Why most of traders lose on forex?

I have question to you, what is your opinion about why only 10% of traders (may be less) can win on forex while in theory there must be 50% losers and 50% winners? I think that there are not many experienced traders on forex. After bad experience many traders leave forex, some traders' nerves do not allow to last at forex more than a year. So this 10% is well experienced traders.
Personally when I was new to forex, despite I followed forex psychilogy study I could not control myself. I was emotional when losing and admired when gaining. When I won I thought that nowbody was there smart like me (I was so wrong), and being encouraged I made many wrong moves, I was overtraded I had as low as 300$ account and I traded over 60K a day. than as I found out that I made many wrong moves (without placing stop loss orders) I made the very mistake what most newbies do, I allow losing posotion to remain, however I was losing almost 80% but then market reversed and even gained something, but not always I was so lucky one more trade and I lost almost my deposit. But however I did not give up developed different strategies analyzed almost every currency pair, first time specialized on fundamentals and then used tech as well. WHy I am telling so much? I think main reason why most traders (newbies) lose is that they make riskiest moves after little gaining and never use stop loss orders, or even add lots to losing positions. They simply cannot learn to love losses. Only self-confident traders can win who developed belief, that from 100 deals most of them (over 70) will be successful. And uses stop loss orders to eliminate situation that if these 30 cases occur total loss would not exceed total profit. So I think that loses who cannot admit losses when needed.

My opinion would be lack of disopline. I traded for 4 month on a demo and was doing very well. I went Live and killed my account. The thing is I was consist on my demo and I stuck to my EMA's and other indicators. I went live and changed stratagies all togather. I was not disoplined and I paid the price. Now I am trading like I was on my demo, being patient for the indicators to line up and I get in then. I have a statagy and I now stick to it and when I don't I pay. But I also continue to learn cause I am new at the game and I realize there is so much to learn so I keep an open mind an continue to learn. This is what I think will make me successful and why other are not.

I know when I first started trading I was like a kid in a candy store. Taking every trade without much reason. As time goes on I was taking less and less trades and making better decisions. The book that helped me the most in my trading was Mark Douglas "Trading in the Zone" Why did this book help me. It made me realize that you cannot control where the market goes. You need to let it go where it is going to go. Sounds simple, hard to maintain. People ask me all the time where do I think the market is going. I say to them it goes where it goes, I have no opinion. This has turned my trading around. Train your brain and the rest will follow. Good luck

NJTrader

Forex trading is a mind game,most of the traders cannot control their emotions.90% of traders know the basics of technical and fundamental analysis but they don't have the psychology and they don't know the value of money management.

Quite right, psychology is key in Forex. Neither fundamental nor technical can make you lucky withought good money management.
I think good technical and fundamental skills help you from 100 deals most of them to be profitable and money management helps you these little losing deals not to exceed gaining deals. The second is more important!

It is naive to expect that in a market giving you 50% chance of winning a trade you would last. This is a well known so-called "Gambler's ruin problem". Let me give a simple example. Let say we plain heads and tails for $1 each time. Your initial capital is $10 and mine is $100. We play until one of us runs out of money. Guess, who is that likely to be? Of course - you, with 10:1 ratio. Indeed, since this is equal chance game, the payoff for both parties is the same. The payoff is a probability p to win times the $ of thew win. Since when u win, u win 10 times more, you chance of winning got to be 10 less.
Now back to forex. Here you are with your meager $50,000. And here is Forex with its trillions. So, if you play randomly, just hoping for your 50% chance, what is your chance to bring your money to $1,000,000? If you can't figure out the number yourself, ask me.

In Forex there is no 50/50 chance. You are always at a slight disadvantage because you have to cover the pip spread.
If you were at a stagnent open (neither positive nor negative), you could say it is 50/50 I will go + and 50/50 I will go -.
However, starting off in the negative only betters the chances that you will stay in the negative throughout your trade.
This, again, is where knowledge and discipline come into play. The two are permanently married to each other in every successful traders personality.

YOU must learn to understand the markets movements and not fear your positions. If your afraid of the market, it alreadsy has you.

A little Zen for your day!

well, looking at it critically if traders placed few trades that means they were trading HIGHER TIME FRAMES then they would make few losses and maybe the few winning would have given then a breakeven or a slight profit and not a blown account.
So i guess concentrating on lower time frames is what makes traders loose .

Traders lose because the game is designed for them to lose. It's rigged. You can't win at forex any more than you can win playing slot machines in Vegas - both are rigged to separate suckers from their money.

Most traders do not lose. Most professional traders make money day in and day out. Most gamblers however lose. Trading is a unstructured environment. Its less about what trading system you use but more about what is your attitude Winners do not lose and losers do not win. Its is true in everything else in life... whether you are looking for a job, a restaurant business or searching for a woman to bed. I meant wed. As I say, its all in the mind!

One reason why many new traders fail is the mismanagement of leverage ratios. Many new traders are excited at big leverage ratios as they want to trade positions far bigger than trading capital. This has its disadvantages as if the leverage trade becomes a losing one, the losses are well multiplied and they can blow their account.

The ratio of 50% winners and 50% of losers is just theoretical.

If you open a position without any entry strategy you will have 45% chance to win it, while 55% to lose it.
Let say you trade with a strategy, using 100 point SL and a 100 point TP, while spread is 20 points.

It means if you want to win 100 points the price needs to go 120points to your direction. While it is enough to go 100 points to wrong direction to lose 100 points.

So the whole range where the price can move is 100+120=220 points, and you can win only 100 points from this.
So your winning chance is 100/220=45% while your loosing chance is 55%.

This 45-55% deviation comes from the spread. Brokers always win!

This thread is 11 years old. Think the OP figured it out yet?

You had time to go to school and learn business analysis. Hopefully, that is what you did. Most people lose because they do not know anything about analysis.

But, you also have to have a temperament to gamble. If you are afraid of gambling, it can affect your reaction to trades.

Once you have a background in analysis, and have determined your probabilities, it relaxes your emotional state and you become more rational. Good Luck

The average forex trader loses money, which is very discouraging. But why does that happen? Simply put failure to cut losses short. Successful traders learn to cut their losses short. Do this and you'll never think of quitting forex.

money management

One serious mistake made by traders that makes them lose is letting losses run. Just in case you didn't know, the element of good trading is cutting losses. If you can follow this rule, you may have a chance of being a successful trader.

Its not about "forex trading" -- most "traders" loose money, period. There are a lot of reasons why.. but spot FX lends itself to high leverage that compounds the risk, and therefore losses.

Well a good portion of failure among forex traders can be traced down to impatience on their part to make money as quick as possible. Most new traders want to make money at all cost they barely make out time to even perfect their strategy on at least a demo account.

your trade systems are not important, like a psychology of trading and MM.

I can relate to these thread here. Put simply, human psychology makes trading difficult. We may have all the knowledge and skills, but when we are not mentally balanced and focused. Some of us react rationally to different situations and this may cause more damage!
My simple advice is; cut your losses early and let your profits run.