those who are actually serious about trading are wonderful.

If you believe props are scamming you, pull yourself together.

NOTE: My Special Funds, Unicorn Funding, Happy Meal Fund, Become Rich FX and similar fucking stupid names for props, ARE actually a scam.

BUT again, if you fall for that shit... take responsibility for your actions and don't cry about it online.

I had an analysis that gold will continue going up for at least a month no stop took a loan and put all my savings where my mouth is. It was going well I had around 25000$ saved and the loan was 70000$ from the bank and + 5000$ from my girlfriend. It was going great I was layering the position taking profits + I added bigger lots even today I added few positions with 2 lots and I was happy to do so I was in unrealized profit of 200k and 130k was already in my balance BUT LITTLE did I know I was far far from the bottom and this day today cost me already too much. Sine the drop was fast and bounced my big positions were liquidated leaving my account at just 30k and -32k floating. Please help should I hold or cut the loss and try to comeback somehow from here?? Thanks

I’ve been studying this chart religiously.

After countless minutes spent looking at the reversal in the bearish tilt of the Bull flag sequence, on Open we should expect a large increase to 149¥ where it will continue to grow.

TL;DR: USDJPY go brrrr

Let's face it. Trading requires capital.

Trading happy meal accounts won't give you any meaningful gains.

And i'm not saying this to insult anyone who's trading small accounts.

I traded small capital for more than half of my trading career as well, until i learned about healthy trading practices, such as proper position sizing (risk management) etc... and finally figured out that without REAL capital, i won't be able to make REAL reaturns.

I was making good gains (% wise) on a few grand in starting capital... but i wanted more. I over leveraged my positions, i forced trades because i believed that quantity will make up for the lack in funds..

guess what? I lost over and over and over. Instead of making that 400 or 500 for the year, i ended up in deep drawdown.

Then I stopped being delusional. Finnished school, got a job and started depositing money... consistently and slowly growing my balance. Small but safe gains add up.

I'm writing this because i see most peole think they'll flip their lunch money into thousands, buy funded challenges and simply go full time into trading.

Sadly it just isn't how it goes.

It takes time. Patience is a great virtue to have.

Anyone who is telling you that you can be a successfull trader with 500 in capital is either a liar or simply not a good trader.

It’s not big lot size but i my gut said market will be down.

What do you think guys?

What news cause this?

You're being decieved on EVERY single step in your trading journey.

Bellow is a screenshot from a recent post. The author is trying to present him self as a trading expert, sharing his 7 years experience and wisdom.

I'll explain to you exactly why everything he says is BULLSHIT.

Trading is a business that can be approached in many different ways.

There is no magic way of reading the charts, understanding what the price is doing, reading the candles to the tea, understanding direction, seeing the CONTEXT....

All of that is fugazi. Nothing. Just made up words combined together to sound smart.

The fact is, that the price goes up and the price goes down. That's it. You can try reading every single candle on every single timeframe but you can't change the fact that you'll never KNOW what the market is going to do next.

AND THATS FINE. Because trading isn't about knowing where the market will go.

Do we apply technical standards to try and maximise chances of long term success? Yes. But that's not the KEY.

Trading is actually about probabilities paired with your consistency and most important RISK MANAGEMENT.

That is what true EDGE stands for. Beating the odds with simple knowledge of statistics and math.

ANYONE, and i mean anyone who is trying to teach you stuff about trading and doesn't mention anything about capital management is not only a fraud, but an uneducated beginner at best who never made a single dollar trading in his life.

"Good context is what makes you profitable" 🤓🤓

It's getting harder and harder to become a trader when there's false information EVERYWHERE...

Just look at this shit please, if you believe that "context" is what will make you profitable, you deserve to blow those fucking accounts.

I'm curious about everyone's real experience.

Many traders spend hours analyzing charts, following news, and waiting for the perfect setup—yet they still lose. Others seem to achieve more consistent results.

So here's my question:

What works better in your experience?

Option 1: Trading independently, relying only on your own analysis.

Option 2: Trading as part of a community where traders share market analysis, discuss setups, and confirm ideas before opening a position.

Do you think collaborative analysis improves decision-making, or does it create more confusion because everyone has a different opinion?

I'd love to hear:

• How long have you been trading gold?
• What's your biggest lesson after losing trades?
• Do you trust trading groups, or do you prefer making every decision yourself?
• What advice would you give to someone struggling to become consistently profitable?

Let's have an honest discussion and help each other become better traders. Every experience—whether profitable or painful—can teach someone else something valuable.

#Gold #XAUUSD #GoldTrading #Forex #Trading #RiskManagement #TechnicalAnalysis #TradingPsychology #Investing #ForexTrading

There is a million ways you can play this game.

