Winter Trades

7 Figure Order Flow & Auction Trader with Two Years of Market Variance. Learn from me here👇

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

the traders printing $100k months aren't using a secret indicator or a secret strategy.

they trade only one specific 1 setup.

they've taken it 1,000+ times on the same pair, same session, same 2-hour NY-AM window.

they know their win rate is 38%. they know their average winner is 2.4R.

they know that math still prints money even when they're wrong 62% of the time.

you've got 11 strategies saved across 3 notes apps and you've never taken any of them past 25 trades.

25 trades is a coin flip. not a strategy.

real traders skip days. they skip entire weeks. if New York session isn't expanding, they don't trade it .

1 forced C-setup trade can turn into a blown account.
you took 63 trades last month.

your win rate was 41%. your average loss was bigger than your average win. you were down 8% net.

You felt like you were "grinding" with 63 trades.

The trader taking 2 trades a week, who takes only A+ setups, makes you more than you 63 random ones.

they've blown at least 1 account. some have blown 3-4. they didn't quit, they cut size by 75% and rebuilt with the same setup, not a new one.

you blew your $2k account and opened 4 chart tabs the next morning "researching ICT concepts."

that's not research. that's avoidance with extra steps.

the forex market alone trades $7.5 trillion a day. it's not going anywhere. it's still going to be open tomorrow, next month, in 10 years.

it doesn't pay the smartest person in the chat. it pays whoever's still sized in after the other 90% get liquidated out.

stop researching concept #12.

take setup #1 another 500 times.

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

every NQ session is an auction. price isn't trending or ranging - it's searching for where size will transact. if you don't know whether the market is accepting or rejecting a level, you're guessing direction.

balance. imbalance. reprice. that's the auction cycle. it repeats inside every session, every day

balance is price building a range where both sides agree on value. candles overlap, wicks get absorbed, nothing extends. retail calls this "chop" and stops watching. it's not chop. it's the auction collecting orders before it moves

imbalance is the first clean break away from that range. single prints, no overlap, no absorption. this is where retail jumps in because "it's finally moving." most of the time it's not the move - it's the market testing if anyone's above/below to trade against

reprice is what happens after the market finds where size actually wants to transact. it either accepts the new level (range shifts, continuation) or rejects it (violent return into balance, reversal). this is where the real money gets made - and where the imbalance chasers get run over

one of the members in my free discord spent 45 days just marking sessions on NQ: B (balance), I (imbalance), R (reprice). no trades. just tagging whether each leg was acceptance or rejection.

week 1 he mistagged almost half his sessions. week 6 he was tagging with about 90% accuracy - purely from watching how price behaved at the edges of balance

then he started trading. only reprice entries. only after a confirmed imbalance. only when the reprice showed rejection back into value, not acceptance through it

10 weeks in: 38% -> 61% WR, 0.29R -> 0.68R average, funded a $50k eval and pulled his first payout

nothing about his system changed. his read on whether the auction was accepting or rejecting value changed

"the market is random today" is what people say when they can't read the auction. balance isn't dead time - it's the market doing its job. imbalance isn't the move - it's the test. reprice is the only phase that pays

if you can't tell acceptance from rejection in real time, you're not trading the auction. you're trading your feelings about the last five candles

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

Every unprofitable trader I know is trying to get "consistent"

But every profitable trader isn't. They respect market conditions and variance

Consistency within trading is impossible. The unprofitable trade doesn't accept that. The profitable ones do.

That's the difference

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

WST > ICT 🤡🥀

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

91% of unprofitable traders I know have NEVER gambled

But EVERY good one I know used to gamble in video games.

Wether game loot boxes, Minecraft crates, or flipping CS2 skins.

That's not a coincidence.

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@imantradingYT @_TJRTrades shut that fraud up 🤣😂

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@TradersConf 90% the people calling him delusional are unprofitable 🤣

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@CRTwithSaint how you either end up homeless or rich

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@meeky_fx Psychology is always the limiting factor

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@EliteOptions2 Everyone that makes money breaking their rules eventually loses it all

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@tradertheory average tiktok trader ☠️

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@casper_smc realest shit ever

[L2WTrades @L2WTrades]

broke traders track P&L

rich traders track adherence

look at any losing trader's journal if they keep one. it's a column of dollar amounts. wins. losses. running total. red and green for the eye

look at any actually-profitable trader's journal. it's a checklist column. "followed the rule? yes/no." "took the setup as defined? yes/no." "exited per plan? yes/no.

the P&L is just a result of your system

you can't move a result by chasing it. you move it by getting the adherence to 100%, and then the P&L follows over a 90-day window because the edge is in the rules

a 60% adherence trader running a 65% WR system loses money. the misses cost more than the wins gain.
a 100% adherence trader running a 55% WR system makes money. the rules carry him

every time you check your P&L mid-session you're optimizing for a thing you cannot control directly. every time you check whether you took the last 5 setups exactly as written, you're optimizing for the thing that actually pays

journal the cause. the result will catch up

lesson

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@TradersConf Therapy for trading is overkill 💀☠️

[Jared Shult @jared_shult]

Just found an infinite money glitch

[L2WTrades @L2WTrades]

unpopular opinion:

your girlfriend is the reason you're not profitable

not because she's bad

because you're trading to impress her

and that's the worst reason to trade

talked to a guy who finally became consistent:

"what changed?"

"I got dumped"

"how did that help your trading?"

"I stopped needing to prove something"

"what do you mean"

"when I was with her, every trade was about showing her I made the right choice. quitting my job to trade. she'd ask how my day went and I NEEDED to say it was good. so I'd hold losers hoping they'd turn around. take profits early so I could tell her I won. revenge trade after losses because I couldn't go to dinner as a loser"

"and after she left?"

