Hello and welcome to The r/Forex Trading Community!

A few days back someone called me a happy meal trader and I’d like to say I think I really am
Luckily for me this happy meal trader makes profit

Hey y'all! Veteran trader but new to OANDA (I'm back in Forex after a long absence). I took the position opening option with a set stop and a 3K amount at risk (seems neat -- VT Trader never had anything like that), and OANDA opened the position at 23,879 units (USD). I opened my position at 157.857 with a deep stop at 137.150. Doing the math, if (137.150/157.857)*x = 3000, I would have expected the position to be sized at (157.857/137.150)*3000 = 3452. Instead I see 23,879. Can any help my obviously flawed math skills here? I don't see how this gives me a 23K position size. What's the right way to do the math for this kind of position?

sold gbpusd. days to wait

Massive buyers + sellers stop losses = tp in 30 mins (that's rare in 2026 lol :v )

When I saw this couple hours ago I thought I made mistake but I knew something wasn't right. Decided to go through one star rating on trustpilot with "news" as key word and saw they did this to others.

Today they marked Governor Bailey speech as red in their calendar (btw I can't even see this on forex factory at all).

I heard of many shady stuff but this is wild.

Of course I breached the account🙃

Im surprised they have such high ratings. Idk about other accounts but I believe Zero Instant was created to fail you from the very beginning.

Well long story short is that I made a bet, the market doesn’t seem to be heading in that direction but the trade hasn’t hit any SL yet. Then rn I’m just waiting until the market goes up again. It’s been a couple of weeks now and wanted to know how long anyone else has held onto a position?

One loss can make a perfectly reasonable rule feel broken. Before changing anything, check whether the trade actually followed your plan. If it did, the loss may just be part of the strategy. If it didn’t, fix the execution instead of rewriting the setup. I find it more useful to review several similar trades together and look for a repeated problem before making a change. Otherwise, you can keep adjusting your rules around every recent result until there’s no consistent strategy left to test. How many trades do you review before deciding a rule needs to change?

First of all apologies for the wall of text, but it's difficult to be concise on the subject. However, I wanted to share some observations as just as everyone here, I've also tried my luck. And here are my observations.

If there were a trading strategy that consistently made money, surely everyone would be talking about it. Yet the more I look at the entire retail trading landscape, the more convinced I become that the people making the most consistent money aren't necessarily the traders themselves.

It's the brokers collecting spreads, commissions and overnight fees. It's the self-proclaimed trading gurus charging hundreds or thousands for courses, mentorship programmes and signals. It's the influencers promoting brokers through affiliate links, earning commissions from the very people they're supposedly helping. It's the prop firms collecting challenge fees from thousands of aspiring traders, most of whom will never receive a meaningful payout.

Social media is absolutely flooded with trading success stories. People supposedly turning £100 into £10,000, posting screenshots of massive profits, showing off luxury cars and claiming they've cracked the market. But how many of these individuals provide independently verified trading records covering several years? How many show every losing trade, every blown account, every deposit and withdrawal, and their actual profitability after fees?

And how many of those success stories are simply fabricated, exaggerated or amplified by bots and promotional accounts to attract new customers?

Every few months, another supposedly revolutionary strategy becomes popular. First it's moving averages, then supply and demand, order blocks, liquidity sweeps, fair value gaps, smart money concepts, ICT methodologies, and whatever else happens to be fashionable. Each one is presented as the missing piece of the puzzle. Yet despite all these strategies, indicators, educational resources and increasingly sophisticated trading platforms, the overwhelming majority of retail traders still struggle to achieve consistent profitability.

Whenever a strategy fails, the explanation is almost never that the strategy itself might lack a genuine statistical edge. Instead, traders are told they lack discipline, patience, emotional control or proper risk management. And while those factors certainly matter, they also provide convenient explanations that make practically any losing strategy impossible to disprove. The method is always right; apparently, it's the trader who is wrong.

Then there's the endless cycle of backtesting, optimisation and hindsight analysis. Almost any chart can be made to look predictable after the price has already moved. People draw perfect entries around historical support and resistance, highlight precisely the order blocks that worked, and conveniently ignore the dozens that failed. But identifying profitable trades retrospectively is completely different from making decisions in real time, when the market could move in either direction.

What I increasingly question is whether the retail trading industry is primarily built around helping ordinary people become consistently profitable, or around monetising their endless attempts to achieve that profitability.

Because when you examine who receives guaranteed payments regardless of whether a trader wins or loses, a rather uncomfortable pattern emerges. Brokers get their fees. Educators get their course payments. Signal providers get their subscriptions. Influencers receive their affiliate commissions. Trading platforms receive their subscriptions.

Meanwhile, the ordinary trader takes virtually all the financial risk.

And perhaps that's the most profitable trading strategy of all: don't trade the market; sell the dream of beating it.

Loss

Hello my dear Traders , i know when you are balls deep into trading your mental health takes a toll , you forget who you are and sometimes , hell most of the times you doubt yourself if you can even make it to the top .
I absolutely understand what each and every trader goes through everyday in their life’s.
All i wanna ask is HOW ARE YOU ? Be open and share how you really are feeling and doing in life, there are no wrong answers. Just get it off your chest you might just feel better and reset yourself and get back to being the awesome happy talented trader you are meant to be

I bought pre london. Wait and see blue arrow wicked, I planned to add more, London or New York.

i sold on tokyo

It’s weird how the same setup can feel completely different after a losing streak. A few days ago you would’ve taken it without much thought. Now you’re hovering over the button, checking everything twice, and still can’t bring yourself to enter. You know losses happen, but you really don’t want another one. How do you deal with that? Do you take a break, trade smaller, or find something else helps?

