95% losers - Fact or Fiction? | Page 3 | Forex Factory

Options

Go to
Permalinks
Print Thread

Similar Threads

Trading Sayings: Fact or Fiction 64 replies

Winners scale winners, losers scale losers 12 replies

Profitable EA, Fact or Fiction? 35 replies

Broker Moles: Fact or fiction? 7 replies

Trading sytems losing value with age or the more people trade it. Fact or fiction? 25 replies

Attachments: 95% losers - Fact or Fiction?
Exit Attachments

95% losers - Fact or Fiction?

  • #41
  • Jun 6, 2010 12:39am Jun 6, 2010 12:39am
Quoting adamnz
I find this thread great.

I have been demo for 3 odd months so far ( because that is what was suggested to me ) and i have lost demo money consistently.

I now have a mentor who I believe is sucessfull and I think I will learn to use the method he uses well in time, or at least parts of it with my own method. that word again TIME.

But anyway, I got interested because it would be a great full time job for me considering my circumstances.
The fact that 95 + % of people who try fail does not worry me all that much, it just warns me to be cautious.
The...
Keep working and you will get there, I'm sure.
First turn yourself profitable with demo trading. than switch to live trading with a small account just to feel the thing. If you blow it, try again and again, like all the other education, it costs money, but in the end it will give you the results you're looking for.

Good luck with your journey!
  • #42
  • Jun 6, 2010 12:56am Jun 6, 2010 12:56am
Quoting Orcinus
Keep working and you will get there, I'm sure.
First turn yourself profitable with demo trading. than switch to live trading with a small account just to feel the thing. If you blow it, try again and again, like all the other education, it costs money, but in the end it will give you the results you're looking for.

Good luck with your journey!
Thanks, appreciate the positive feedback.

A
  • #43
  • Jun 6, 2010 1:20am Jun 6, 2010 1:20am
Quoting adamnz
Thanks, appreciate the positive feedback.

A

Everyone told me I would fail, after all 95% fail, as "they" say. I prefer to do it otherwise. Keep working, you will fail, until you succeed.
  • #44
  • Jun 6, 2010 1:28am Jun 6, 2010 1:28am
Quoting blunderbuss
1. If that 95% figure is true, I don't care. I shall be part of the 5%
who makes money in these markets. It is my intention to retire rich
at 45, while I'm still young enough to enjoy it.

.
I am 100% in agreement with you BB
  • #45
  • Jun 8, 2010 8:59am Jun 8, 2010 8:59am
95% of what? 95% of people including the ones that thought 'Oh I'll try forex and gave up after a month' ?

There are statistics, more statistics.................................. and some lies?
  • #46
  • Jun 8, 2010 10:05am Jun 8, 2010 10:05am
Good point.

It would be interesting to see the figures when filtered by a variety of categories (education, profession, age, net worth, etc.).

No doubt the percentage of all people who have opened accounts and not been profitable is probably way, way up there, closer to 100% than 95%. The barrier to entry is so small while the game is extremely competitive.

Consider how easy it is to NOT wipe out your account. All it takes is some very simple math with basic money & risk management, yet how many traders will wipe out their first, second, even third accounts? I mean it's actually to the point where some even consider it trading 'wisdom' that you SHOULD wipe out your first account while you learn the ropes. What a joke!
  • #47
  • Jun 8, 2010 11:30am Jun 8, 2010 11:30am
95% over how long? On a day? Over a week? Over a year? And how many accounts? I believe that 95% figure is not fiction BUT it's could be only the % of losing accounts in ONE moment in time and that exists in all types of investment trading. If you want to get an assessement of an overall profitability of Forex accounts, you have to look at the average loss % over a long period of time.

Because accounts at those brokers are constantly changing with new accounts coming in and old accounts closing or continuing, if you examine any broker's books, there will always be large losing accounts on ANY given day. New traders losing money in the beginning and experienced traders happen to lose just on that ONE day. But for those of us who have traded for a long time, we all know that we progress and we eventually make more money than losing. So if everybody is doing that, on an aggregate basis, how can 95% of accounts be losing?

And if you want to hold this 95% to be true then you have to realize that this figure applies also to other investment types as well including Mutual Funds. When the IT bubble burst back 10 yrs ago, people lost huge amount of money in their Mutual Funds. If you examine the books of those Mutual fund companies on that day of the crash, I bet you the % of losing accounts is even higher with lot higher amount of losses. So are we going to say 95% of the Mutual Fund accounts lose money? Ironically it's actually true in a sense, it's just that those losses are unrealized so we don't see it.

So, to me that "95%" or "99%" depending on which article you are reading is just a number that makes me go "Oh really? Interesting"
Make your losses in demo. Earn your profits live.
  • #48
  • Jun 8, 2010 12:06pm Jun 8, 2010 12:06pm
bruce lee was the best at giving advice and kicking ass

if one is not successful here then doesnt say he or she would not be successful in another

I tried other investments other than this but I found this to be the best discipline.

Life is about adapting always changing to the environment that we live in

and always smiling at adversity, why? because this is what makes us strong and winners.


