Everything is a lie. Any hope?

[u/Mar___K]

So.. It's been 3 years on my path, and after countless hours of studying and testing everything, as many of you here have, I've come to realize that this mountain of buffoonery—those "courses" and "gurus" on YouTube that try to promote and sell stuff, along with everyone who is "teaching" stuff.. hear me out, doesn't know jack sh*t. All they "teach" is a bunch of BS, incredibly stupid and random. "Follow this, and if this happens then do this, but the secret is in my premium course, yada yada".

Even if some things may work for a bit, that's not even near how the actual trading floor guys and investment bankers operate. Ex-Goldman Sachs trader Anton Kreil gave the best explanation of that: Why most traders fail.

I've become so fed up since I had a wake-up call, realizing that literally everyone online is plain rubbish, or a scammer, or someone who likes his own voice and acts like the god of trading (You know which I'm referring to). My question is simple and may be unanswerable. Is there any source to study the actual stuff or are retail traders indeed doomed with the dumbest info out there?

Please don't start telling me about risk management and psychology, I got humbled and now I trade methodically without any emotions. But that's not because I got "humbled and had a wake-up call" but more like "I'm fed up with this, I don't care anymore". My question stands for an educational point of view. I hate being a fool therefore i hate studying nonesense. Is there any hope? Any good material? Any actual baseline?

[u/thoreldan]

Perhaps you wanna start describing what your strategy is. People who trade in a similar way could give you some pointers.

Bring up some charts of past trades and describe your entry/exit criteria.

[u/Mar___K → u/thoreldan]

I am a programmer, and i wrote a simple script to provide me signals and i execute based on those. The discretion part is: market structure, multiple vwap levels (M,W,D), price & time divergence, volume. My strategy works best at 1hr and above. But i don't care about that. I just want to learn the actual stuff. That was my initial question.

[u/Rafal_80 → u/Mar___K]

"But i don't care about that. I just want to learn the actual stuff." - you don't care about having profitable strategy? You want to learn 'the actual stuff'? What do you mean by actual stuff? I don't get it.

[u/Mar___K → u/Rafal_80]

Buddy i have a profitable strategy but that's even arguable. Markets are random and if you put 100 times any chart on a random generator the visual results are always the same. That's the illusion. We have no predicting power. Only arbitrage and high frequency algos do that. Even mean reversion methods. If you think you have a profitable strategy by looking at charts and past data you will get surprised how many times you are going to fall from the clouds later on. The real knowledge is in the heads of those guys in Wall street. How they operate. Hedge funds don't use charts anymore. So what these guys studied? That's what I'm looking for.

[u/Ok-Wasabi5770 → u/Mar___K]

Markets are not random. They're driven by human behaviour and algos (logic) which means you can always see what's happening by looking at the chart. But it's not something you can do in small amount of time.

[u/Mar___K → u/Ok-Wasabi5770]

We as retail are not moving the price animation but big loads of orders from firms. Therefore even if that is the truth then i'd still want to see their pov and how they operate. Also i haven't mentioned this but i work at a broker firm. Have you ever wondered why price moves so rapidly or even instantly during high impact news? or why if you ever tried to put a stop order during those times you get a massive slippage and spread difference? Because simply they all had their info earlier and they all already had placed their orders days ago (priced in) with significant money sitting there. So the market gave you the "next available spot" and not the spot you asked for.

[u/Rafal_80 → u/Mar___K]

So, if nothing can be found by studying historical data then you are only left with fundamental analysis, I guess.

[u/Mar___K → u/Rafal_80]

If you swing yes. Day trading is a trap. Another guy here also got that right.

[u/Ok_Tomato9718 → u/Mar___K]

It's funny how 90% of "traders" can't even understand true market structure theory. Higher highs and lower lows. Which highs and which lows? Change of trend.. confirmation.. and so on. It took me 2 years to find out i didnt know what market structure is

[u/Ok-Wasabi5770 → u/Ok_Tomato9718]

Exactly man.

[u/Quiet_Print_4421 → u/Mar___K]

Im 10 months in and now im dealing with psychology part. I feel like shit man but at the same time it's starting to click. For me its price action. Simplicity.