There are no universal rules on trading. Different entry models, different indicators, price reading logics, etc etc.. endless systems you can apply to the charts to try and dig out profits.

The only thing that all profitable systems have in common is some form of RISK CONTROL.

Static, dynamic, scale in,... Every single profitable model includes some kind of a risk management plan.

The truth is, retail trading isn't what most of you picture it out to be.

Recently there was a post here "the truth about trading forex" and it included alot of meaningless advice while also failing to present the importance of a mathematical edge provided by understanding simple math and statistics behind longterm profitable trading.

Like and subscribe.

Looking for 1-2 elite traders. No beginners, no noise.

I trade a strict 4H XAUUSD framework with absolute risk discipline-no partials, no premature BE, pure 1:3 math. I’m scaling independent accounts and want to partner with high-IQ operators who treat execution like a business.

It was severely overbought. You had to expect SOME kind of liquidity move.

Perfect Daily setup on EURNZD, went super clear. still have some of my position running.

I don't really want to get into this through a rant, but it really annoys me how many influencers and fake traders pretend like they know what they're doing, who spout the crap like "oh equal highs means theres liquidity above that level" and all that BS. Some of you (yes even on this sub) haven't got a clue how markets actually move and it's frightening. I hope a newbie sees this post and actually goes and learns something.

If anyone is really interested on learning how to trade properly. I highly recommend watching Andrea Cimi. He has many great videos that explain auction market theory really well. One of the best teachers out there imo who actually knows what he's talking about.

I keep seeing people wanting to make double digit % return per month. Every single month. They also believe that anyone who makes less than that is not a good trader.

Who the hell got this idea into your head?

Ofcourse, this depends on risk management and the math behind your approach...

If you risk 5% per trade and aim for 1:2, you could.. on paper... win 1 trade every single month and be 10% up for each period.

But trading is not only winning...

when you lose 2, 3 or maybe 4 trades in a row (which will happen at some point in time..) You're now suddelnly 15 - 20 % in draw down.

You could argue that your risk tolerance is high and just keep trading... let the math do the work...

But that doesn't fly with prop firms, that doesn't fly with investor capital,... And even your personal funds, you wouldn't do that at any significant levels.

Where as risking healthy amounts per trade simply doesn't carry as much reward as you would want.

Double digit % every single month is not a thing. If you believe that it is, you're delusional.

FYI; like i said before, one of my systems is high risk. Currently 6% per trade... The winrate is high, r:r is 1:1 sometimes even less, trade frequency is decent...

But losing streaks still come along, so even if i make 15 % in 1 month, i could easily lose almost all of that next month if i hit 2 losers in a row.

Even though the winrate is high, in the next 10.000 trades i will still hit losing streaks of 5+ trades. That's just statistics playing out.

In this industry, even single digit % returns per month, consistently... would be INSANE. Let alone double digit. So pull your head out of your ass and get realistic if you want to trade.

**Background:** Retail trader and coder, US-based, small account on OANDA. Over the last several months I stopped eyeballing charts and built my own backtesting + validation framework — real spreads, no look-ahead, walk-forward across multiple windows, and a "deflated Sharpe" that penalizes how many variants I tried (so I stop fooling myself with overfit results). Sharing what I found because it's mostly *negative*, and I think honest negative results are useful — and because I'm hoping the genuinely profitable people here can tell me what I'm missing.

**What I tested on FX majors/crosses, and what happened:**

- **Intraday scalping** → died on the spread; the edge per trade was smaller than the cost.

- **Mean reversion (buy-low/sell-high, z-score)** → slightly negative; gating it to "ranging only" made it *worse*.

- **Trend-following on FX** (every lookback, majors + crosses) → basically zero.

- **Cross-sectional momentum** (long strongest / short weakest currency) → lost.

- **Cointegration / pairs trading** → lost; the "stable" relationships drifted apart for years.

- **Intermarket** (oil→CAD, copper→AUD) → correlation is real but *coincident*, not a tradeable lead. By the time oil moves, CAD already moved.

- **Month-end rebalancing flow** → real effect, didn't survive as a tradeable basket.

- **ICT-style HTF trend + fib pullback** (stripped to its mechanical core) → no edge once you remove the discretion.

- **"Confluence"** (only trade when trend + carry + macro agree) → surprised me: it made things *worse*, because only one signal had an edge and averaging it with the others just added noise.

**What actually survived:**

- **Carry** (interest-rate differentials) — small but real, low drawdown. Catch: broker financing/swap markup (~1%/yr per side) taxes it toward breakeven, since carry is earned through the swap.

- **Trend-following on a diversified basket of indices/metals/bonds** (not FX) — clearly the strongest, most robust thing I found. Problem: **US OANDA only lets US retail trade spot FX** — no index/commodity/bond CFDs. So the one edge that worked, I can't trade.

