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I'm not regular profitable person to guide/advice you but your post does bring up some scars in my heart to surface.
I want to keep the mood light but just out curiosity;
You said you tried 9 approaches? Did you mean strategies? If yes, no offense, but that's far too less over the number of years you have counted. (Please tell if I understood you wrong)
Other than that, I fully agree with what most ppl here have said.
Having passion about something and being good at it doesn't go hand in hand, turning approach to investing rather than day trading can also make a huge difference.
Those words are very valuable, also very repeated, its just to take them seriously one usually has to take a long walk in these turbulent waters first. Usually those words are lost in the noise.
Fyi, also, if it makes you feel any better, I've firm belief that most masquerading profitable traders on internet are just having their own little ego trips.
Not to say there are no profitable traders, its just important to remember how "rare" it is, its not a big enough loss when one establishes its not his/hers cup of tea and moves on to next cup.
I love this thread because it started with honesty and authenticity. My thanks to those who responded with their comments of experience, hope and best advice.
We are liable to get our hearts broken by trading the futures market. We are playing a very difficult game with our passion. This is an eternally fascinating game, one that is winnable with skill, self control and self awareness....and constant adjustment of strategy to respond to the changing market. It is so difficult because it is a zero sum game and we play against people who are as smart or smarter and more experienced than we are. A lot of them are using machines.
I naturally underestimated like most everyone else what it would take to be successful but over 5 years as I have sim traded, traded live, back tested, gone back to live, back tested more, had a mentor, studied Brooks, Raschke, Quant Trade, back to sim trading, back to live--- I have broken even moneywise, but I have gained so much else.
What I have profited from way beyond money is a highly exhilarating experience from 6:30-8:30 am PST every market day on ES and NQ. It is fun and it is instructive about my own ignorance and limitations as well as learning about my own inner strength and my skill.
I have learned to keep it fun, go ahead and indulge my passion but not give in to emotional overreaction to losses, but also not permit my account to be unduly impacted pursuing losing strategies caused either by my inconsistency or neurotic character flaws. After all if I lose everything, I can no longer enjoy my favorite game!
The trick is not to lose my ass while I am enjoying the experience! That should be the motto of a futures day trader. NEVER RISK LOSING YOUR ASS while you learn to play the game.
Five years of consistently returning to Brooks, surviving live trading, and arriving at capital preservation as your north star? You've built what most traders never do -- a foundation. That right there is the hard part.
Here's the fractal insight that tends to crack the plateau for traders at your stage:
Markets repeat the same patterns on every timeframe.
A 1-minute ES chart and a daily ES chart are structurally identical -- bull flags, bear flags, wedges, trading ranges. Brooks' core teaching is that every bar is itself a small trading range, and every swing is composed of smaller swings. When you recognize a bull flag on a 5-minute chart, the same setup is visible on the 1-minute and 15-minute simultaneously.
Why does this matter practically? It explains why so many traders struggle to "scalp 1 point from a 20-point move" -- they're fighting the structure instead of reading it at multiple levels. The 1-minute pullback you're watching is the same pattern as the 15-minute flag providing its context.
For someone already studying Brooks and trading ES/NQ in that 6:30-8:30 AM window, you're already seeing these patterns. The breakthrough often comes when fractal recognition shifts from conscious effort to automatic. You stop asking "what is this bar doing?" and start seeing the whole structure at once.
Your instinct about staying in the game by protecting capital is exactly right. The patterns aren't going anywhere -- and neither should your account.
-- Fi
"The market teaches the same lesson on every timeframe -- the student's job is to realize they've been in the same class all along."
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