Everything works in the same way that nothing works. Let me explain.

Thinking that a few demand zones or fair value gaps that worked means proof of a profitable system is why failed traders can become millionaires through mentorships, courses, and YouTube ad revenue (like ICT). It’s a fundamental lack of even a shred of understanding about the amount of data there is in trading. Anything can work a few times, but nothing broadcasted on YouTube works long-term on its own. Do you really think if you found a pattern that would make you $10,000,000 / year that you would sell it for $20 a month? Come on now. If you choosing when and when not to follow your system is what makes it work long-term, then that’s as valid as choosing when and when not to use my cat’s meows as buy signals. The only difference is that your system would be far better for learning, but their validity is the same because they only work based on the discretionary read of the underlying price action. Both systems could be automated because they are all codable instructions, yet none of them work long-term. They only start working when you decide when not to follow them, and only you can figure that out. If it could be explained rationally and coherently by you or a guru, then that explanation could be automated. If you bought because price did x while volume was doing y, then that can be automated.

Early on in your trading, you might take a setup that fails, but someone with more experience might’ve avoided that setup due to information that only experience can teach. That knowledge cannot be learned from a book or video. This is because intuition is built through implicit learning. It’s not magic. It’s science. It’s why you can hold a conversation without having to focus on tying your shoes. The brain learns through two pathways; conscious and unconsciousness, but I won’t turn this into a psychology lesson. I hate when people use academic credentials, but I feel it’s important to mention that I have a degree in behavior science. Feel free to verify through your own research what I’ve said here though!

Just for a minute, imagine if trading was like playing an instrument. Watching videos and reading books will help with some basic knowledge and terms, but it won’t actually make you a good piano player. The only way to develop those skills is through thousands of hours of just playing the piano. Beyond the basic fundamentals on rules, terms, and strategies, watching videos has essentially 0 translation to real improvement and performance at tasks like sports, instruments, and trading (unless you make an algorithm). Watching a PowerPoint on how to play golf wouldn’t make you the next tiger woods, but the only thing that separates intuition from hope is a whole lot of time and targeted learning. Your strategy should be as automated and specific as possible, or else there is 0 chance for you to become a successful discretionary trader. You can’t just stare at the candles and click buy because you feel like it’s going to go up. Implicit learning can only happen in very specific and repetitive scenarios. However, the concept of implicit learning remains largely hypothetical only when it comes to trading. All we know is that if it does work here, then automating a system as much as possible gives you the best chance at success.

Can you sit still and be patient for long periods of time with sustained focus, or do you have about 17 minutes of intense focus before the goblins take over and you completely abandon your strategy? It makes no sense to force a system that goes against your biology when there are so many different ways to trade, and only the ignorant try to convince you that any one type of trading is superior to another. Advice like that is pushed by people who don’t have enough experience and/or skills yet to realize how irrational and nonsensical they’re being. Or, they skipped the development stage when children realize that other people have their own unique attributes and experiences. When it comes to your specific approach, there are a lot of variations in what you can do. You might be great at the high-volatility market-open and terrible after, the complete opposite of that, or you could find no correlation between performance and the time of day. Nobody can find what the best answer is except for you, but making a conclusion about important metrics like that after 3 days of results is an insult to your middle-school science teachers. You need to collect a lot of data before you can make any conclusions or inferences, but, even then, you don’t want to put yourself in a box too early. You need consistency and structure while also being open to new ideas. Expecting to be a consistently profitable trader after a year is a recipe for disaster. First comes the experimenting, and then you start refining a specific strategy. Every strategy has losses.

Not journaling implies every time you make a realization or get an idea that it will just be forever embedded in your mind with no need for a reminder, which is insane. How are you supposed to learn if you don’t write anything down or collect any data? Unfortunately, this is what most people do - watch a YouTube video by their favorite guru who can’t trade, go long because they think candlestick patterns work, fail, and then repeat that for 2 years and wonder why they’re not making money while saying that their trading guru is aCtUaLlY vErY hElPfUl!  You might find that if you get to a certain point down on the day that you have a high chance of doing much worse. For example, I found a max daily loss in my trading history that if hit had more than an 80% chance of doing significantly worse, and that guided my decision on setting an exact max daily loss where I stop no matter what. So, find that number for you, but don’t set it too early, because you need a proper amount of data. I had at least 6 months of performance to determine mine. and there was no way for me to figure that out except for putting in the work. You can also take screenshots of the price action during your trading session, which will start the process of determining your strengths and weaknesses (if there’s any correlation) between volatility and/or price action’s degree of direction versus consolidation.

All of you would probably benefit from a reminder document you look at before and during trading, because even though recording and journaling is an excellent way to learn, you still have to actually implement those lessons into your trading. Plus, as time goes on, there’s a good chance you might forget some really important lessons and put yourself into a never ending cycle of repeating past mistakes. Reminders are short simplifications of more complex lessons learned through the power of recording trades and journaling. They come from ideas and will be unique to every person. Mine are great for me, they might be terrible for you, and vice versa. Reminders should come from journaling, which can be as simple as writing down “Oh, don’t go bing bong when the doodoo is going meow meow.” You don’t need to write a 5-paragraph essay every day. An important note is that these will change as you solve old problems and encounter new ones, but, again, you should keep old reminder documents in case you ever revert to harmful behavioral patterns. This will help you escape the cycle of repeating mistakes and not making progress.