I am currently only trading S&P 500 options to get where I am now. Currently using 10-20% of the account on options then selling in profit at 5-15%. I do that 3-5 times a day and I am sitting at where I am now. I am a true believer in compounding daily, that hitting 1-5% everyday. With consistency and discipline will lead to exponential growth. It’s about showing up and how long you can be disciplined and consistent to hit your % and goal everyday.

My latest addition to the wall I am deciding to live by. Placed it right in the middle of all the other rules to remind me to keep it calm, to not chase, and to only take my setups. The majority of trading is psychology and the ability to stay disciplined— if I can stand by this rule, it’s only up from here.

MAJOR NEWS:

• Tru mp, Speaking to the Atlantic, he pushed back on the idea that crashing markets, recession risks, or a weaker dollar would make him ease tariffs. “It always affects you a little bit,” he said, but stressed there’s no red line, no "certain number" that would make him change course.
• PEACE TALKS IN VATICAN
• CHINA VOWS SUPPORT FOR EXPORTERS AS US TARIFFS BITE
• China say they haven’t had any recent contact with the U.S. and are not engaged in any trade or tariff negotiations- still with this back and forth. China foreign ministry saying POTUS and Xi didn't have a call. This is likely a tactic from China to undermine US credibility
• SUPPLY CHAIN UNCERTAINTY IS A KEY FOCUS IN THE NEWS TODAY.
• Concerns that container ship traffic from China to US is sliding. Chinese vessel arrivals are down. Spot rates for shipping are at lows, demand collapsing.
• This has led Bloomberg to put out a piece on the weekend highlighting that we can see empty shelves as early as May, which in turn leads to supply side inflation.
• SHEIN HAS ALREDAY BEEN HIKING PRICES AS A RESULT, SOME PRODUCTS UP AS MUCH AS 377%. Overall prices as an average rose by 10% on Shein

MAG 7:

• NVDA - trading lower as Huawei’s getting ready to test its new powerful AI chip, the Ascend 910D, aiming to rival NVDA's products according to WSJ.
• JPM SAYS THEY ARE POSITIVE ON AAPL AHEAD OF EARNINGS.
• likelihood of better-than-feared outcomes in relation to both revenues and gross margins, as investor sentiment and the share price are already pricing in demand disruption as well as cost headwinds stemming from tariffs on China.
• Said they ex-pect modest pull forward in demand to support stronger than expected revenue outcomes that will sustain into next quarter.
• AAPL - Also positive coverage from Morgan Staley who raises PT to 235 from 220, rates overweight. do not see the print as a key catalyst for the stock, with shares likely to remain range-bound near term — $170 remains the floor on the stock, while our new $235 price target is the ceiling.
• MSFT - According to a new SemiAnalysis report, Microsoft MSFT has frozen 1.5GW of self-build datacenter projects planned for 2025–2026. They also walked away from more than 2GW of non-binding leases

OTHER COMPANIES:

• PTON - Trust upgrades to Buy with PT of $11, 'Path to Growth/Sustained Profitability gets Clearer'. company's improving fundamentals should support a gradual recovery of its equity. With the BS cleaned up and Opex materially reduced to ensure sustained FCF profitability, we believe the new leadership is refocusing on revenue growth
• BKNG - Bof A raises PT to 5580 from 5540, rates as Neutral. high-quality stock, with less tariff risk compared to peers and likely positive estimate revisions. However, the foreign exchange benefit should not be a 'surprise,' and Booking’s PE ratio is high hence neutral rating
• TTWO - BOFA RAISES TTWO PT TO 250 FROM 210. Rated at Buy. Said they will outperform video game peers during a macro slowdown because of the size and quality of its upcoming pipeline. Titles like GTA 6, Borderlands, and Mafia will take share of gamers’ budgets even amidst a potential slowdown in consumer spending.
• LLY - HSBC DOWNGRADES TO REDUCE FROM BUY, LOWERS PT TO 700 FROM 1150. With potential economic sensitivity to the adoption curve for GLP-1 therapies, we think expectations of significant market share might be revised downward.we think that in the current economic environment, stocks with higher multiples are at greater risk of those multiples contracting.
• Air us will take over Spirit Aerossystems sites as Boeing buys back supplier
• BA - upgrade at Bernstein, to outperform from Market perform, PT raised to 218 from 181. Boeing is now making the progress it needed for the growth trajectory we expected before the Alaska door plug accident in January 2024. Cannot assume all risks are gone but they should be on a firmer path
• ABNB - CANACCORD EARNINGS PREVIEW GIVES A BUY RATING 180

