Forum Forexroasted

most retail traders i talk to identify as either range traders or trend followers. very few say 'both equally'.

range traders cite: better win rates, clearer rules, less waiting for setups
trend followers cite: bigger winners, simpler psychology, ride the moves everyone wishes they caught

ive been a trend follower for years but my P&L per opportunity has fallen as ranges dominate more in 2026. considering adding range trading approaches but worried about identity confusion / strategy dilution.

what's your primary approach and why?

FVG = Fair Value Gap. a 3-candle pattern where the wicks of candle 1 and candle 3 don't overlap, leaving a 'gap' in the middle candle that price often returns to fill. kill zones = specific times when institutional activity historically peaks (London open 02-05 NY time, NY open 07-10 NY time, NY PM 13-16 NY time). the theory: high-probability moves happen during these windows.

google sends them to affiliate blogs that lie to them tho. thats the whole point of having it here

doji, hammer, engulfing, morning star, evening star - the classic candlestick pattern lexicon. most trading books spend chapters on these. but i've never met a profitable trader who trades pure candlestick pattern signals without other context.

is this a 'candlestick patterns work but only with context' situation, or are they just chart aesthetic that has never had real edge?

stayed pepperstone. their support actually answers fast when smth breaks during news. that mattered more to me than 0.1 pip

+1. multi-condition alerts > simple price alerts. also useful: time-based alerts that trigger when market opens specific sessions or N minutes before/after major news releases. lets you prep without watching the clock.

add one: if a broker suddenly only lets you deposit by crypto, run. crypto = no chargeback. thats the whole reason they push it

+1. having two distinct playbooks is the only way switching works. when traders try to use 'adaptable' single strategies, they're usually doing trend-following badly in ranges and range-trading badly in trends. clarity > flexibility.

real risk but mitigated by track record. newer = less data. id say start with smallest eval ($10k), pass it, take 1-2 payouts to verify reliability, then scale up if comfortable. dont front a $200k eval with a firm that has 6 months of history.

shopping for a vps and the cheap ones all have suspiciously identical specs and glowing reviews that smell fake. ive heard horror stories of oversold hosts where your 'dedicated' resources vanish during peak hours, exactly when you need them.

what are people actually running long term without regret? more interested in reliability than rock-bottom price.

been thinking about sharing my tradingview chart analyses publicly for community feedback. but i've seen that tv public charts section is full of conflicting analysis and it's not obvious how to get useful critique rather than just random comments.

is the tradingview community useful for chart feedback or is it mostly noise? how do you get quality eyes on your analysis?

ive committed to stripping my charts back to bare price for a full quarter and journaling the transition here, because im terrified without my indicators and want a record of whether it actually helps or im just chasing a trend. week 1, charts feel naked, i hesitated a lot, took fewer trades. updating weekly with honest results, not a success story sold in advance.

the confidence and stress numbers are gold for spotting the overconfidence trap too. a lot of traders find their highest-confidence entries underperform their moderate ones, because high conviction often means bias rather than edge. you only see that by scoring it numerically and reviewing. strongly second this.

response times are good (usually under 4 hours). where it falls short: the support agents sometimes give inconsistent answers on rules questions. asked about a specific situation around a correlated positions rule twice and got two slightly different interpretations. for anything rules-sensitive i now insist on a written clarification and save it. small firms often have inconsistent internal knowledge on edge case rules.

extremes and alignment with trend are the key qualifiers. when retail is overwhelmingly long against a clear downtrend, thats meaningful because it confirms the crowd is fighting the move that usually wins. when positioning is roughly balanced or only mildly skewed, theres no signal. people fail with this by treating any imbalance as a fade trigger rather than waiting for the lopsided-against-trend extreme. its a filter on top of your read, never the read itself.

if you go the webhook route, host the listener on the same vps as your mt5 so theres no public internet hop between the bridge and the terminal. and put a hard sanity check in the EA: reject any signal with a lot size or price wildly outside expected range. webhooks can get spammed or replayed.

markets.com sent me a notice last week about a new 'inactivity premium' for accounts trading less than 5 lots per month. on top of their existing inactivity fee and the spread markups that have been creeping up all year.

this is what, the 4th fee structure change in 18 months? feeling like im being nickel and dimed.

who's moved off markets.com recently and where to? want to consolidate to something more transparent.

yes essentially. for each stop-loss exit, slippage = (intended price - actual fill price) in pips. positive = slipped against you. log every trade and you get a real distribution. dont eyeball it.