This was probably one of the cleanest months I’ve had in a long time and honestly the biggest reason was simplification.

Over the last month Itook a payout of $5,572 across 4 accounts, and almost all of it came from repeating the same few models over and over instead of constantly searching for new setups every day.

The biggest one was the IRL → ERL model.

NQ has been in a strong trending environment lately, and instead of trying to predict reversals or short every extension, I mainly focused on liquidity. Once liquidity was taken and price reclaimed structure, I waited for pullbacks into imbalance or HTF FVGs and looked for continuation toward the next draw on liquidity.

What really helped this month was journaling everything and reviewing the stats after every session. A lot of traders think they need more strategies, but most people honestly just need more data on themselves.

Once I started tracking things deeper, the patterns became obvious. Certain setups consistently worked better. Certain times of day were killing my P&L. Some trades looked “smart” in real time but statistically made no sense when I reviewed them later.

That’s why this month was mostly base hits and a few larger continuation trades.

If anyone wants, comment MODEL and I’ll send over the free IRL → ERL breakdown video and the stats/replay breakdowns I’ve been studying this month.

Just locked in another payout cycle on these 4 Alpha Futures accounts and it brought the total up to $5,572 for the month. What’s crazy is almost all of it came from the same few setups I’ve been sharing here live the entire time.

Lately the IRL → ERL model has been absolutely printing in this market. NQ has been in a strong trending environment and instead of trying to be the hero calling tops every day, I’ve just been following liquidity and waiting for the market to pull back into imbalance before continuing higher.

That’s honestly been the biggest difference.

A lot of traders keep getting chopped because they’re forcing trades in the middle of ranges or trying to short a market that clearly wants higher prices. Meanwhile I’ve mostly just been sitting on my hands waiting for the same conditions over and over again: liquidity gets taken, price reclaims structure, we retrace into IRL, then expand toward the next ERL target.

The setups themselves are not complicated. The hard part is the patience.

This month only had a couple small red days across these accounts. Everything else was either base hits or bigger trend continuation trades. No crazy gambling. No oversized revenge trading. Just waiting for clean conditions and executing the same model repeatedly.

That’s also why prop firms have worked well for me. Being able to spread the same execution across multiple accounts makes a huge difference once you actually have a repeatable edge and proper risk management behind it.

The best part is these were all trades I talked about publicly while they were developing.

Still a lot more work to do, but this has probably been the cleanest month I’ve had in a while just from staying patient and sticking to what’s already working instead of constantly searching for something new.

If you want the full free video breakdown of the IRL → ERL model and how I’ve been using it in this trend, comment MODEL and I’ll drop it.

Also if you haven't seen it yet, Alpha just launched the Premium Plan. It's basically the plan every trader has been asking for.

Check it out below:

Alpha Futures CLICK HERE

Alpha Capital CLICK HERE

We just dropped a podcast episode with Zander and honestly this one hit different. He started in 2020 at 17 years old with nothing but YouTube videos and a demo account. A kid who decided he was going to figure this out and refused to quit for six years straight.

What I liked about this conversation is he didn't sugarcoat any of it. He talked about how beginner's luck almost ruined him because those early random wins made him think he had it figured out when he had no idea what he was doing (some might call this beginner's luck). He talked about cutting off friends who kept telling him he was wasting his time. And he broke down what his actual daily routine looks like now, which is nothing like what you see on social media. No lambos we promise. He's routine consists of waking up at the same time every day, training, eating right, doing his premarket prep, and executing the same process over and over. He compared it to lifting, same time, same movements, same discipline, and honestly that's the most accurate way I've heard anyone describe what consistent trading actually feels like.

One thing he said that stuck with me was "you're not an unprofitable trader until the day you quit. Until then it's your learning phase." If you're in year 1 or year 2 right now and wondering if this is worth it, watch this episode. He was exactly where you are for a long time and he came out the other side by just not stopping.

He also gets into why your sleep, diet, and physical health will always show up in your trading whether you want to admit it or not. If you're eating garbage, sleeping 5 hours, and skipping the gym, your decision making at the screen is going to reflect that. Fix the foundation first and the trading gets easier. I've experienced the same thing myself this year.

Full episode here: CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST

Also if you haven't seen it yet, Alpha just launched the Premium Plan. It's basically the plan every trader has been asking for.

Check it out below:

Alpha Futures CLICK HERE

Alpha Capital CLICK HERE

Sitting on $2,284 P&L on a $200K funded account. $185 more and I'm paid. If you've been this close before you know how easy it is to do something stupid, so I went through my last 17 trades and broke everything down by time, day, and behavior.