A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at. bruce lee
As you think, so shall you become. bruce lee



To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities. Bruce lee
  • #49
  • Jun 8, 2010 1:03pm Jun 8, 2010 1:03pm
Fact, I have blowed up 3 of my 4 accounts till now, after 1 year my net balance is still negative. I'm thinking in retiring of forex, if in next 6 months I can't recover what I've lost, I will definitively retire from forex.
  • #50
  • Jun 8, 2010 1:14pm Jun 8, 2010 1:14pm
Quoting Trad3r
Fact, I have blowed up 3 of my 4 accounts till now, after 1 year my net balance is still negative. I'm thinking in retiring of forex, if in next 6 months I can't recover what I've lost, I will definitively retire from forex.
Its hard to take that as fact unless you post a bit about your experience. How did you blow out the account? What strategies did you change in between blow accounts? How was your money management? Unless you changed all of these in between each account, then maybe it's not the forex market that caused the blowouts . . .
  • #51
  • Jun 8, 2010 3:02pm Jun 8, 2010 3:02pm
Quoting Temps
I had always been lead to believe that 95% of traders lose consistantly and recently joined social networking site currensee ..... what i have found on his site is definitely more than 5% consistant winners and these accounts are all live,...

i have so many friends from this website, and if i compare their 'attitude' in posting, i see some thing that may interesting, (although not all but from people that i know seems like this) :

-. a successful trader not too much talking, (it could be see in his/er total post. or when they answer a question from others member)
-. a successful trader don't fight or make a 'fool debate' about something, (that most people do here). see in some thread, there are so much fight everyday to debate long or short, comment other trader style, MM etc, etc, etc and act like he is the best trader ever.
-. don't always look at the vouch of a member. i have friends here, his post not more than 150 post, no vouch, and quest, he manage million dollar in his acc. (i doubt people who always fight here have more that 1000 $ )
-. mostly successful trader come to this site for 'window shopping' only, and not be and active poster. (well it may cause angry to whom been active here , but that's what i see, they come here just to look around and go).

still so many that i could see from 5% but my post will be to long.

so, see u.

java.
I will be the number one Manager.
  • #52
  • Jun 8, 2010 6:51pm Jun 8, 2010 6:51pm
Quote
I'm thinking in retiring of forex, if in next 6 months I can't recover what I've lost, I will definitively retire from forex.


Trad3r, take this as a small advice from a newbie and possibly less successful than you are.

IMHO, if you put constraints on the return you do want, you are imposing deterministic expectations to something which is not deterministic (at least not entirely deterministic, from the observer's point of view).

I wish you all the best in your journey, but if I can give my opinion about: focus on what you can learn and how not to loose more; how to improve yourself as a trader.

Again, I am definitely part of the 95%, so just take this as a piece of advice from someone who is still searching. I was focussed on returns. I do not know where my journey will take me, but at least now I am enjoying it; it is a matter of discipline and learning. I think it is worth trying and improving. But, please, do not impose some returns: why should the market bother on how much we make or loose? Or have lost or made in the past?

It is this independency of events, which makes consistency so difficult to achieve (and money management unavoidable): even if a method is extremely good, it will have to fail sometimes and if you are over-leveraged, you will not survive to get back into profit.

That is what I have learnt and, essentially, what I am 100% sure is that I definitely know nothing and, even worse, not certain of how I could react emotionally, until I am in the game. My way of approaching forex now is: I love trying to understand it and in order to do that I also have to trade live; in order to trade live I need money, so I will use minuscule capitals and small risks to survive my learning curve (hopefully); or at least to pay the least possible for my 'tuition'.

Just my two cents. Happy trading and wish you all the best.
  • #53
  • Jul 9, 2010 4:40am Jul 9, 2010 4:40am
http://forexmagnates.com/demo-tradin...-are-alarming/
  • #54
  • Jul 9, 2010 3:29pm Jul 9, 2010 3:29pm
Quoting Adal
http://forexmagnates.com/demo-tradin...-are-alarming/
Very interesting - thanks for sharing. The outcome doesn't surprise me at all.
  • #55
  • Jul 9, 2010 6:35pm Jul 9, 2010 6:35pm
Quoting javapips
i have so many friends from this website, and if i compare their 'attitude' in posting, i see some thing that may interesting, (although not all but from people that i know seems like this) :

-. a successful trader not too much talking, (it could be see in his/er total post. or when they answer a question from others member)
-. a successful trader don't fight or make a 'fool debate' about something, (that most people do here). see in some thread, there are so much fight everyday to debate long or short, comment...
hey java.... ..... some posts deserve to be seen twice...... just took care of it.....

//----

judging from your charts you must have some creative abilities.... should go well with forex...... again.....h
to trade and code, keep both simple... no call to impress....h
  • #56
  • Edited 9:47pm Jul 9, 2010 9:43pm | Edited 9:47pm
Here is some thoughts that come to mind mind as I trade and
watch the price action. Ok, lets just say that 5 minutes from now price will have moved down 20 pips on the GBPUSD. So, if 95% people trading are wrong that means, theoretically, that 95% of whoever trades the GBPUSD in the next five minutes will place losing trades. So, if those losing traders lost pips because they traded up and the price moved down how can you explain the price actually moving down? If 95% of the people are trading up and the other 5% are trading down then how do you explain price actually going down... and not up?