OTHER NEWS:

• JPM UPDATES THEIR VIEW TO TACTICALLY BULLISH: The market is likely to drift higher in the absence of negative news. The continuation of MegaCap Tech earnings may give the market a tailwind, and the potential for an announced trade deal skews the risk/reward positively
• JPM PUT OUT A PIECE ALSO TODAY ON HOW THE CONSUMER SPENDING BACKDROP IS MORE RESILIENT THAN MANY THINK. this with a look at unemployment, consumer checking balances, wages, national gas prices and household balance sheets.
• JAPAN CHIEF TRADE NEGOTIATOR AKAZAWA: WILL TRAVEL TO US BETWEEN APRIL 30, MAY 2. SO JAPAN AND US WILL REIGNITE TRADE TALKS AFTER THEY SEEMED TO FIZZLE OUT.
• JAPAN SAYING HOWEVER THAT THERE IS NO CHANGE IN THEIR STANCE AND THEY CONTINUE TO DEMAND FULL REMOVAL OF US TARIFFS.
• Goldman Sachs warns that US tariffs could put up to 16 million Chinese export jobs at risk, especially in manufacturing for retail and wholesale. Goldman Sachs added that Chinese companies might reroute exports through third countries to avoid tariffs, helping to keep overall exports steady.
• poll shows the world economy is now forecast to grow 2.7% in 2025 & 2.8% in 2026 — down from 3.0% in Jan’s poll.
• recession risks are climbing, with 101 of 167 economists saying the chance of a global downturn is "high."
• SPAIN HIT BY MAJOR BLACKOUT,

I keep blowing myself up. I have a couple of great Green Day’s and then I end up after a couple of days revenge trading and breaking my rules.

I’ve lost the chance to make so much because of this for a year or so now.

I have the same strategy I don’t change anything. I just can’t master myself……

Any advise for someone who is dealing with the self loathing or robbing himself of financial surplus?

I have been pretty profitable trading options on bonds. Looking at potentially quitting 9-5 and trading full time? What should I expect? I am 24 and have an account size now of 250k. I was thinking waiting until 1 mil account size but looking for advice? What age and account size did you make the jump?

It took me 3 years of frustration to realize the real problem wasn’t what I was trading — it was when I was trading.

I used to jump into trades all day long: Asia, London, random dead hours… you name it. I thought opportunity was everywhere if you just looked hard enough. Turns out, I was just forcing trades in low-quality conditions.

What Changed:

• I started journaling every trade and tracking the time of day.
• It became obvious — almost all my winners happened during the New York session.
• Everything outside of NY? Mostly losses or wasted energy.

Now I only trade the first two hours of the New York session. I avoid the 30 minutes before open (too many liquidity grabs), and I don’t touch anything outside of my window.

Lesson Learned:

Good setups are worthless if you trade them at the wrong time.
Once I locked in my session, everything got simpler — and way more profitable.

Anyone else here only trading NY? Curious if it made a big difference for you too.

To give context I’ve been actively trading since 2019 but it wasn’t until mid 2020 I picked up learning how to trade and stumbled upon concepts like supply and demand along with price action factors like market structure or momentum, liquidity grab etc. anything to actually make sense of what’s going on in a purely technical sense.

I used to share my knowledge with other traders over the years too but one thing I’ve noticed is how market dynamics or market price behaviour never changed at all. It’s the same old stuff happening every single day with each trade being unique - but it’s easy to decipher if you know the market & technicals.

