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Why 95% Of All Traders Fail 202 replies

Why most 'traders' fail 12 replies

Why Most People Fail At Trading Infographic 3 replies

The Reason why 95% Traders fail 341 replies

Why Traders fail despite of good system available here in Forum?? 8 replies

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Why do 99% of the people who wants to be traders fail?

Quoting forexmoments
No, it's not a joke mate.

Whether you like it or not, there ARE people out there who SIMPLY CAN'T CONTROL THEIR EMOTIONS. They can't keep them in check. And if that's the case, what chance does one have with MM?
Do you think you could control your emotions if every tick increased or decreased your account by 5%?

Do you think you could control your emotions if you knew that, if the worst happened, and the trade hit your stoploss, the most you would lose is 1% of your account?

Can you see then, how MM is the route to controlling your emotions?
Quoting ubeee
GENERIC PART
Most of the people who wants to be traders fail because most of the people of the world fail anyway whatever they try to accomplish. Most of the people have fat wives, ugly children, small houses, minimal education, zero self-esteem, boring (if not unbearable) jobs and accept to succumb all the time to their arrogant bosses at work and hysteric relatives at home. I know it is very sad, but it is a truth: most of the people of the world fail because they are losers.
Now, if you don't believe what I'm saying, be honest, just go out and walk a little bit in the streets around your house: how many Claudia Schiffer or Albert Einstein do they live in your neighbourhood?
We are a result of genetic selection. Genetic selection most of the time produces average elements that will never do anything special in their life, and will never win anything in any context that is even just a little bit more challenging. Only very rarely genetic selection produces first-rate elements, maybe only 1% of the time, that in itself is the answer to why 99% of the people who wants to be traders fails.
Gotta disagree with ya this time, Ubee. Your premise is logical, but makes the assumption that an even cross-section of humanity attempts trading. My opinion is that most people would never try this, those are the real losers. I think those that try this would generally be among the most intellegent, accomplished, and competitive in other areas.
Quote
For a clear example of what I'm talking about here please read this post that I consider to be one of the most useful and intelligent post you could ever find on FF.
Hey, now I know where Brett gets his material. He read OUR posts, Ubee!
Quoting ubeee
I know I'm going to be hated for what I'm going to write, but I'm going to do it anyway because I think it could still be enlightening (to few).

GENERIC PART
Most of the people who wants to be traders fail because most of the people of the world fail anyway whatever they try to accomplish. Most of the people have fat wives, ugly children, small houses, minimal education, zero self-esteem, boring (if not unbearable) jobs and accept to succumb all the time to their arrogant bosses at work and hysteric relatives at home. I know it is very sad, but it is a truth: most of the people of the world fail because they are losers.
Now, if you don't believe what I'm saying, be honest, just go out and walk a little bit in the streets around your house: how many Claudia Schiffer or Albert Einstein do they live in your neighbourhood?
We are a result of genetic selection. Genetic selection most of the time produces average elements that will never do anything special in their life, and will never win anything in any context that is even just a little bit more challenging. Only very rarely genetic selection produces first-rate elements, maybe only 1% of the time, that in itself is the answer to why 99% of the people who wants to be traders fails.

TRADING SPECIFIC PART (not only forex)