Here's what the data actually says.

The $896 Leak: Early Morning Entries

Broke down my entries by hour and this was brutal.

• 7AM: 4 trades, 0% win rate, -$483
• 8AM: 2 trades, 0% win rate, -$413
• 6AM: 4 trades, 75% win rate, +$784
• 3PM+ late session: 4 trades, 75%+, +$521 to $552

0-for-6 between 7-8AM. That's $896 gone from just 2 hours of trading. Without those entries I'd already be paid out at $3,180. Blocking that window entirely going forward.

Day of Week Breakdown

• Sunday: 0% win rate, -$196
• Monday: 25% win rate, -$14
• Tuesday: ~40%, between -$34 and +$367
• Thursday-Friday: 100% win rate, +$1,556 combined

Thursday and Friday carried this entire account. If I had only traded those two days I'd be at +$1,556 on 5 trades with zero stress. Instead I took 17 trades to get to $2,284 because I kept forcing setups on days where my edge doesn't exist.

The Revenge Trade That Almost Got Me

May 4th I took back-to-back losses within 12 minutes. MNQ -$183 then MNQ -$203. Classic revenge pattern. Ended up recovering with a +$521 winner later but those two impulse trades cost me $386 before the bounce back.

Rule going forward: 2 losses in a day and I close the platform. Come back tomorrow.

The Gameplan

• Block 7-8AM completely
• No Sunday trading
• 2-loss daily cap, no exceptions
• Lean into Thursday and Friday sessions
• Normal sizing only

At my average of $134/trade I need 2 clean executions. That's the whole goal. Not $185. Two good trades.

Side note — been using an Zella AI in my journal that helped me pull all this data which is still in Beta right now. Asked it what's hurting my performance and it flagged the time-of-day leak, the day-of-week edge, and the revenge pattern on May 4th in about 30 seconds.

Sitting on $2,284 P&L on a $200K funded account. $185 more and I'm paid. If you've been this close before you know how easy it is to do something stupid, so I went through my last 17 trades and broke everything down by time, day, and behavior.

Here's what the data actually says.

The $896 Leak: Early Morning Entries

Broke down my entries by hour and this was brutal.

• 7AM: 4 trades, 0% win rate, -$483
• 8AM: 2 trades, 0% win rate, -$413
• 6AM: 4 trades, 75% win rate, +$784
• 3PM+ late session: 4 trades, 75%+, +$521 to $552

0-for-6 between 7-8AM. That's $896 gone from just 2 hours of trading. Without those entries I'd already be paid out at $3,180. Blocking that window entirely going forward.

Day of Week Breakdown

• Sunday: 0% win rate, -$196
• Monday: 25% win rate, -$14
• Tuesday: ~40%, between -$34 and +$367
• Thursday-Friday: 100% win rate, +$1,556 combined

Thursday and Friday carried this entire account. If I had only traded those two days I'd be at +$1,556 on 5 trades with zero stress. Instead I took 17 trades to get to $2,284 because I kept forcing setups on days where my edge doesn't exist.

The Revenge Trade That Almost Got Me

May 4th I took back-to-back losses within 12 minutes. MNQ -$183 then MNQ -$203. Classic revenge pattern. Ended up recovering with a +$521 winner later but those two impulse trades cost me $386 before the bounce back.

Rule going forward: 2 losses in a day and I close the platform. Come back tomorrow.

The Gameplan

• Block 7-8AM completely
• No Sunday trading
• 2-loss daily cap, no exceptions
• Lean into Thursday and Friday sessions
• Normal sizing only

At my average of $134/trade I need 2 clean executions. That's the whole goal. Not $185. Two good trades.

Side note — been using an AI in my journal that helped me pull all this data. Asked it what's hurting my performance and it flagged the time-of-day leak, the day-of-week edge, and the revenge pattern on May 4th in about 30 seconds.

This is the IRL to ERL framework and it's the only way I read price action now. Start on the daily. Find where price just took external range liquidity, that's your highs or lows. Once ERL gets taken, price wants to rotate back into internal range liquidity which is your fair value gaps and imbalances sitting inside the range. So the flow is simple. ERL gets taken, price pulls into IRL, then pushes back out to the next ERL. You're just trading that rotation over and over on every timeframe.

