Why are most retail traders usually on the wrong side of the market?

I'm of the opinion that it's impossible to know where any market is going to go next. So my guess is that traders on the wrong side of the market is a result of holding losing trades too long & cutting winners to quickly.
Otherwise its automated trading robot that always end up trading against the trend.
And I've had plenty of bad experiences of my own with both these situations

Why are most retail traders usually on the wrong side of the market?

It's a very smart question, because if you get the right answer you'll find the path to profit.
I think that most traders are on the wrong side of the market because they don't understand a basic principle: money is made at the extremes. Behind the extremes lies an opportunity. Trading is a game of probability, the market when it reaches an extreme gives value, determining a correct extreme is not simple but this is the intellectual challenge.

No value no edge, no edge no gain long term

Simply Because They're being manipulated to be there, Whatever you do, you will find yourself in the wrong side (Short term trading is always manipulated by the big money)

I feel most retailers end up on the wrong side because they focus on chasing price, instead of understanding how and why the market moves. Extremes feel the riskiest to trade because they don’t confide with the emotions of the majority and that is when smart money comes in. Instead of responding when it’s too late, the challenge is to stay patient and disciplined.

When it comes to Forex, there is no such thing as "wrong side of the market".

Thinking in terms of probabilities is not easy, standard or straightforward process because the path you take (in terms of strategy) is determined by the context in which you operate and the quality of the data and knowledge at your disposal. For example, the same pattern can have different meaning and different values to different people. For one person the pattern is useless, but for another it's valuable. The same pattern can be considered a valid buy signal and a valid sell signal at the same time!

Why this happens? Because the market (FX market specifically) is chaotic, with fractal and mean reverting structure. Knowing how to operate in such environment allows the experienced traders to extract positive expectancy per trade independently of trend direction. Because "the trend" is also relative and depends on the timeframe of observation. For example the large trend on M15 is just a normal correction on D1. You can have 2 traders with opposite positions opened at the same time and both can make profit if they time the exits correctly.

Every trader have to determine their main goals. Do you want to predict market direction or you want to make money? Because you can be right about market direction every time and still lose money on every trade due to wrong exit timing. And you can also be wrong about market direction on every trade and still end up with profit because you have clever money management strategy and good exit timing.

Thinking in terms of probabilities also includes non-linear functions and law of large numbers! Unfortunately most people have a hard time grasping these concepts. It's very hard to truly understand these things if you are not deeply involved with coding, statistics and automated systems. You really need to see and test the concepts first hand to truly understand what the theory means in the context of the market and what are the practical applications.

I quite agree. The important thing is to have value, to have tools that can give us a significant advantage, otherwise it is better not to trade because it is basically a losing game. Sorry for my English