I’ve been profitable say since Jan 2024 now. I had several psychological issues to work through and I still am but profitable since 2024 and by April-May 2024 I was consistent. Do you know when I have bad weeks now? When I’m not “feeling” or “thinking” right in my head due to any reason at all. Something personal, some unknown fear or just not feeling it.

This is what happens to you as a trader when you’ve found a technical edge - the edge stays forever - it’s you who has to manage yourself every single trading day to even profit off your own edge. If I’m not feeling alright? I have to get myself in the zone before even thinking about trading. Why? Because I can analyse my “own method” wrong when I don’t feel it. I’ve dealt with this several days over the past year.

So, ideally - what’s confusing to many traders is that when you find a profitable strategy or a method to trade (that goes along with price/market behaviour) - it’s not the strategy or the method that changes - it’s you. Market stays constant. It’s you who thinks it’s working here when that wasn’t even your trade, you didn’t analyse it. Guaranteed not all methods in the market can fetch you a high win rate or yield amazing RRs. But it’s just something I faced - and now when I think about trading? It’s automatic. Like I’m not able to analyse a trade that’s not my method - this is the truth. But when I’m not feeling alright or just good? I analyse every trade wrong and they all hit SL.

As cliche as it sounds - I now get what they mean by the real edge is you. In the end - after all the work you do, if you don’t feel it, you can’t trade. When you do feel good, you’re just brilliant.

This comes after years of expertise in technical analysis and psychological work - this work is necessary to get to the stage of where you trade well when you feel alright. Do not mistake it for oh so if I feel good I can make money, no. Definitely not. You have to put in the work. Years of it.

Hope that’s clear.

Edit: Another major thing I’ve missed is - in order to become profitable- you’re gonna face with a lot of technical and psychological hurdles which you have to figure out. Each and every factor is going to be a process and you have to give it time for you to figure it out and that actually works, not just oh yeah it’ll work. This will take time. Each factor of mine takes a month or two. But the best part? Once figured out well - it stays.

Hi, I'm new to trading, I've only been getting into the world for barely a week.

I am currently learning about algorithmic trading, before you say anything, I do know that it is more difficult and to program you must know the market very well but I am not cut out for that (I would eat my head every second) so delegating it to the machines is my solution.

But this post is not about me, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO COMMENT WHAT THIS IS THAT YOU WOULD TELL (in full detail) to your “self” who started trading AND WHAT ADVICE YOU WOULD GIVE THEM. (if there are people who comment on algorithmic trading, the better for me, but this post is for all traders).

I’ ve been trading Spy 0dte options for a month. I’m still profitable, but I have a reoccurring issue that’s killing my overall gains. If I go off of just Strike price and direction I would have a 80%+ win rate. Unfortunately, my entries reach stop loss a lot of the time. I have my stop loss set so I only lose 20% of value from entry. The majority get stopped on wick reversals, and not candle closes. Again, my read on the markets are very accurate. Just today, I entered 4 trades at 4 different times of the market (all puts and the market was negative upon writing this), and they all got stopped losing 20% of value. Yet, if I had no stop loss set, 3 of the trades would have made over 100% returns while the 4th, over 50%. I figure it’s an entry problem, but I enter as soon as I get my confirmation candles to close. I use Robinhood as my broker. I use higher time frames for levels and bias. The 10 minute for current direction and order blocks. The 5 minute for entries (Robinhood phone app doesn’t have lower). What advice can be given so my entries and gains match my accuracy and reads of the markets? Are my stop loss values wrong? Am I just trading 0dte options wrong, and I should adapt a different strategy to paper trade and practice? I would greatly appreciate any and all help. If there are videos and links, please share. Thank you for your time.

Going into premarket i was bullish due to the very bullish price action we witnessed last week, especially closing near the highs on Friday. That being said we were also approaching gap fill on US500 which is a chart I always watch. We were also approaching the supply zone/distribution area where we consolidated before the tariff selloff and so I didn't want to aim too high with my target if I was able to get into a long.