  1. trading seems easy. This is the number one reason people fail at trading. You see all that money going up and down all day long (and with forex also night) and it seems real, concrete, tangible, it seems like a lake so full of fishes that you can see them jumping and swimming and calling you to just go there and easily catch them. Only later you discover they are piraña.
    .
  2. losers are losers and in the deep of themselves they know they are losers. Knowing this they try all of their best to avoid doing hard things and focus themselves only on easy things. The problem here is that trading seems easy, so losers think trading is just the perfect thing for them to do. Instead of working hard to have a better job, a more complete education, a more beautiful wife, more self-esteem and so on (these are all hard things to do) they just prefer to trade: it's more easy! So trading in itself naturally attracts more loosers than talented people.
    .
  3. losers feels more urgency to start trading (read: to start making something that is easy) exactly after they have just got a bad stroke in their life, like after having been fired at work, or their wife left them, or having contracted a big debt with a creditor, or (for youngers) having failed at school or college, and so on. They start in the worst case scenario, under strong pressure and just after having discovered how losers they are.
    .
  4. trading in itself is not any harder than a lot of other jobs of this world, but in most countries of the world there are no official, widely esteemed and well recognized schools that teach trading. Vast majority of the time you will only find ambiguous gurus, suspicious mentors, lofty traders that promise to reveal you "the deeply hidden secrets of trading that will enrich you well beyond your wildest dream in a few weeks". There are of course good and honest mentors, but you have to find them, and they are rare. In fact being the world of wannabe traders populated by so many losers a lot of scammers exist because they know it's easy to fool losers.
    .
  5. trading is hard because whoever gets really very good at it only rarely feels the urgency to teach his knowledge to other people. They usually teachs to some of their relatives or best friends and that's it. Even when you find honest mentors you will soon discover that while they are truly good as trader, and it's true that they make a living out of trading, it is also true that they are not any outstanding champion of trading. They are just good and honest average traders with distinct ability in teaching. You will never get private mentorship from the real champions unless you are already very close to them.
    .
  6. trading is hard because being the knowledge in this field so unorganized tons of totally false myths flourish at the speed of light and soon become the "established truth" for the vast majority of wannabe traders that, being made of losers, are especially good at getting mixed up on what is good and what is crap. For a clear example of what I'm talking about here please read this post that I consider to be one of the most useful and intelligent post you could ever find on FF.
    .
  7. people fail at trading because most of the time instead of studying, learning and practicing the markets they waste all of their energies reading on forums like FF the complainings and the laments of losers that cry all the time that there is no way at all to be profitable with forex, that whoever says he's making money is a liar and an impostor and if someone demonstrates to be profitable showing true statements losers say it was just luck (so only very temporary success that will surely very soon be reverted to huge losses), and waste their time writing replies to that losers stuff. So, well, I think it's better I stop here.

This is a really good post. 100% Agree. Alot of Truth, should be made a Sticky for all to Read. Should be put into an ebook.
FTMO $10k Verification #2 (PASSED) All Time Return: 5.2%
Quoting blueruby
Gotta disagree with ya this time, Ubee. Your premise is logical, but makes the assumption that an even cross-section of humanity attempts trading. My opinion is that most people would never try this, those are the real losers. I think those that try this would generally be among the most intellegent, accomplished, and competitive in other areas.
My experience (limited, I have to admit) has been different so far. I've never known any person that never tried at least one time in his/her life to make some sort of financial trading. Vast majority of them, surely, just followed some suggestions from their bank to buy stocks of this or that company (or a fund), and after having lost money immediately stopped, and forever. Those surely are the biggest losers.
On the other side I agree with you that those that instead resisted the first losses and decided to go on trying to understand and learn are usually people that already had some sort of success in other fields of their life and could not be considered the biggest losers, and of course it is between them that you find that 1% that will do it, but still the vast majority of them usually stops trying in one or in a few years.
Anyway if for trading you just intend what we are doing here (on these forums) and not any type of risk investment, then, well, you are right. I also think that whoever has arrived at the point to read and write on forums like this is way ahead of the vast majority of losers. For example in my beginnings, when I was one of the biggest loser of all time (in trading), I never thought forums like this would be helpful.

Quoting blueruby
Hey, now I know where Brett gets his material. He read OUR posts, Ubee!
If I only had found that author some years ago I would have saved a lot of money in losses spent just to discover exactly what he writes.
.Ubeee.
Quoting ubeee
My experience (limited, I have to admit) has been different so far. I've never known any person that never tried at least one time in his/her life to make some sort of financial trading. Vast majority of them, surely, just followed some suggestions from their bank to buy stocks of this or that company (or a fund), and after having lost money immediately stopped, and forever. Those surely are the biggest losers.
On the other side I agree with you that those that instead resisted the first losses and decided to go on trying to understand and learn are usually people that already had some sort of success in other fields of their life and could not be considered the biggest losers, and of course it is between them that you find that 1% that will do it, but still the vast majority of them usually stops trying in one or in a few years.

Anyway if for trading you just intend what we are doing here (on these forums) and not any type of risk investment, then, well, you are right. I also think that whoever has arrived at the point to read and write on forums like this is way ahead of the vast majority of losers. For example in my beginnings, when I was one of the biggest loser of all time (in trading), I never thought forums like this would be helpful.

If I only had found that author some years ago I would have saved a lot of money in losses spent just to discover exactly what he writes.
Sure, I agree "everyone" invests at one time or another, I was referring to the type of trading we do. However, Brett's article seemed to say that traders came from an even cross-section.
yeah, well...to be honest, i never got the "edge" thing...can anybody give me an example of an "edge" ? and i dont mean "superior knowledge of what is going on"...a real edge...please point me to it...all i know is, if my trading is runnig well, i have to press it a little bit...if it doesnt going well, i have to cut it down...the hardest part is to not try to press a bad day...
These threads are so redundant and distracting to the mind.