Here's how I execute it step by step:

• Identify on the daily where ERL was just taken (previous high/low, swing point, session liquidity)
• Find the nearest IRL below or above (daily FVG, 4hr imbalance, order block)
• Wait for price to flush a key level and reclaim on the 30min to 1hr timeframe
• Once it reclaims, mark the FVG that forms on that displacement
• Entry is at the FVG, stop below the first candle of the gap for longs or above it for shorts
• Target the next ERL for a fixed 1R or 2R depending on stop distance

The reason this setup prints is because you're not guessing direction. The daily tells you where price wants to go. The 30min to 1hr gives you the exact entry. And the weekly bias confirms whether you should even be looking for longs or shorts that week. If every day that week has been open low high close and sending new highs, you're not taking shorts. You wait for the IRL to get tapped, enter long, and ride expansion back to ERL.

I only trade 1-2 times a day max on micros only and that's been enough to pull consistent payouts every couple weeks. The edge isn't in how often you trade. It's in how well you read the rotation between these two levels and having the patience to wait for price to come to you.

Alpha Futures click here

Alpha Capital click here

Another one. $9,800 performance fee secured and paid out to Diamond.

What people don't see behind these certificates is the amount of days where nothing happens. The traders getting paid aren't the ones glued to the screen 12 hours a day, forcing entries. They're the ones who wait, execute, and move on taking their chunk out of the market.

Trade with the best propfirm out there:

Alpha Futures click here

Alpha Capital click here

still don't know if they should be long or short when the session opens. What fixed it for me was asking one question before every session: where is the liquidity and where does price want to go next? External range liquidity is the obvious stuff like previous day highs and lows, session highs, swing points. Internal range liquidity is what sits between those levels like fair value gaps and imbalances. Price moves in a rhythm between these two. It takes a high or low, pulls back into a gap, and then pushes out to take the next high or low. ERL to IRL to ERL. Over and over. Once you see this pattern the market stops looking random.

So how do you actually trade it? Look at the daily or 4 hour chart and find where price just took a significant high or low. That's your ERL. Now find the nearest FVG or imbalance that price is likely pulling back to. That's your IRL. Drop down to the 30 minute or 1 hour and wait for price to flush a key level, reclaim above it, and displace to form a FVG. That gap is your entry. Stop below the first candle of the FVG for longs, above it for shorts, and target the next external level for a fixed 1R or 2R depending on how tight your stop is. Place the order and walk away. Price either comes to your level or it doesn't. No fill means no trade and no loss.

This gets even stronger when you layer it with weekly structure. Monday builds a range. Tuesday or Wednesday sweeps one side to grab liquidity and that confirms your direction for the rest of the week. If Tuesday sweeps Monday's low and reclaims, your bias is bullish. Now you're only looking for IRL to ERL longs. You find your FVG on the 30min or 1hr, place your entry, and ride the expansion. Weekly bias plus daily IRL to ERL plus a clean FVG entry on the lower timeframe. That's three layers of confluence all pointing the same way and that's when these trades hit with almost no drawdown.

The part nobody wants to hear is that none of this works if you're forcing it. Some weeks the structure is messy and there's no clean manipulation. Some days the FVG never gets tapped. That's fine. The traders who make money with this aren't the ones taking 5 trades a day. They're the ones who place one order, go live their life, and check back later. The less time I spend staring at screens the better my results have been and that's not a coincidence. When you're glued to the charts all day your brain starts seeing setups that aren't there because it wants the dopamine of placing a trade.

Do your prep in 10 minutes. Mark your levels. Set your orders. Go outside. Move your body. Take care of yourself and the trading takes care of itself. This setup is simple on purpose. T

I wanted to share this because it shows how little you actually need to trade when you're selective and executing properly.

May 2026 so far. 4 trading days. Up about $1,000 per account across 4 funded accounts. And the trade I'm most proud of this month isn't even a winner.

What happened today

We formed a short setup from all-time highs. Valid setup but my weekly bias has been bullish since Monday so I knew I was fading the trend. Took it with reduced size.

I always watch ES when I'm trading NQ. The second ES swept the Asia session sell-side liquidity I moved my stop to breakeven on NQ. Five minutes later price ripped through my original stop location. But I was already flat.

Two minutes after that a 15-minute ORB to the upside formed. Clean break, clean imbalance, fully aligned with my weekly bullish bias. Took the long for a fixed 1R. Hit with zero drawdown on the entry.

That sequence is what I want to talk about. I took a trade I wasn't fully confident in, protected myself when the correlated pair gave me a warning, got out flat, and then flipped to the setup that actually made sense.

