You now have eight approaches to choose from, which creates a new problem: choosing badly. Most traders select a style based on what sounds appealing rather than what their schedule and temperament can actually sustain — and then conclude the strategy failed when the mismatch surfaces.

Start with your schedule, not your preference

This is the filter that eliminates most options immediately, and applying it first saves months.

Note what is missing from the third row: scalping and intraday. If your available time does not coincide with London or the overlap, those styles are not options regardless of how much they appeal.

A trader with thirty evening minutes who selects intraday trading has chosen a method they cannot execute. Every subsequent problem traces back to that decision.

Then match temperament

Schedule narrows the field. Temperament decides between what remains.

If you need to be right often — range trading and trend following suit you. Win rates of 50–65% are sustainable psychologically. Breakout trading, at 35%, will feel like constant failure and you will abandon it during an ordinary drawdown.

If you can tolerate frequent small losses — breakout trading becomes available, and it has genuine advantages: mechanical rules, clear invalidation, large winners.

If waiting is difficult — swing trading will be painful. Positions sitting for days while moving against you is the core experience of the style.

If rapid decisions stress you — avoid scalping entirely. It is the most demanding style under time pressure.

The five-step selection process

1. Eliminate by schedule. Cross out styles you cannot execute during your available hours.

2. Eliminate by temperament. Cross out those whose win rate profile or holding period you know you will struggle with.

3. Pick one from what remains. One. Not a combination.

4. Write it out completely. The five questions from the first lesson: what, when, stop, target, size.

5. Trade it for fifty trades without modification.

Step five is the one traders skip, and skipping it makes the whole process meaningless. Fifty trades is the minimum sample where results start reflecting the method rather than variance.

Building the written plan

A complete trading plan on one page. Specific enough that someone else could follow it.

Print it. Keep it visible. The value is not in having written it — it is in being able to check, before any trade, whether the conditions are actually met.

The review cycle

After fifty trades, assess honestly. Four questions, in order.

Did I follow the plan? This comes first, and the answer is usually “mostly.” Identify the trades taken outside the criteria and examine them separately — they often account for a disproportionate share of losses.

What is the expectancy? Win rate and average win-to-loss, combined into one number as covered in Lesson 1.

Where do the losses cluster? One instrument, one session, one setup type, one time of week. Patterns invisible day-to-day become obvious across fifty trades.

What single change would help most? One. Change it, and run another fifty trades.

Changing three things at once means learning nothing, because no result can be attributed to any specific adjustment.

When to change strategy

Rarely, and not for the reasons most traders do.

Valid reasons: your schedule changed and the style no longer fits; expectancy is negative across a hundred-plus trades with the plan genuinely followed; the style conflicts with your temperament in a way that makes consistent execution impossible.

Invalid reasons: five consecutive losses; a flat month; someone described a better-sounding method; boredom.

The strategy-hopping cycle is the most reliable way to lose money slowly. Each new method gets abandoned during its first drawdown, which means the trader experiences every strategy’s losing periods and none of their winning ones.

What actually determines results

Having written eleven lessons on strategy, the honest summary is that strategy selection matters less than the things surrounding it.

Position sizing. A good strategy at 5% risk fails. A mediocre one at 1% survives.

Consistency. Following the rules on the trade that looks marginal, and on the day after three losses.

Patience. Waiting for setups, and waiting through drawdowns.

Record keeping. Without a journal, you cannot identify what to improve.

These four have more influence on outcomes than the choice between trend following and range trading. In twelve years I have never seen a trader fail because they picked the wrong strategy from a list of reasonable ones. I have seen many fail on position sizing and consistency, repeatedly, across several strategies.

On using signals

A note, since many readers follow signal channels including ours.

A signal is someone else’s analysis. It replaces the entry decision and nothing else. Position sizing, whether the trade fits your plan, and how you respond to a losing streak all remain yours — and those are the parts that determine your results.

The traders who use signals well treat them as a supplement to a method they understand. Those who treat signals as a substitute for having a method tend to struggle in exactly the same ways they would have struggled trading alone.

Our own signals use a single entry, one stop and one target with a full close, deliberately — that structure makes the position sizing arithmetic straightforward and removes mid-trade decisions. But the sizing itself is still yours to calculate, and no provider can do that part for you.

What to do next

You have completed the Trading Strategies section. The remaining Academy sections cover technical analysis, risk management, trading psychology and MT4/MT5 mechanics in the same detail.

Before moving on, one suggestion: complete the written plan above for whichever style you selected, and trade it on demo for fifty trades. That will teach you more than the next section read immediately.

Frequently asked questions