I posted this in another thread where it probably wasn't very relevant.
Maybe it will be more help here?

The source, stems from times as old as Confucius and Socrates.

As far as I know, this is how it actually started.


He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool - shun him, (= Unconscious Incompetent)
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not is ignorant - teach him, (= Conscious Incompetent)
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep - wake him, (= Unconscious Competent)
But he who knows, and knows that he knows, is a wise man - follow him, (= Conscious Competent)

And I think it's point is what others have made more than once (probably more than a million times)

Education, Hard Work and Attitude/State of Mind trump all.
Attached Image (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: competency_matrix.png Size: 86 KB
Carpe Divitiae
This is my uderstanding as to Why...


http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...5&postcount=10
Quoting peter100
yeah, well...to be honest, i never got the "edge" thing...can anybody give me an example of an "edge" ? and i dont mean "superior knowledge of what is going on"...a real edge...please point me to it...
This is a hard question to answer as nobody will give away or reveal an edge; simply because if they do that edge will disappear.

But if I can use an example unrelated to forex, then card counters at a casino have an edge over the house.
umm... is it really unrelated to forex?
An edge is simply positive expectancy - the expectation that you will come out ahead over time even the distribution of wins and losses may in fact be random. A casino has positive expectancy but cannot be sure how those profits will come. In the markets this can only be based on analysis of past data and of course so there are no guarantees since a market has no permanant mean.
Please allow me to explain, I’m a new trader, I did blow out, my First account, On my second so far I’m averaging about 10% return per week. At First I tried to Understand the chart reading and you make move on that but really It’s hard to figure that out, I personally don’t think you can’t predict the future by looking at the past, I start just trading by looking at the news, If you read right you could have a good Idea were that rate will go, Don’t stay there for a long time but just enough to make some pip, what ever you are happy with, I personally I’m happy getting between 5 to 10, then I get out, So per week ,y average is 10%. When I was looking and trying to read the charts, I was losing allot and would stay with that open position for days just to break even, or getting out with a lost. I could be wrong but so far so good.
i think most traders fail due to some 'unknown' force that keeps it that way.

I mean if trading was easy, where everyboyd is profiting and making money, nobody will do anything productive in the real world. The world economy would collapse.

Maybe it's the forex gods that keep the winning percentage low so that the rest of us would go out there and WORK.
Working towards CME membership
Quoting dpereira;1855451[SIZE=5
On my second so far I’m averaging about 10% return per week.[/size]
WOW! with compoundidng you will double your account every 8 weeks and achieve a 6497% return per annum. Starting with a 1k micro account you will be worth over 4.25 million in two years surpassing any other traders results ever! dont you think thats a little odd for a newbie who cant read a chart? It is unlikely that you can interpret the news either so you are dependant on the views of analysts to call a direction for you and they are notoriously innacurate. We are six weeks into the year and if you last another six without at least one more blown account I will be amazed - do some research on risk management and probability if you want to avoid my prediction comming true - its all here on FF
Quote
WOW! with compoundidng you will double your account every 8 weeks and achieve a 6497% return per annum. Starting with a 1k micro account you will be worth over 4.25 million in two years surpassing any other traders results ever! dont you think thats a little odd for a newbie who cant read a chart? It is unlikely that you can interpret the news either so you are dependant on the views of analysts to call a direction for you and they are notoriously innacurate.

While it's probably a bit too optimistic, you don't need to call a direction at all. Just put a buy-sell stop pair some pips out from the current position (ATR can help with that, look at non news ATR swings and compare). Figured that out my 2nd week trading so I could see someone new doing it. Only problem will be translating it to a real account... slippage and high spreads make news trading very difficult, and while you can trade the rebound... I'm not sure it's worth following every little news story just to hope for a buck. Sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen.
  • Post #55
  • Quote
  • Edited 5:14am Feb 18, 2008 5:02am | Edited 5:14am
Quoting Warren Forex
...... Technical trading on it's own cannot work long term. .......
Warren, I've no doubt that you're successful, and I congratulate you.

However, there are those who claim to be consistently profitable, using purely technical methods.

Once a trader has found his own winning method, I guess it stands to reason that he no longer continues to research other approaches, and hence runs the risk if developing a kind of "tunnel vision". I believe it's not necessarily correct to assume that, just because somebody else's method isn't similar to one's own winning way, that it's doomed to fail. As Jack Schwager says in The New Market Wizards (assuming it's applicable to forex also) "there are a million ways to make money in the markets; the irony is that they're all very difficult to find".