Win ou loss?🚦

Well, it was my second trade after I lost the first trade, the target was little way and then it reversed. I can't explain this type of pain but my old self would have blown my account without showing mercy. How do you guys handle this? Because I don't like taking partials it will disturb my strategy and how do you handle this emotion? It is worst then hitting then sl because you see all that profit but it being taken away from you!

I'm so disappointed!

Well, I have backtested a strategy and it has 45 % win rate with 1:3, how do you guys follow the system? It's been 3 losses in 3 days and sitting in loss is so hurtful. I mean, I can't stick to the process, I still risk like one more small trade and it definitely ends up in loss also. What I'm asking is how do you stay with the drawdowns, I'm like 1% down!

I don't know how to get through this difficult process

I've been paying for challenges and wanted to know if my numbers actually give me a real chance, so I ran a Monte Carlo sim with typical rules: 8% target, 5% daily loss, 10% max loss, 1% risk per trade, 2 trades a day.

With a 50% win rate and 1:1 RR:

- No time limit: about 55% pass

- 30-day limit: about 30% pass, and roughly half just run out of days

- Trailing drawdown instead of static: drops to around 47%

What surprised me most is that at 1:1 and 50% you have zero edge, so passing is basically a coin flip weighted by how far the target is vs the max loss. Changing risk size barely helps. With a real edge, lower risk per trade usually increases pass rate but takes longer.

Rough math: if a challenge costs $300 and your pass rate is 30%, you're paying about $1,000 on average per pass.

Curious what win rate and RR people here actually run on challenges, and whether you size down near the daily limit.

I'm testing a mechanical Support & Resistance strategy on XAUUSD.

My rules:

- M15 Support/Resistance zones

- M5 entries

- Trade only with the trend

- Wait for strong rejection

- Liquidity sweep + reclaim

- Fixed 1R risk

This trade ended in a full stop loss before price later recovered.

Looking at the attached chart:

I'm looking for educational feedback, not hindsight. Thanks!

as I see it

I have been following and testing this strategy off of trade with Pat has anyone tested it or use it regularly. I am aware there is no one magic strategy but wanted input from more experienced traders.

If you aren't aware basically the rules are 9:30am EST 15min orb. Breakout decided direction, Pullback into a supply or demand( ema 200 added for confirmation eg demand should be above ema200 and supply below it)

I like this strategy and it's rules( especially because it is supposed to be only the first three hours of NY open so I don't have to watch charts all day and it prevents overtrading, something I struggle with) what was off putting that on his live stream he trades it without an sl. Anyone trade this or a similar strategy to scalp?

I've knowledge of forex trading after completing over 1 yr of studying but I still don't feel confident and I'm still on demo accounts. So i was requesting if there is someone here who is willing to act as my mentor as we share ideas so I could learn more from them and expand my knowledge base.

Thanks 😊

"It finished near breakeven” sounds reassuring. It tells you surprisingly little about what happened to the account along the way.

In one of our historical simulations, an Australian-dollar signal traded gold, silver and two oil contracts. Over 2017–2023, the combined return was -0.15% a year.

Almost flat. The biggest fall from a previous account-value peak? 16.74%. The worst day? -4.42%.

Same strategy. Same sizing. Same run.

Here is the breakdown:

- 2017–2020: -0.02% annual compounded return, 8.29% maximum drawdown, -1.45% worst day.
- 2021–2023: -0.33% annual compounded return, 16.74% maximum drawdown, -4.42% worst day.
- Combined: -0.15% annual compounded return, 16.74% maximum drawdown, -4.42% worst day.

The signal used AUDUSD information from the fully completed previous month. Each month, a statistical forecast was fitted using the preceding 120 months. A positive forecast bought all four commodities. A negative forecast sold them.

Historical prices came from HolaPrime. Each position had a face value equal to 12.5% of starting capital, giving 50% across the basket. Each had a 1.99% stop, giving combined initial planned risk of 0.995%. Transaction costs and changing financing charges were included. The run contained 328 completed instrument trades.

The near-flat ending does not make that path safe. It tells you where the account arrived, not whether you could have stayed with it.

That distinction becomes particularly important when someone presents a strategy as suitable for a prop challenge. You cannot compare its final return with a firm's loss allowance and call the job done.

A 16.74% peak-to-trough drawdown does not automatically establish a particular firm's rule breach either. Some limits use starting balance, others trail account highs, and daily calculations can include open losses and specific reset times. This simulation was not a firm-specific pass/fail test.

My practical check: put the final return beside the worst day, maximum drawdown and full equity history. Then apply the actual account rules to that history, including open positions. Check the lowest points, not just the ending balance.

Both separate periods here lost money. Picking the calmer period would make the story prettier, not the evidence stronger.

When someone shows you a nearly flat backtest, what do you check first to distinguish a harmless result from an account-threatening ride?