Interview noteThis page restates a public interview in new words. Dollar results, win rates, and payouts are claims made by the speaker or the host. They are not this desk's record, and they are not a result to expect.
The firm ranked five strategy families against its own challenge book, about 10,000 unique traders in the last quarter. The host's headline on that book is harsh: 90 percent failed the challenge in just under a month, and only 5 percent ever earned a payout. He refuses the usual explanation that the profitable slice simply "managed risk and mastered psychology." The split he actually ran is the strategy. Almost every account fell into reversal, breakout, trend following, price action, or order flow. For each he reports how often they passed, how long the pass took, what the people who got paid made in a month, and what share ever received a payout. He frames it as internal data, not advice.
Reversal, then breakout
Reversal is fading an extension. Too far up, short it. Too far down, buy it. The tools he names run from RSI, through cumulative-volume-delta divergence, out to Ornstein-Uhlenbeck statistical arbitrage. The temptation is that a turn can be one of the strongest single outcomes of the five styles. The book says almost nobody harvests that. Of the reversal traders in the 10,000, 5 percent passed, and those who passed took 25.6 days on average. Monthly payout among the ones who got there averaged $2,441. The top 10 percent of that paid group made $4,917, the top 5 percent $11,086. Traders who both passed and took a first payout were 1.8 percent of the reversal group. He ranks it fifth, and he notes that $2,441 sits below the median monthly income of most developed countries.
Breakout is the search for volatility that sustains a direction: news, stop cascades, anything that is not a random fluctuation. The style accepts a lower win rate for a higher reward-to-risk, and it mostly ignores slow indicators in favor of levels, news, and liquidity. The stress is the timing. Late misses the move. Early is a stop. Because stops are tight and targets are wide, bad timing hurts this style more than the others, and he says the model needs near-perfect entries and stops or it falls apart. The reason anyone accepts that is one good break can pay back many of the stops before it. In the group, 8.3 percent passed, in 13.9 days on average, about half the time reversals took. Average monthly payout was $3,268, about a third more than reversals. Top 10 percent $6,643, top 1 percent $15,618. First-payout rate 3.7 percent. He ranks it fourth, and names a specific failure: direction can be right and the volatility can still run the stop.
Trend following and price action
Trend following is the primitive version of the job. Sustained rises are longs, sustained declines are shorts, from a moving-average cross up to a Kalman filter. It dies when the thing on the chart is not a trend. His line is that most of what traders call a trend does not show statistically significant momentum. The move looks directional and behaves like noise, and the trader chases it. The attraction is the stress profile. The style hunts occasional large winners and does not demand the attention a breakout does. Pass rate 9.8 percent, 22.8 days, between breakout and reversal on speed. Average monthly gain among those paid was $4,376, about 34 percent above breakouts and 79 percent above reversals. First-payout rate 5.4 percent. Third place.
Price action is the wide bucket: market structure, candle structure, any direct read of price. The basic end is higher highs and higher lows. The advanced end is liquidity sweeps, order blocks, structure shifts, and displacement. He says the style was the hot concept for a long time and that most people still struggle with it. Pass rate 11.7 percent, 19.1 days. Average monthly payout $4,137, above breakout and reversal, below trend following. Top 10 percent $7,482. The top 1 percent figure is cut off in the caption and is not stated. First-payout rate 6.8 percent, which he says is about 25.9 percent higher than trend following and 278 percent higher than reversal. He asks that this bucket be read lightly, because it covers contrasting sub-styles, and he still ranks it second on the improvements he saw.
Order flow, and what the ranking does not prove
Order flow reads the buying and selling under the price: who is driving the move, where that pressure is absorbed, and when one side is losing control. The tools he names are volume delta, footprint charts, and the book. He calls it more advanced and not beginner-friendly, and it led the set. Up to 15 percent passed, in 17 days on average. Average monthly gain among those paid was about $4,862, the highest of the five. Top 10 percent $8,437, top 1 percent $15,021. The share who earned at least one payout was 9.5 percent, almost one in ten of the people using the style. His theory is that the style supplies more direct evidence of what is pushing price in the moment, instead of a guess that a move has gone too far or a story attached to a pattern. Buying pressure, selling pressure, absorption, exhaustion. That can mean fewer trades, cleaner invalidation, and fewer entries that are only a pattern. The finished order is reversal, breakout, trend following, price action, order flow.
He then separates the ranking from the advice people wanted. Mindset and risk management matter, and neither rescues a strategy with no edge. Willpower does not manufacture positive expectancy. Risk management slows the losses. If the strategy loses after costs, more trades give that disadvantage more chances. A real edge is rare in any style, and harsher in what he calls delta-one: futures, spot, CFDs, anything whose gain and loss moves roughly one for one with price. Those products do not hand over an advantage. The edge has to come from what is traded, when it is entered, when it is exited, and whether that setup shifts the outcomes that follow. After spreads, commissions, and slippage, expectancy has to be positive, through a higher win rate, larger winners, smaller losses, or some mix. It also has to survive data it was not fit on, a change in conditions, and enough trades to tell a signal from luck. A beautiful backtest in one market and one friendly period can still be nothing.
He also flags a selection effect. Order flow is harder, so the people using it may already be more experienced, more selective, or more systematic than the average reversal trader. The style does not automatically confer an edge. Inside this data set, the people using it were more likely to be running something that paid. The takeaway he wants is narrower than "switch." The style changes the odds of finding and executing an edge. Whatever the method, it has to stay net positive after costs, across enough trades, outside a cherry-picked test. Psychology and risk rules can keep a real advantage alive. They cannot build one out of noise.