One thing I've learned is that pro short term traders don't go for homeruns, they only have a plan for if a trade can turn into a homerun. But pro short term traders just try to capture high probability short term moves. 10 ticks, 20 ticks, whatever. If you can make 20 ticks (20 ticks = 5 ES points) per day for the rest of your life, you should be happy with that. That's better than the median income in the USA.
So my suggestion to you to be profitable in sim would be to stop looking at the gain porn on twitter/elite trader and try to capture one or two good moves per day. Good moves doesn't mean 1 full ATR or whatever. Just means one level to the next, for example.
For each trade, give yourself two tries on it. Set your stops tight. If the trade stops out, re-assess whether your thesis was correct and you just got caught up in volatility and wait for another good entry. If that one also stops out, then DO NOT GO TO ANOTHER CHART OR TIMEFRAME, just wait for the NEXT good setup. Only keep trading if you are making good trades.
For your first trade, start with a small position. If you get a strong signal in your direction, look to add on pullbacks/retraces till it hits your target or the trade is no longer valid. If you are short term trading, do not set your target based on the weekly chart (though sometimes that is useful). One useful approach (IMO) Is to use tick charts and set levels based on "congestion" in the charts. So where there was a fight between bulls and bears. Time charts can sometimes show this, but tick charts _always_ show this, and they sort of correct for volatility which time charts do not.
You can do it. There is a slight adjustment you need to make that has nothing to do with Brooks. The problem is that you are probably trying to capture home runs off of one entry. You can build up a huge trade by continually adding on pullbacks. That way your initial risk is low but you keep adding as your signal gets stronger rather than averaging down.