"nobody to impress. nobody to perform for. I could lose $500 and nobody knew. nobody cared. suddenly losses were just losses. not failures as a man. not proof she was right to doubt me. just losses. I cut them fast and moved on. that's when I got consistent"

here's what most traders won't admit:

they're not trading for money

they're trading for validation

from girlfriends who don't understand trading
from parents who think it's gambling
from friends who are waiting for them to fail
from society that doesn't respect their choice

every trade becomes a performance

and performance creates pressure

pressure creates bad decisions

bad decisions create losses

losses create more pressure to perform

spiral until blown account

the best traders I know:

single or with partners who don't ask about trading
parents who gave up trying to understand
no friends who trade
zero people watching their results

they trade in complete isolation

no audience

no performance

no pressure

just them and the chart

if you're trading to prove something to someone:

you've already lost

the need for validation is the leak in your psychology

plug it or stay broke

trade for yourself

or don't trade at all

[Winter Trades @TheWinterTrades]

@TradersConf ☠️

[L2WTrades @L2WTrades]

Your "ICT model" or "SMC setup" only works in specific market conditions and you keep wondering why you're inconsistent…

You're using a hammer for every job and expecting screws to go in

The market has 3 states. That's it

State 1: Trending/Expanding
- Clean moves
- Higher highs/lows
- Clear one-sided bias
Weapon: Momentum strategies (breakouts, trend following)

State 2: Ranging/Consolidation
- Sideways action
- No clear movement
- Lower Volume
Weapon: Fading the extremes

State 3: Retracement
- Opposite move from the HTF
- Slow af
Weapon: Sit the fuck down

Your ICT model? Only works in one state

Apply it to State 2, get chopped
Apply it to State 3, get liquidated

The traders printing $300k+/year don't trade "a strategy"

They identify market state first, then deploy appropriate weapon
You are missing narrative.

Monday trending = momentum strategy = print
Tuesday ranging =wait for one side of the range to get taken = print
Wednesday not doing shit = sit out = preserve
Thursday trending = momentum = print

They're not waiting for "their setup"

They're adapting to the battlefield

Your "one strategy for everything" mindset is amateur
Their "market state" mindset is professional

Stop hunting for the holy grail system

Start learning to read conditions

The strategy is irrelevant
Narrative is everything

That's the alpha nobody teaches because it requires thinking instead of blindly following

[Casper @casper_smc]

Here are my thoughts markets as a whole for the near future. Nothing here is financial advice, but merely my perspective.

The Fed is ending quantitative tightening on December 1st. For the past three years, they've been draining over $2 trillion out of the financial system by letting bonds mature without replacing them. Here's what that means in simple terms: when the Fed owns a bond, they paid cash for it. When that bond matures (expires), they get their cash back. Normally they'd use that cash to buy new bonds, which keeps the money in the system. But during QT, they just pocketed the cash instead of buying new bonds. That removes money from circulation. Now they're stopping that process. Once that happens, they're going to start pumping liquidity back in.

This sounds great, but here’s what most people are missing. Every other time the Fed has done this, it was because the economy was falling apart. Markets were crashing, unemployment was rising, inflation was not a problem, and assets were cheap. They were trying to prevent a collapse. That made sense.

But look at where we are right now. The market is at all-time highs. Unemployment is sitting at 4.3%. The economy is growing at 2% annually. Inflation is still running above 3%, well over the Fed's 2% target. The equity risk premium, which measures how much extra return you get for taking stock market risk versus safe bonds, is at a razor-thin 0.4%. That means stocks are extremely expensive relative to bonds.

So the Fed is about to inject liquidity into a system that's already running hot. This isn't crisis management. This is stimulating into a bubble, and even Ray Dalio is calling it out as classic late-stage debt cycle behavior. When you combine massive government deficits with central bank money printing while asset prices are already at extremes, you're setting up for a blow-off top.

On top of all of this, Trump is expected to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell in May 2026 with Kevin Hassett, who currently runs the National Economic Council. Hassett has been openly pushing for aggressive interest rate cuts even with inflation still elevated. He's criticized Powell for not cutting fast enough and said the next Fed chair needs to "clean house." This guy thinks inflation will magically drop to 1% next year while the economy surges, which would justify flooding the system with cheap money.

So here's the setup. The Fed ends QT and starts adding liquidity back in. A dovish new Fed chair takes over in May 2026 who wants to cut rates aggressively. And markets that are already expensive get flooded with fresh liquidity.

The result is a melt-up. Markets go parabolic not because fundamentals improve, but because there's too much money chasing too few assets. Stocks rip higher. Bitcoin and crypto explode. Gold surges as people look for inflation hedges. Everything inflates together as liquidity pours into already overpriced markets.

This sounds amazing, and yes - there will be opportunities in the short term, however this isn't sustainable growth. When you stimulate into a bubble instead of into a bust, you're adding fuel to a fire that's already burning too hot. The bigger the bubble gets, the harder it pops. Late stage debt cycles don't end with soft landings. They end with implosions.

What I AM doing, not advising you to do, is making sure I’m positioned to ride the wave up while understanding the context. This isn't a new bull market based on improving fundamentals. This is the final stage of a bubble getting one last push from central bank liquidity before reality catches up. I plan to take a lot of profits, likely by DCA’ing out of many positions, during a melt up if and when it happens. I will hold on to portions of my main long term assets (VOO, BTC, Real Estate, and high quality stocks) and sell the rest.

QT ends December 1st. Dovish Fed chair likely takes over May 2026. Money printers turn on. Markets melt up. THEN the implosion, but not yet imo.

[Solana Korea 🇰🇷 @SolanaKorean]

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