Forum Forexroasted

b-book = broker takes the other side of your trade instead of sending it to the market. so when you lose they win directly. expect tiny 'glitches' that always somehow favor them. spinning close button during a spike is textbook

yes all session transitions cause some widening. london close is usually most dramatic because it overlaps with the new york close approach and pre-asia setup, making it a true liquidity vacuum. asia close (around 06:00 UTC) widens less because new york is fully active. ny close at 21:00 UTC widens noticeably too especially on cross pairs.

volume is a separate dimension worth adding for some traders. complete framework: trend + momentum + volatility + volume = 4 orthogonal dimensions. note: in forex, volume data is broker-specific (tick volume not true volume), less reliable than equity markets. but still useful as one of multiple signals. on stocks/futures, volume is critical.

ran it on a news filter for 5 months. small steady gains UNTIL i forgot to disable it over an nfp once, gave back 6 weeks in 20 min. these high-winrate scalpers live or die on the filter. if you cant babysit it dont

99% are lying or showing only the cherrypicked good months. the remaining 1% are using leverage so extreme that they will blow up - they just havent yet. take any '30% monthly' claim and ask for 3 years of consecutive verified statements. silence every time.

eh i passed 2 and got paid both times. its not a scam its just hard and the daily dd rule punishes overtrading. if you blew 3 on daily dd while 'up overall' you were probably swinging too big intraday. thats exactly what the rule filters out

ive been manually checking charts for price hitting levels and its eating my day. mt5 has the built-in alert system but the conditions you can set are limited. wrote a custom mql5 script to alert me when:

• price approaches my key level within X pips
• volume on the current candle exceeds Y times average
• candle closes outside a daily range with strong body

big improvement for not staring at screens. wanted to share and ask: what custom alerts have other traders built that saved them significant time?

BOS = break of structure (price breaks a recent swing high/low confirming trend continuation). CHoCH = change of character (price breaks an opposite swing showing trend may be ending). basically renamed 'higher high broken' and 'trend reversal signal' but framed within a market structure framework. understandable terms once you map them to old TA concepts.

i ran simultaneous accounts at vantage and ic markets for 6 months. tracked every metric. results: 95% similar execution quality. tiny edge to ic markets on extreme news events, tiny edge to vantage on customer service speed. negligible practical difference. picked vantage based on personal workflow preferences.

agreed its legitimate. the test for whether youre papering over a problem: does the strategy lose during news specifically because of execution conditions (spread, slippage, spikes), or because its directional thesis is wrong during volatility? the first is solved by a filter. the second means the filter just hides a broader fragility.

the reddit search method works surprisingly well. if a firm is silently not paying or having issues, it shows up as pattern in community posts even if there's no formal review. also check if they respond to negative reviews publicly - firms that engage with complaints honestly are a better signal than 5-star rating alone.

the robustness argument is the real one. a simple strategy with two clear rules degrades gracefully when the market changes, a complex one with fifteen finely tuned conditions tends to fall off a cliff because the exact conditions it was tuned for stop occurring. plus you can actually execute a simple strategy consistently under stress, where a complex one invites hesitation and error in the moment. simple is more robust and more executable, both matter.

looking at vps options and linux servers are significantly cheaper and more resource-efficient than windows. i know mt5 is windows software natively. curious whether running it on linux via wine or crossover is reliable enough for actual trading or whether it's just a cost optimization that introduces new problems.

agree. the one free limitation that annoys people is indicator count per chart. if you run more than a couple studies at once youll hit it. but for clean price-action swing trading thats a feature not a bug, fewer indicators usually helps.

i include engulfing patterns only as confirmation, never as the primary entry trigger. if i have a good location trade (key support, clear trend, good risk-reward) and a quality engulfing forms there, i take the entry. if i don't have the location trade first, i ignore the engulfing entirely. treating it as confirmation rather than signal changed my results significantly.

the monthly fee compounds. $150/month on an instant account where you take 3 months to hit your first payout = $450 in fees before you see a dollar. a $300 challenge fee where you pass in month 1 and start getting payouts immediately is cheaper. do the break-even math for your realistic scenario, not the optimistic one.

mql5 is object-oriented where mql4 was more procedural. for simple input tweaks youll be fine. for anything with custom indicator buffers or order management the structure changed a lot, orders use a position/deal model now instead of the old order pool. budget real time if your EA does anything clever.

passed my first prop firm evaluation 5 weeks ago. now funded $50k account. honestly the change in trading psychology has been bigger than i expected.

the eval was about hitting targets. funded is about not breaking rules to keep the income going. completely different mindset shift.

for funded traders 6+ months in: how did your trading evolve? what surprised you about the transition that you wish someone had warned you about?

typical consistency rules: no single day's profit can exceed X% of total profit, minimum number of trading days required even after hitting target, max trade size limits relative to account. these prevent passing eval with one lucky home run. forces you to demonstrate repeatable edge over multiple sessions.

their educational content is actually solid for beginners, mostly broker-agnostic teaching (chart reading, risk management). as a broker they're fine for small accounts to start with. you wont get the absolute tightest spreads but the convenience of education + execution in one place has value for learners.