A year ago I would have held that short, watched it go against me, added to it, and turned a breakeven into a $500 loss. The difference between then and now isn't a better strategy.

Why I only traded 4 days this month

The price action hasn't been clean the whole time. We've had expansion, weakness, chop, then continuation higher. Most traders treat every phase the same way and that's where the damage happens. They overtrade during the chop trying to catch the next move and give back everything they made during the clean days.

I recognized early this month that the choppy sessions weren't worth trading my higher timeframe model on. So I leaned on my 15-minute ORB during those sessions because it's designed for intraday moves and doesn't need a clean multi-day structure to work. On the days where the higher timeframe setup was obvious I took my swing entries. Matching the right tool to the right environment instead of forcing one approach on every market condition.

A few things that clicked for me this year

The biggest one was accepting that more screen time doesn't mean more money. I used to think if I watched the market for 8 hours I'd find more opportunities. What I actually found was more reasons to take bad trades. Now my prep takes 10 minutes, I know what I'm looking for before the session opens, and if it doesn't show up I close the charts. Some of my best weeks have been weeks where I traded once or twice total.

Second was paying attention to correlated pairs. Today's trade is a perfect example. NQ didn't tell me to move my stop. ES did. If you're only watching the instrument you're trading you're missing half the information. The divergences and confirmations between correlated instruments are some of the highest probability signals you'll find.

Third was building each account slowly instead of trying to hit the profit target as fast as possible. I used to rush evaluations and funded accounts alike. Now I take base hits, pull profits consistently, and treat the whole thing like a paycheck not a lottery ticket. The math compounds faster than you think when you're not giving back half your gains on revenge trades.

If you're in the grind right now

You don't need to trade more and you don't need a new strategy. Go look at your last 30 trades and count how many of them actually met every single criteria in your plan. If that number is below 80% your problem isis clearly obvious and discipline isn't something you're born with, it's something you build by tracking your trades, reviewing your data, and being honest about when you're forcing it.

Most of your progress will come from cutting out the trades that shouldn't have been taken in the first place.

I wanted to share this because it's the clearest example I have of what happens when you stop forcing trades and just take what the market gives you.

May 2026 so far. 4 trading days. Up about $1,000 per account across all 4 of my Alpha Futures 50K accounts. $4,000 total. One day away from another payout. And honestly the trade I'm most proud of this month isn't even a winner.

What happened today

We formed a forever model short from all-time highs. Setup was valid. I took the trade with reduced conviction because my weekly bias has been bullish since Monday, so I knew I was fading the trend. This is where watching the correlated pair saved me.

I always check ES when I'm trading NQ. The second ES swept the Asia session sell-side liquidity, I moved my stop to breakeven on NQ. Five minutes later price ripped through my original stop. But I was already at BE.

Two minutes after that, a 15-minute ORB to the upside formed. Clean break, clean FVG confirmation, aligned with the weekly bullish bias I'd been tracking all week. I took the long for a fixed 1R and it hit with zero drawdown on the entry.

I took a short I wasn't fully confident in with less size, protected myself immediately when the correlated pair gave me a warning sign, got out flat, and then flipped to the setup that actually aligned with the higher timeframe bias.

The bigger picture

If you look at this month's price action, it hasn't been clean the entire time. We've had expansion, some weakness, chop, and then continuation higher. That's where most traders mess up, I use to mess up here a ton and keep trying to either catching a falling knife or call a top. They treat every phase the same and end up overtrading in the worst conditions. I recognized this from past experience and decided to lean heavily on my 15-minute ORB during the trendy sessions and only take my IRL to ERL model when the higher timeframe structure was obvious.

The biggest shift for me has been focusing on execution rather than constantly searching for new setups. Whether it's ORB, liquidity-based entries, or higher timeframe reactions, the edge comes from how well you follow your rules. Not how many strategies you know.

What I've changed this year

A few things that have made a real difference:

• Keeping risk consistent and not overextending on any single trade. When you combine that with scaling across multiple accounts, even small wins compound fast.
• Tracking everything across all accounts in one place. When you can see your performance clearly it's much harder to justify bad trades or emotional decisions.
• Recognizing that you don't need to trade more. Most of your progress will come from cutting out the unnecessary trades and focusing on the ones that actually meet your criteria.

