The title is brash, I know. But before you click away, answer these two questions:
1) How many strategies have you tried?
2) How many strategies have you backtested through several years and thousands of trades?
If you have tried more strategies than you've backtested rigorously, then stick around because that's probably the reason why you're losing money.
Imagine this. Florence is a novice trader. He's seen the thousands of dollars in profit a kid 10 years younger than him can generate. He's seen the kid flexing his Lambo on Instagram. The kid mentions RSI a few times, so Florence assumes the RSI indicator is the secret to insane profits. Florence is chomping at the bits and loads up a fresh Webull account with $3,000. Every time the RSI is above 70 on a stock, he shorts that stock.
Lo and behold, after 5 trades, Florence's account now sits at $2,300. He concludes the indicator does not work.
Florence perseveres and is determined to find the secret strategy to quick profits. He scraps the RSI and studies "support and resistance" trading from a few youtube mentors. He reloads his Webull account back up to $3,000. With a refreshed vision, he shorts anytime a stock is at resistance and longs anytime a stock hits support. Sadly, after 10 trades, his account is down again, this time to $2,600.
Florence is flabbergasted.
The story goes on. He attempts implementing strategy after strategy and continues to lose money. Unfortunately, many of us are Florence. We did what he did. We got into the game without a blueprint or game plan.
And this is why my title is brashly stated, "If you don't read this you are going to lose money," because it's true. If you resemble Florence even in the slightest, basing the success of your trading strategy on a handful of trades, then how do you expect to know what strategy is actually successful?
I don't blame you for approaching trading like Florence. In today's age, we are seeing the market oversaturated with traders and trading coaches, or even worse, "trading influencers". As with any influx of the masses, we are going to get the scumbags trying to get you to buy their image and product by falsifying the simplicity and ease of trading.
If you are jumping between strategies without quantifying its success and failure rates over thousands of scenarios, then stop trading right now because you are going to continue losing money. Find a backtesting service or at the least log every single trade you take. Whatever it is, slow down and find proof of failure before declaring failure. I don't want you to fall into a never-ending hole of searching for the "right" indicator/strategy. The truth is, most of the strategies you've thrown away probably work and you don't even know it.