The only realistic reason I can think of is the timing of the trades placed by the individual traders. Do the 5% winning traders have much better timing of when and where (price point) of their trade entries than that of the losing traders?
  • #57
  • Edited 10:26pm Jul 9, 2010 10:13pm | Edited 10:26pm
Agree to disagree here.

FX revolves on news, interest rates / & eco reports, TA is there when news and overall economic sentiment is light. ** EDIT: and as a basis to see how a market is trending on these factors,
then establishing, (if the drivers are not strong enough) possible points of rejection or breakout (S/R) and allowing us to plan strategies around certain levels, how did we move "here" and why is not all technical analysis.

I can't see trading without reading news daily, seems to me that is a setup disaster.

CFD trading is not even legal in the US due to the fact that there are major places of exchange to trade these financial instruments.

Why even compare what is "spread betting" to FX? Essentially a market maker puts the grenade in the small inexperienced traders hand, by allowing low minimum deposits to trade on markets that they have not studied or have any experience in so what happens? They lose everything due to lack of experience in both TA and FA. (to trade the major S&P or Gold futures contract costs far more in margin than a market maker requires - 5K would use over about 20 % of the margin on ONE standard and actively traded contract)

Would you operate as a Surgeon on someone after 6 months of "practice on pork bellies?", reading a few books and paying 1k?

Quoting TJPLD
lol I wonder where all my profits come frome when I don't pay attention
to fundamentals or indicators.

The 95% figure is quite accurate I would say.

There are no real statistics but I've come a cross a paper from the German Parliament about CFD Trading and Customer Protection. They asked the two biggest CFD brokers for how long a typical CFD account lasts. They said that accounts with 1-5k EURs are usually inactive after 0.5-1 year. Accounts with >5k Euros become inactive in 3 years...
XAU-XAG/USD_Gold n Silver Trader's Thread = Technicals, Fundamentals & News
  • #58
  • Edited 11:05pm Jul 9, 2010 10:35pm | Edited 11:05pm
The winning traders are
A. IN trades already. Or not in the market until price comes to their level buy or sell
B. Not trading 5 minutes scalper charts as newbies think that they can
C. Scalpers sold at that top and got short in the same click (not possible on MT4 or MM) scalping to buy lower, and sell at the next high again in a market like cable that backs and fills violently.
D. 20 pips is about an M5 candle on Cable. Set a 20 or 30 pip SL and you will lose all your money in a few days with poor entries. Look at H1 to see what this pair is capable of. For several days it has moved over 100 pips consistently. Sometimes 200 plus pips daily range.

Why not look for that setup? to gain 60 with a good entry you can risk 30 "at times"

Retail Forex does not move the market. We are maybe a 1 or 2 % share of a trillion dollar turn daily.

EDIT** 95 % of the FX market is not taking that trade if they were, the pair would tank into oblivion in a short time.

Quoting mike22
Here is some thoughts that come to mind mind as I trade and
watch the price action. Ok, lets just say that 5 minutes from now price will have moved down 20 pips on the GBPUSD. So, if 95% people trading are wrong that means, theoretically, that 95% of whoever trades the GBPUSD in the next five minutes will place losing trades. So, if those losing traders lost pips because they traded up and the price moved down how can you explain the price actually moving down? If 95% of the people are trading up and the other 5% are trading down then how do you...
XAU-XAG/USD_Gold n Silver Trader's Thread = Technicals, Fundamentals & News
  • #59
  • Jul 9, 2010 11:15pm Jul 9, 2010 11:15pm
A pure technician needs nothing but the candles and a grid.

Quoting TJPLD
lol I wonder where all my profits come frome when I don't pay attention
to fundamentals or indicators.

The 95% figure is quite accurate I would say.

There are no real statistics but I've come a cross a paper from the German Parliament about CFD Trading and Customer Protection. They asked the two biggest CFD brokers for how long a typical CFD account lasts. They said that accounts with 1-5k EURs are usually inactive after 0.5-1 year. Accounts with >5k Euros become inactive in 3 years on...
The road to pipland is arduous and fraught with challenge.
  • #60
  • Jul 11, 2010 8:11am Jul 11, 2010 8:11am
Quoting XTrade
The winning traders are
A. IN trades already. Or not in the market until price comes to their level buy or sell
B. Not trading 5 minutes scalper charts as newbies think that they can
C. Scalpers sold at that top and got short in the same click (not possible on MT4 or MM) scalping to buy lower, and sell at the next high again in a market like cable that backs and fills violently.
D. 20 pips is about an M5 candle on Cable. Set a 20 or 30 pip SL and you will lose all your money in a few days with poor entries. Look at H1 to see what this pair is capable...
XTrade... nice post. You offer up some good points and perspectives. Thanks.
0 traders viewing now