I Daytrade fulltime. Here's How I Developed My Strategy
I've been daytrading fulltime for a few years, and wanted to share the most effective method I found for developing an actual edge. I want to say in advance that this requires hard work and discipline, but from my experience it's near impossible to become consistently profitable without doing the following things.
- First you need to design a strategy that suits your personality. Ask yourself:
- Do I want to scalp, day trade, or swing trade?
- Is my personality more suited for a low win rate and high risk to reward, or the opposite?
- What markets and timeframes do I actually enjoy trading?
- How much time can I realistically spend watching the markets?
- What type of setups do I naturally understand and execute well?
Most people just try to copy strategies they find online, which is way harder to succeed with than using a strategy specifically built for you.
- You need to backtest your strategy. This is hard work, and it can get boring, but it's ESSENTIAL for profitability. Imagine you had 100+ trades backtested, and could see its win rate, average RR, equity curve, your psychology and live trading will far superior to a trader who doesn't have this data. I've shared my equity curve for a backtesting session I did recently to show you that while you may perform slightly better in a backtest than in live trading, it still helps a ton to get a general idea of it your strategy is profitable or not.
- You NEED to properly review, analyse, and understand your trades in a journal. You'll often hear the statistic, 80%+ of traders aren't profitable. Well of those traders who aren't profitable, how many of them do you think actually journal their trades and review their data properly? Probably a tiny amount. The best traders in the world continuously improve and adapt to the market, and the only way this is possible is through properly understanding your trading journal.
- Maybe one asset is responsible for 50% of your losses?
- Maybe your longs have a much higher win rate than your shorts?
- Maybe your strategy performs significantly better at a certain time of day?
Learning and refining your strategy based on things like this is the difference between a profitable trader and an unprofitable one.
I hoped this helped and I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments.
Posted Aug 14, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC
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