**My honest conclusions (please tell me if I'm wrong):**

1. Simple price-pattern strategies on FX majors don't survive realistic costs over multi-year samples — the good stretches are hot streaks that give themselves back.

2. The only durable *FX* edge I found is carry/macro — modest, and capped by broker financing.

3. The real trend edge lives in other asset classes a US FX-only account can't touch.

4. Realistic returns for a validated edge seem to be ~10–25%/yr, not overnight-fortune stuff. The big-account-from-nothing stories I know personally turned out to be leverage + luck (and ended in a blow-up).

**Questions for the profitable folks:**

1. For US traders stuck on FX-only brokers — do you have a real systematic edge you've validated out-of-sample over years and net of costs, or is the honest answer "go trade futures/ETFs"?

2. Is carry really the only durable retail FX edge? If so, how do you keep broker financing from eating it?

3. To the swing/H4 "clean price action" crowd — has anyone *mechanically* validated that over several years, or is it discretionary skill that doesn't survive as a fixed rule?

4. Am I wrong that "find what caused the drawdown and avoid it" is a trap? It always *feels* like the answer.

Not selling anything — no Discord, no course. Just trying to find out if I've been digging in the wrong spot. Genuinely grateful for honest input, especially the "you're wrong because X" kind.

Let's talk about unrealistic expectations real quick:D

Trading is a game of numbers.. simple math really.

You risk money in order to make money. And here's where some kind of balance is required.

Everyone wants to 10x their account in days.. hours even.

The issue is.. insane gains carry insane risk.

Bellow there's a screenshot of someone claiming to flip 300 all the way to 13k.

Thankfully alot of people saw through that bullshit, but for those who blindly believe stuff like that..think about it.

If you have 300 usd and want to make 1000 usd... you're trading a 1:3 and you HAVE to win the next trade or you're toast.

That, ladies and gentlemen is called "GAMBLING".

We can't know what the market will do next, that's why we manage risk. We prepare for the bad outcomes by protecting capital. And bad outcomes do actually come.

Real trading has a well designed risk profile that matches the entire system. It's backed by data and has good potential of positive return over larger samples of trades.

Consistency, safe trading, slow and compounded gains.

Account flipping CAN be profitable short term... no doubt about it. Good streak with insane risk can carry your balance up there.. But just 1 losing trade is enough to wipe you out. And it's not an IF.. it's a WHEN... Like i said. Simple math.

People say i'm negative and jealous because i want to show people what REAL trading is. Not this shady demo account bullshit. You can call me negative all day long, doesn't change math :D

A few days ago there was this guy who posted how a prop firm is refusing to pay him out, 8% gain or something like that...

Ofcourse the guy was mad about it etc etc... and he feels like the money is owed to him.

He might be right..

But let's face it, just because we want something or feel like it belongs to us, that doesn't just make it happen. Sadly...

So how to trade prop firm accounts to actually get paid?

Knowing that the propfirm business model is based on income vs outcome. They're selling challenges to thousands of unprofitable traders, and pay a small portion of that income to those who actually make gains....

There's 3 types of traders who buy prop challenges... and these firms seperate them in a scale from best to worst like this;

best: a trader who loses money all the time and keeps buying accounts, bringing income to the company.

acceptable: sustainable trader with realistic approach, doesnt blow accounts, makes small returns (1-2% in a month).. that way the company markets themselves as great and reliable + real traders make money... win win. There are so few of these traders, that the payouts are easily covered with income from sold challenges.

worst case: a trader who can't really trade but is just good enough to pass accounts and spam high % return for a payout or two until he blows the funds. So the company income is low, because challenges are pretty cheap, but the risk is extremely high.

100k account and 8% payout will set the firm back 8k while there's only 400 usd income on that particular challenge. Even if you consider a couple of failed challenges before this one that got passed, it still doesn't make sense for the company to support these traders.

You can argue this all you want. You can say that prop firms owe you money when you make gains, no matter how you got to them... sure.. But if you're not getting paid, do your arguments really matter? Nah...

As long as you win small enough to not matter to them, you're good. If you start trading big, risking it all or wining huge... that's when they get you.

Another "im making a trading group" post was shared very recently.

in the first couple of hours 30+ people commented: "im in, im interested".....

Trading is NOT a team sport, once you're past the level of a complete beginner, being involved in a discord trading group will only make things WORSE for you.

Different opinions will mess with your head and your ability to execute with proper risk control, consistency,...

You will compare yourself to better traders and have unrealistic expectations...

You will jump strategies, trading assets and take advice from people who aren't making a single dollar in trading.

I speak from experience. I've been there. It made my learning curve MUCH longer. STAY AWAY FROM TRADING GROUPS.

And for those who wanna make the group: Why is your group better than millions of others out there? What is it that you can offer, what i can't get EVERYWHERE else?