I’ve been trying to learn trading for the past year, exploring different markets and trading styles such as intraday, futures, commodities, crypto, and stocks, as well as swing trading and day trading. Despite experimenting with different risk-to-reward ratios like 1:1, 1:2, and 1:1.5, and maintaining strict discipline, I haven’t found a successful strategy yet. I’ve read numerous books(including Al Brooks), and followed every rule about discipline, never move my stoploss, never over trade, but nothing seems to work in the long run. Initially, things seem to work, but eventually, they fail. I know I tend to change things quickly, but I make sure to try everything for at least 20 trades. After a year of effort, I’m still clueless and in need of guidance. Can anyone help me figure out what I should do?
I can understand you mentality
We all go through these stage, when these trading puberty hit 
(jokes apart)
I dont make these thing long motivational talk, but in short i will suggest you to
Make a strategy ------ Stick to it as hard as singles stick with their side pillow ------ And if you take any wrong move, then try to improve it, a small improvement in every wrong move make a lots of change in long run .
I hope these will help you, if you got any problem then, feel free to ask me
Thank you. It really helps.
I was in the same exact situation as you but i focused on one time frame and only stocks. If your strategy is working and then fails, it means that you are missing something, your strategy is incomplete, focus on that one strategy, see how and why the strategy fails.
Stock selection also plays a big part, many of the books like Al brooks will show you only the perfect conditions and everything looks great in hindsight.
Also, don’t be too quick to execute a strategy live because almost always something will go wrong and if you have money on the line, you won’t be in the right headspace to properly gauge why the strategy isn’t working.
So you are suggesting to backtest and forward test strategy? I do backtest but around 30 trades. And only glance through 1&2 days of forward testing before jumping in with the trade.
So if your advice is testing, could you let me know for how long one should test?
In my opinion, you should backtest for 10 to 20 years; the more you backtest the strategy, the better.
etf ke baare mein suna hai? pick the right one and enter only at the right time. instead of using a stop-loss (only in the case of etfs!), average down 2x at every support. just an idea. do your own research.
I do have a few etfs in my portfolio. But mai unko sirf investment ke tarike se dekhta hu. Trading ke liye socha nehi kabhi
Backtest constantly in your free time, it will build trust in your strategy but there will be a sort of confirmation bias so be careful.
Forward testing or live testing without money, needs to be done for at least one month and i can almost guarantee that a new strategy will face issues after 2 weeks of live testing and if it doesn’t, then great, you have a strategy that has worked consistently for a whole month, so you can assume it will last. I’ve had experiences where a strategy failed after even one month of live testing but my testing was inaccurate and biased so make sure your testing is honest and accurate.
Also, many people on this forum will tell you that trading is probabilistic in nature and every strategy will face some extended loss periods which may be true but since you are starting out, you cannot follow that principle since it will be impossible to distinguish between a bad strategy and a good one, because you can just assume a bad strategy is going through a dull period. So, consistent profitability is the goal.
Thank you so much for the advice. Can you suggest how to avoid bias during testing?
During backtesting, you have to go through all days that would trigger your strategy, do not pick and choose certain days. During live testing, you have to note down the exact time and trade or else you’ll end up assuming you would have taken a certain winning trade or you would have just missed a trade that didn’t work.
Write a code for backtesting. This way, it will take all the entries without any bias, and you will also eliminate human errors.
You need to develop a playbook/setup/strategy before you go and backtest.
backtesting 10 to 20 years might not work in the futures as the market conditions will be changing every year.
I would suggest once you have the defined playbook with the entry, exit conditions, then do a through backtest for past 6 months.
Let me know if need any more clarifications.
Thanks for the comment, i actually did that. But i needed some guidence. for the last 3 months i am profitable. I have defined rules, clear entry and exit points. Lets hope for the best.