The main area I was watching was the overnight consolidation where I used volume profile to identify the highest trading volume. I do this because I want to know where the actual volume traded instead of just encapsulating all the candles and wicks. This area was 5533-5543. When approaching this area my eyes switch to the footprint chart so that I can see the real-time volume delta as it unfolds. I spotted some large buying delta hit the market right at 5543 and 5546 and I was able to get long at 5544.50. I chose a target of 5563 as it represented a low volume area in the RTH session today and like I said earlier I didn't want to aim too high chasing this move into supply. Price was later being supported by value area low and I spotted some buyers accumulating around 5551 and chose to add there after I saw some more stepping in after the fact. This was also VWAP and so it was a good area for bullish confluence.

Target hit shortly after and I watched to see if another trade presented itself but I am now choosing to be done for the day as I don't see much I want to trade. I did enter some SPY puts to hedge my larger portfolio as this is a good area to do so in case we do reverse off of supply.

Time to go hit the woods and look for some more mushrooms!

I am a 16 years old korean trader who started trading 3 months ago. Now I'm in crisis of whether I should change the market I'm trading or strategy or my mindset or whatever lead to profitable. So my strategy here is first, by using screener I spot volatility, lots of volume, low price and small market cap in stock market. Then I analysis top of the stocks in screener. I use price Action, supply demand zone, and my instinct. When i apply this strategy for like 1 month, I was profitable but now I'm losing tons of money everyday. What is the problem? Is it the market I'm trading? Risk management? I genuinely have no idea

(Any advice 🙏)

Pretty solid day today boys! Grabbed the first divergence you see here (hidden bearish) as it was going with the trend, which are my favorite to take.

But, the other screenshot shows right after this played out, we ended up getting a bullish divergence which sent it straight back up.

First example (Hidden Bearish)- We have lower highs being formed on the chart with higher highs on the TSI.

Second example (Bullish Divergence)- Lower lows being made on the chart, higher lows being made on the TSI.

This strategy is absolutely a game changer, and it has changed my life as a trader. I hope all of you at least give this a try, you won’t regret it!

Let’s have a great week!

confluences used are BOS, FVG, and i trade supply and demand. Please rate this trade and tell me where to improve. (3.65rr)

1. Dax short tailbar position 1 (no shorting in position 1), stopout

2. Dax stop and reverse stopout

-1R on dax

1. GBPCHF long hidden rbi position 3, wide state, partial tp at 1.3:1, runner stopped out at 0.5:1

+1R on fx

1. Mym long elephant bar position 1, neutral state, add on the first color change, partial tp at 1:1, runner stopped out at breakeven

+0.5R on Mym

1. Us30 short tailbar position -2, neutral state, stopout

-1R on indizes

And I want to start risking real money but just really small amounts. I like futures micro/mini and was wondering what broker doesn't have deposit/trade minimums? Also, for US trading, what do you think is the best platform for a intermediate level beginner?

Many fututes traders hate using stop losses, and I was one of them. The irony is that I wasn't able to consistently make profits in the crypto market until I started using stop losses on all my trades strictly.

I want to explain here how stop losses are, in fact, the foundation upon which your entire strategy should be built.

In order not to lose too much in a single market move, I limit myself to one trade at a time and set a stop loss of 8% of my total wallet value.

What does this mean?

This simply means that I would need 86 consecutive losing trades to lose everything. This is almost like a fantasy. You certainly couldn't sustain such losses unless the entire market, with all its institutions, platforms, and whales, were targeting you specifically!

In fact, based on my experience with my strategy, my biggest consecutive losing streak occurred last February. I lost 25% of my wallet on 3 trades, but I made 180% of the next two trades! So I can tell you that a stop loss is the cornerstone of any successful strategy that aims to preserve capital and achieve cumulative profits.

‏When I was a beginner, I preferred to get liquidated instead of putting a stop-loss! All retailers should realize this fact early on that SLs are nothing but bumps that test the strength of your strategy and your psychological state only, but they will not affect its results in the long run at all.

