Forum Forexroasted

my journal has made it undeniable: my single biggest leak is overtrading, taking too many marginal setups out of boredom and fomo. ive decided to dedicate this log purely to fixing that one habit rather than tweaking strategy. the rule im testing: a hard cap of two trades per day, logged here daily. starting now, will report whether a simple trade cap actually fixes the leak.

tried chasing a tier last year and blew the strat lost 2 months of profit for 300 of rebate. dont

exactly. the most reliable negative balance protection is the one you enforce yourself: reduce or close oversized exposure before known high-risk events, dont hold maximum leverage through weekends or major central bank decisions, and keep position sizes where even a violent gap is survivable. the brokers protection is a backstop, your sizing is the real defence.

yes pls as a beginner i open like 4 tabs to understand one thread its painful

i found out the hard way took a bonus, made profit, went to withdraw MY OWN deposit and got told i had to trade like 800 more lots first. felt sick

same rule here. the phone is great for getting an alert and deciding whether to walk to the desk. its terrible for actually managing trades because the screen real estate hides the context that stops you doing something dumb.

hi! 3 years, started fbs (mistake), now tickmill + vantage. gbpjpy and indices mostly. biggest lesson stop trading after 3 losses in a row my best months were the ones i didnt trade lol

love this already so tired of every site being a paid funnel pretending to be reviews

example: price ranges between 1.1000 (low) and 1.1050 (high) during opening range. price breaks ABOVE 1.1050 - thats the breakout. then price retraces back to 1.1050 (now becoming support instead of resistance) - thats the retest. if 1.1050 holds as support on the retest, that confirms the breakout was real not a fake. entering on confirmed retest is safer than entering on initial breakout.

spent 2 years on wyckoff specifically. the volume analysis approach was eye-opening but the strict pattern dogma was constraining. now i use volume context + price action without trying to fit it into wyckoff named phases. took the useful, discarded the rigid.

ive tried both trend following and mean reversion and i keep gravitating back to one even when the other is performing. makes me wonder if the choice is less about which is objectively better and more about which fits your temperament. for those whove traded both seriously, is strategy choice really a personality fit, and how do you know which one is yours?

vantage has been pushing visibility hard in 2025-2026. asic regulated entity for some clients, offshore for others, decent raw pricing on majors. they're aggressively trying to displace pepperstone and ic markets in the active trader segment.

for those whove tried vantage seriously: were they good enough to stay long term, or did you eventually move back to one of the bigger names?

for first 100 trades, spreadsheet is fine and the discipline of manually entering each trade has educational value. after 100+ trades the analytics in paid apps start providing insights spreadsheets cant. roughly: start free, upgrade when youve proven you'll actually use it consistently. paying for tradervue then not journaling is just spending money.

if you suspect regime change, do you modify the strategy or just sit out until conditions return to your preferred regime?

spent 8 months on a detailed narrative format - writing paragraph-style entries about each trade, the setup, my thinking, emotions. it was useful but slow and i found myself avoiding journaling on busy days because it felt like homework.

just switched to a simple structured template: setup type, entry reason, emotion score 1-5, result, one-line lesson. wanted to share the experience since i've seen people debate formats a lot. and also curious if others have changed formats and whether they regret it.

right-click on the timeframe bar in the chart toolbar and you'll see a 'manage timeframes' or similar option depending on mt5 version. alternatively some timeframes are in chart properties under period. for eas and indicators you can specify custom periods programmatically in mql5. it's not the most obvious menu item.

comparison to historical baseline. if your backtest showed max DD 18% and average DD 9%, and you're currently at 14%, you're in normal range. if you're at 30% and the historical max was 18%, something might be broken. also check: are your losing trades following the rules, or are you making execution mistakes? rule-following losses = system regime. mistake losses = you're broken not the system.

echoing - if you must test them, $500 max, no bonus, withdraw within 30 days. if anything sketchy on that test, run.

how do you find out who the actual backend is if the prop firm doesn't disclose it? is it in the terms somewhere or do you have to ask directly?

the markup difference between brokers can be enormous. i've seen some charge 5x what competitive ecn brokers charge on the same pair. for swing traders this matters more than spread. worth building a comparison spreadsheet with the actual dollar cost per lot per night across the brokers you're considering.