The plan from here

I'm building each account up to about $2K in profit and then pulling 50% out at each payout cycle. The goal is to create a consistent income stream from these accounts by protecting capital, taking base hits, and compounding over time. If I lose an account along the way I'll get funded again and start the cycle over. That's the business model.

One more payout day away. I'll post the certificate when it hits.

Alpha Futures click here

Alpha Capital click here

I wanted to share this because it's the clearest example I have of what happens when you stop forcing trades and just take what the market gives you.

May 2026 so far. 4 trading days. Up about $1,000 per account across all 4 of my Alpha Futures 50K accounts. $4,000 total. One day away from another payout. And honestly the trade I'm most proud of this month isn't even a winner.

What happened today

We formed a forever model short from all-time highs. Setup was valid. I took the trade with reduced conviction because my weekly bias has been bullish since Monday, so I knew I was fading the trend. This is where watching the correlated pair saved me.

I always check ES when I'm trading NQ. The second ES swept the Asia session sell-side liquidity, I moved my stop to breakeven on NQ. Five minutes later price ripped through my original stop. But I was already at BE.

Two minutes after that, a 15-minute ORB to the upside formed. Clean break, clean FVG confirmation, aligned with the weekly bullish bias I'd been tracking all week. I took the long for a fixed 1R and it hit with zero drawdown on the entry.

I took a short I wasn't fully confident in with less size, protected myself immediately when the correlated pair gave me a warning sign, got out flat, and then flipped to the setup that actually aligned with the higher timeframe bias.

The bigger picture

If you look at this month's price action, it hasn't been clean the entire time. We've had expansion, some weakness, chop, and then continuation higher. That's where most traders mess up, I use to mess up here a ton and keep trying to either catching a falling knife or call a top. They treat every phase the same and end up overtrading in the worst conditions. I recognized this from past experience and decided to lean heavily on my 15-minute ORB during the trendy sessions and only take my IRL to ERL model when the higher timeframe structure was obvious.

The biggest shift for me has been focusing on execution rather than constantly searching for new setups. Whether it's ORB, liquidity-based entries, or higher timeframe reactions, the edge comes from how well you follow your rules. Not how many strategies you know.

What I've changed this year

A few things that have made a real difference:

• Keeping risk consistent and not overextending on any single trade. When you combine that with scaling across multiple accounts, even small wins compound fast.
• Tracking everything across all accounts in one place. When you can see your performance clearly it's much harder to justify bad trades or emotional decisions.
• Recognizing that you don't need to trade more. Most of your progress will come from cutting out the unnecessary trades and focusing on the ones that actually meet your criteria.

The plan from here

I'm building each account up to about $2K in profit and then pulling 50% out at each payout cycle. The goal is to create a consistent income stream from these accounts by protecting capital, taking base hits, and compounding over time. If I lose an account along the way I'll get funded again and start the cycle over. That's the business model.

One more payout day away. I'll post the certificate when it hits.

Sunday night I already know what I'm looking for. Before a single candle prints on Monday I've mapped out where liquidity is sitting and what the weekly range needs to do before I take a trade.

How the weekly candle actually works

Monday is accumulation. Price builds a range. Nothing exciting happens and that's the point. The market is loading up positions.

Tuesday or Wednesday is manipulation. Price sweeps Monday's high or low to grab liquidity from everyone who got positioned too early. It looks like a breakout but it's bait. This is where most traders get trapped.

Wednesday through Friday is expansion. The market moves in the real direction away from the manipulation leg. This is where the money is made.

Think of it like this. Monday sets the table. Tuesday flips it over to shake everyone out. Wednesday through Friday the market goes where it actually wanted to go the whole time.

How I trade it

Once manipulation confirms my bias the setup is simple:

• Tuesday sweeps Monday's low → I'm only looking long the rest of the week
• Tuesday sweeps Monday's high → I'm only looking short the rest of the week
• Wait for price to displace and form a FVG on the 30min or 1hr
• Enter at the FVG
• Stop below the manipulation low (for longs) or above the manipulation high (for shorts)
• Target the next pool of liquidity in the expansion direction

If Tuesday takes Monday's high instead of the low, everything mirrors. Same rules, opposite direction.

When I sit out

This is the part most people skip and it's honestly the most important part of the whole framework. Not every week gives you a trade and that's fine.

• Monday is choppy with no clear range? Sitting out.
• Manipulation doesn't happen until Thursday? Too late, sitting out.
• No displacement or FVG forms after the sweep? No entry, sitting out.
• News-heavy week with FOMC or NFP? Reduced size or sitting out entirely.