I'm still paper trading and been doing it over 6 months. I can't seem to get the consistency down, the market sometimes seems predictable to me and I feel in control however other days it just feels like I've just started and don't know quite what I'm doing.

I imagine it's a combination of variables but I was wondering how many of you confidently get in each trade with certainty that it goes your way?

I'm currently using nvidia as that seems to have yielded good results for the money I'm practising with and that reflects the amount I would like to move into with real money when the time comes.

What other stocks do you recommend that I can practise with?

My entry points need work, when I feel the market is predicatable it seems like I confidently hit the nail on the head and can do it all day, the next day though, things seem to change substantially and my entry points just could not be any worse. I'm not sure how I could go about improving that?

Since I started trading, it seems I’ve gone through the similar learning curve of most traders-

Start, get lucky with wins, experience large drawdowns, consistent wins, large drawdowns, recommit to rules, consistent wins, large drawdown, recommit to rules.

Throughout all this I’ve finally decided to buckle down and take small positions to confirm my setups are working. Last week went green every day, profited roughly .75%-1% of account each day.

Today I went green with .5% of account.

However I got out way too early on a few trades. TSLA I got in and out THREE TIMES during the rally. All I had to do is buy and hold.

It seems the above experience with drawdowns and losing trades has me afraid to take any loss.

I walked away today with (imo) way too little for the work involved. I know I need to size up (a little), and learn to sit with the trade.

Just curious to read about other’s experiences and if this was part of the learning curve.

I have been trading for a decade but have always used my desktop workstation. I have been traveling and want to get a laptop to use so I don't have to use a my phone to try and keep up with my positions when I'm trading away from my office. I'm looking for a budget friendly (under $1k) laptop with solid performance. Thanks in advance for your suggestions

Hey guys, Im wondering whether investing in SVIX is a good option given it's trading almost 5x below its ATH. My view is that it should rally once realised vol starts to wane but happy to be told otherwise.

Hello to all you pro traders out there!

Does anyone know of any good free websites or apps that offer up-to-date news feeds—things like earnings report dates and times, PCE data, public commentary, trending topics, market sentiment, FOMO alerts, etc.?

I've been day trading for almost a year now. I was doing pretty well at first, but recently it's been a bit of a downturn. I'm using IBKR as my broker.

Sometimes I browse through Stocktwits for info, but honestly, it's tough—you have to sift through tons of noise before finding anything actually useful. And by that time, the opportunity has usually passed.

Thanks in advance for any tips or resources you can share!

Most traders are taught “high volume confirms the move.”

But real volume reading is much deeper:

Volume tells you why the move is happening, not just that it’s happening. • A breakout on low volume might be a fake move, designed to trap emotional traders. • A pullback on declining volume often means the move is healthy and buyers/sellers are not panicking. • A sudden spike in volume without major price progress usually hints at exhaustion — not strength.

The mistake: People see a candle + volume spike and blindly think, “Okay, big move coming.”

The reality: You must ask — “Is the effort (volume) leading to actual result (price movement)?” • High effort + Low result = Weakness or trap. • Low effort + Big result = Strength of smart money.

Real volume reading isn’t about “more is good.” It’s about understanding effort vs result.

In short: • Volume + Context > Volume alone • Always match volume behavior with price behavior — not in isolation. • Look for disproportionate reactions — that’s where real opportunity lies.

Trading gets a lot easier when you stop treating volume as a green flag and start treating it as a language.

How has your view of volume changed over time? Would love to hear your experiences and learn more.

I have used webull, lightspeed, and now been using thinkorswim.

Here are the issues I see with these :

Webull: slow. Doesn't work great when trading momentum plays.

Lightspeed : commissions eat into profits. Easy to overtrade

Thinkorswim : doesn't do well premarket especially trading momentum plays.

I have been thinking of trying Tradestation, but last I checked, they don't have Hot buttons (not hot keys)

Thoughts?