As to why so many traders fail, there's a lot of randomness in price movement, and my experience is that it can take several months of testing to find a pattern that delivers an edge. I'm not there yet myself, but there are some that have claimed to achieved it, hence I believe that it's possible. Many newcomers have been seduced into believing that forex trading is easy money, and aren't prepared to put in the hard yards when they discover that it's not the case. The dedication required can place tremendous strain on one's career, marriage and family priorities. It takes some resilience to continue persevering, following several frustrating months (or possibly even years) of poor, umpromising or inconclusive results. I expect that all of these factors help contribute to the high dropout rate.

I also believe that aspiring intraday traders underestimate the effect of costs across a large number of transactions (spread may be < 5% of a move, but casinos make billions from a 1% edge), and there is also the possibility of stop hunting and broker cheating.

I think that the MM and psychology aspects definitely take their toll, but are overrated. Of course if a newcomer sizes positions recklessly and/or makes entries or exits based on emotion or hunches, he will ultimately fail. But the same is true if he doesn't have a method that's capable of overcoming the odds.

In similar vein, I don't believe that maintaining a positive attitude by itself is enough. Just because I "generate" as much positive energy as I can when I buy a lottery ticket, it doesn't change the odds, and I don't see why trading should be any different. But of course a negative attitude is self-defeating.

Last year I traded a live account for almost 4 months and I lost around 9%. I can honestly say that I sized all positions at 1% risk, maintained a positive enough attitude, and kept to my entry/exit plan with 100% discipline. But my plan didn't time the entries and exits accurately enough, and consequently didn't deliver an edge. As a result, I lost money, and closed the account.

David
Quoting ubeee

  1. trading is hard because being the knowledge in this field so unorganized tons of totally false myths flourish at the speed of light and soon become the "established truth" for the vast majority of wannabe traders that, being made of losers, are especially good at getting mixed up on what is good and what is crap. For a clear example of what I'm talking about here please read this post that I consider to be one of the most useful and intelligent post you could ever find on FF.
    .
  2. people fail at trading because most of the time instead of studying, learning and practicing the markets they waste all of their energies reading on forums like FF the complainings and the laments of losers that cry all the time that there is no way at all to be profitable with forex, that whoever says he's making money is a liar and an impostor and if someone demonstrates to be profitable showing true statements losers say it was just luck (so only very temporary success that will surely very soon be reverted to huge losses), and waste their time writing replies to that losers stuff. So, well, I think it's better I stop here.

Nice post, Ubeee, I particularly agree with the parts I've selected above. I probably spend far too much time replying to forum posts myself! And many thanks for the link to Dr Steenbarger's article - it makes a lot of sense to me (especially "The main cause of trading failure is a lack of an objective edge in the marketplace, trading random patterns that have never been tested out for success.")

Best wishes,
David
Quoting hanover
Nice post, Ubeee, I particularly agree with the parts I've selected above. I probably spend far too much time replying to forum posts myself!
David, your posts are usually very valuable. I know how much time it takes to make the kind of accurate posts that you usually write and this is why I usually read them very carefully.
The sad part of all this is that in life, provided that you work hard and that you are really committed, you can do almost everything you want but one: have the time to just flow a little bit slower. Time is really the most precious thing we have. It is mandatory to use it in the most judicious way we can.
.Ubeee.
Quoting M.A.C.Doug
WOW! with compoundidng you will double your account every 8 weeks and achieve a 6497% return per annum. Starting with a 1k micro account you will be worth over 4.25 million in two years surpassing any other traders results ever! dont you think thats a little odd for a newbie who cant read a chart? It is unlikely that you can interpret the news either so you are dependant on the views of analysts to call a direction for you and they are notoriously innacurate. We are six weeks into the year and if you last another six without at least one more blown account I will be amazed - do some research on risk management and probability if you want to avoid my prediction comming true - its all here on FF
Well so far it has been working for me another 10% this week, I'm glad that you did all that math for me, but I do think that 10% will come to a closer window, I only Open one trade at the time, when I'm in a positive, I get out, with news, 90% of the time you will see a drop or a win of a minimum of 10pip, now depending on your leverage you could easy do 10% a week. I do believe chart could be read, but I'm sure it takes allot of expertise and schooling to learn this. If you are able, good for you, but please teach me, I honestly get very confused with all this method, and when a make a decision, really I'm guessing. So far News work for me
Quoting ubeee
I know I'm going to be hated for what I'm going to write, but I'm going to do it anyway because I think it could still be enlightening (to few).