This framework isn't supposed to give you a trade every week. It's supposed to keep you out of the weeks where there's nothing there. By Tuesday afternoon I usually know if this is a trading week or a sitting week and that clarity alone saves me from forcing garbage setups.

Why this works

Every IRL to ERL trade I've been posting about the past few weeks follows this exact framework. The manipulation confirms my bias. The FVG gives me my entry. The external liquidity gives me my target. Same thing every week.

When the weekly structure lines up the trades are high probability because you're trading with the flow not against it. When it doesn't line up you're not in the market losing money while everyone else is getting chopped up trying to force something that isn't there.

Comment "BIAS" if you want me to break this down on NQ with real chart examples from the past month.

Alpha Futures click here

Alpha Capital click here

A lot of traders buy prop firm challenges without ever doing the math first. They see a discount, buy the account, take a few trades, and only realize later that their win rate, risk, payout rules, and reset costs never actually made sense together.

That is why I think every trader should calculate the real numbers before paying for another challenge. A prop firm account is not just a trading account. It has fees, rules, payout requirements, minimum days, consistency rules, drawdown limits, and a very real chance of blowing the account before ever seeing a payout.

For example, on a $500 challenge fee with a 52% win rate, this calculator shows a projected +191% ROI, a 78.4% chance of funding, and break-even after the first payout. That kind of information changes how you look at the whole decision. Instead of guessing whether a challenge is “worth it,” you can actually see the risk before you pay.

The biggest mistake traders make with prop firms is only thinking about the profit target. They forget to calculate the cost of failed challenges, resets, payout timing, and the chance of getting breached before withdrawing anything. That is how someone can post payout screenshots and still be negative overall.

The calculator runs the numbers using your own stats and gives you a cleaner picture of whether the challenge actually makes sense for your trading style. It is not magic, and it will not make you profitable, but it can stop you from buying accounts that were mathematically bad decisions from the start.

If you want the free calculator, comment "CALC" and I’ll send it over.

Abby just crossed $15,700 in total payouts with Alpha Futures. That's not one lucky month, that's consistent execution stacking up over time.

This is what happens when you stop chasing home runs and just focus on repeatable setups with solid risk management. The payouts add up faster than most people realize when you're not blowing accounts every other week.

Trade with the best propfirm out there:

Alpha Futures CLICK HERE

Alpha Capital CLICK HERE

The market is making all-time highs and what comes after ATH? More ATH. I scanned the major names driving NQ and ES and everything was pointing the same direction. Earnings came in decent. Weekly bias was clearly bullish. So even though chasing longs at all-time highs isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, everything was lining up.

Wednesday we flushed the Asia session low. Thursday price reclaimed on the 1-hour and displaced above forming a clean FVG. That's my zone. Price ran up to take the external range liquidity at the highs, reversed back down into the FVG which is internal range liquidity, and then exploded right back up and smacked my target for a fixed 1R.

IRL to ERL. Same model I've been posting about for weeks now. Enter at the FVG, stop below the first candle, target the liquidity draw. It's boring at this point and that's exactly how I want it.

This week was choppy. Monday I lost $78. Wednesday I lost $191. But I kept my losses small on the days where the setup wasn't clean and then pressed when the A+ setup showed up today.

Starting May at +$394 per account. Let's see how the rest of the month plays out!

Comment "SETUP" if you want the free video breakdown of this model.

Alpha Futures CLICK HERE

Alpha Capital CLICK HERE

Payout hit today and I requested last night, woke up to cash in my bank. Less than 12 hours.

My win rate this month was 50%. Half my trades lost. But my average winner was $287 and my average loss was $135. That's a 2.13 profit factor. For every dollar I risked I made $2.13 back. The math doesn't care about your win rate. It cares about how big your winners are compared to your losers.

After a few months of doing this the patterns become stupidly obvious, I found out my longs hit 62.5% this month but my shorts only won 25% of the time.

Two weeks ago I had back to back red days. Lost $466. Old me would have revenge traded. Instead I opened the journal, saw I was forcing setups on a choppy day, and sat out the next session. Came back the day after and hit $395 overnight. The journal didn't just show me what was broken. It gave me the confidence to trust my process after a loss instead of spiraling.

! trade my main 3 setups. The data confirms they work so I don't second guess them. I don't add indicators. I don't switch strategies. I just run the process and collect, wether itys a 1R or 2R or BE or even a loss.

If you're trading without tracking your data you're making this 10x harder than it needs to be.