GENERIC PART
Most of the people who wants to be traders fail because most of the people of the world fail anyway whatever they try to accomplish. Most of the people have fat wives, ugly children, small houses, minimal education, zero self-esteem, boring (if not unbearable) jobs and accept to succumb all the time to their arrogant bosses at work and hysteric relatives at home. I know it is very sad, but it is a truth: most of the people of the world fail because they are losers.
Now, if you don't believe what I'm saying, be honest, just go out and walk a little bit in the streets around your house: how many Claudia Schiffer or Albert Einstein do they live in your neighbourhood?
We are a result of genetic selection. Genetic selection most of the time produces average elements that will never do anything special in their life, and will never win anything in any context that is even just a little bit more challenging. Only very rarely genetic selection produces first-rate elements, maybe only 1% of the time, that in itself is the answer to why 99% of the people who wants to be traders fails.

TRADING SPECIFIC PART (not only forex)

  1. trading seems easy. This is the number one reason people fail at trading. You see all that money going up and down all day long (and with forex also night) and it seems real, concrete, tangible, it seems like a lake so full of fishes that you can see them jumping and swimming and calling you to just go there and easily catch them. Only later you discover they are piraña.
    .
  2. losers are losers and in the deep of themselves they know they are losers. Knowing this they try all of their best to avoid doing hard things and focus themselves only on easy things. The problem here is that trading seems easy, so losers think trading is just the perfect thing for them to do. Instead of working hard to have a better job, a more complete education, a more beautiful wife, more self-esteem and so on (these are all hard things to do) they just prefer to trade: it's more easy! So trading in itself naturally attracts more loosers than talented people.
    .
  3. losers feels more urgency to start trading (read: to start making something that is easy) exactly after they have just got a bad stroke in their life, like after having been fired at work, or their wife left them, or having contracted a big debt with a creditor, or (for youngers) having failed at school or college, and so on. They start in the worst case scenario, under strong pressure and just after having discovered how losers they are.
    .
  4. trading in itself is not any harder than a lot of other jobs of this world, but in most countries of the world there are no official, widely esteemed and well recognized schools that teach trading. Vast majority of the time you will only find ambiguous gurus, suspicious mentors, lofty traders that promise to reveal you "the deeply hidden secrets of trading that will enrich you well beyond your wildest dream in a few weeks". There are of course good and honest mentors, but you have to find them, and they are rare. In fact being the world of wannabe traders populated by so many losers a lot of scammers exist because they know it's easy to fool losers.
    .
  5. trading is hard because whoever gets really very good at it only rarely feels the urgency to teach his knowledge to other people. They usually teachs to some of their relatives or best friends and that's it. Even when you find honest mentors you will soon discover that while they are truly good as trader, and it's true that they make a living out of trading, it is also true that they are not any outstanding champion of trading. They are just good and honest average traders with distinct ability in teaching. You will never get private mentorship from the real champions unless you are already very close to them.
    .
  6. trading is hard because being the knowledge in this field so unorganized tons of totally false myths flourish at the speed of light and soon become the "established truth" for the vast majority of wannabe traders that, being made of losers, are especially good at getting mixed up on what is good and what is crap. For a clear example of what I'm talking about here please read this post that I consider to be one of the most useful and intelligent post you could ever find on FF.
    .
  7. people fail at trading because most of the time instead of studying, learning and practicing the markets they waste all of their energies reading on forums like FF the complainings and the laments of losers that cry all the time that there is no way at all to be profitable with forex, that whoever says he's making money is a liar and an impostor and if someone demonstrates to be profitable showing true statements losers say it was just luck (so only very temporary success that will surely very soon be reverted to huge losses), and waste their time writing replies to that losers stuff. So, well, I think it's better I stop here.

This is possibly a better article than the one you provided a link to, which was great to begin with. This should be a sticky.
Quoting dpereira
now depending on your leverage you could easy do 10% a week. I do believe chart could be read, but I'm sure it takes allot of expertise and schooling to learn this. If you are able, good for you, but please teach me, I honestly get very confused with all this method, and when a make a decision, really I'm guessing. So far News work for me
What is your stop loss per trade? what is your win loss ratio so far?
let me know when it starts to lose 10% or more per week and Ill will gladly teach you how to trade very reliably using only support and resistence confluence as determined using TA. If you succeed in achieveing 10% per week every week then I will take lessons from you, deal?
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