Why 99% of traders lose money

First of all let me qualify, I'm not a FX trader, I trade interest rate futures professionally at a large firm so take what you will from this.

This is what I preach to my guys: forget PnL (obviously still manage your risk and what you can afford to lose, i'm referring to profit goals), especially daily pnl goals when you're starting out. Its crazy to do so and i'll explain why.

1. If you were taking up a sport, pool for example (sorry this is the only sport I have some knowledge of), you don't start by going to a pool hall and start doing cash games. You train, deliberately practice your skill, you do some shooting drills, shape drills etc. Now in between these training session maybe you have a casual match at the local hall, but most likely you'd get destroyed. You would however look at that match and learn from it and be better next time. You're not concerning yourself about how to win yet. The same is for trading, the first year or two your main goal is about learning and improving your skill. Now unfortunately there's no practice ground for trading as demo trading does not allow you to develop emotional skills necessary for trading but you can limit your losses to very small.

2. Your PnL goals should at the very least be monthly, I personally use quarterly. Having daily pnl's can both make you 'chase' a target when the opportunity is not there or stop once you've reached your arbitrary target. Trading is about spotting opportunities (edge if you will) and taking full advantage of it, the market isn't some orderly system that gives out a specific number of opportunities a day. My month often comes down to several big days.

Can someone please explain how PIPS move up or down?

its a complicated question to answer , there is no one in this trading place who can predict the pips in this market place with certainly.

some discord i have , the traders who are real professional in Forex trading they can calculate the pips , but not for all time.

Thanks AdamCrist, I was asking what makes a pip to move?
My understanding is the pips moves high (long) when buyers able to find sellers. If there are no sellers above a price point then the “long” movement is stopped. Vice versa for short trade. What I don’t understand is when the price is not reaching the pending order (live account). For example, even though pending sell order is there the buy is not happening. The price reverses and moves down. This is confusing. Hence the question.

Even there is sell and buy orders (Take profit, stop loss or pending orders) above or below a price point, why the market reverses without filling the order? If we don’t understand why? Obviously, we will lose.

More official data came out of Australia, connected to the number of people losing money. According to the report of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) for the first half of this year, there is a a troubling rise in investment scams. The report reveals that Australians are collectively losing $4.3 million a month to scams in the sphere of cryptocurrency, binary options trading, as well as traditional investment markets like stocks, real estate and commodities.

Furthermore, the Scamwatch report shows that more than $26 million has been lost to investment frauds in 2018 in Australia, which is 84% of the total losses recorded in 2017. This represents an average month on month increase of 117 % in losses compared to last year.

Think in terms in percentage returns (and drawdown)

Never ever set/force monetary profit targets. One shouldn't force profits if one's trading performance happens to go down for whatever reason.

Having losing days/weeks/months is possible in good trader's trading career, it happens once in a while even to professional traders!

Be realistic and practical.

99 % lose due to the enemy within, there are 10,000 free systems , systems work.

Sometimes when making losses , we can’t control the emotions and frustration , but it is more important to ensure cool mind after having a loss , generally we try to take revenge from here by over trading and become loser ultimately. So, don’t try to take revenge from this stock market.

yes true fact , but without losing money there is no way to be a good trader. but don't trade over , its a part of immaturity.

I don't know where you got your 99% losers figure from, the stat I have heard several times is that 1 in 4 day traders make consistent profits, so; 75% losers. I play a mean hand of poker so I figure it's worth a shot.

My plan is to get a duel degree in finance and economics part time while play stay at home dad to my new family and try to make gas and drinks money from trading a few different markets in my spare time.

That sounds like a plan to me.

yes same question , the accurate percentage of losing may be 90% not 99% at all.

percentage is not a big deal , the deal is mostly are loser from here due to lack of exact trading knowledge . and the successful percentage is very minor according to loser.

The actual number is about 80% lose. You just need to look at the latest esma report of brokers showing winning and losing customers.

Yes, good point EcoTrader!

These figures just go to show that the "99% lose" nonsense we've had preached to us for years is a massive red herring!

Compare these figures to e.g. starting a successful new business, getting into a top university, bench-pressing your own weight i.e. any difficult endeavour, and you can see that becoming a profitable trader is certainly possible for those with the right psychological make-up and those willing to work hard at it.

Human beings are crap, in a hurry to blame anyone but themselves. Most people on this forum already know what to do to make money in the markets but the majority sabotage their efforts. It may be a bit harsh and I really do love people, but one only has to look around and see all the overweight miserable people around. They all know deep down what they need to do to get in shape but they choose not to do it (for lots of valid reasons).

Same with losing traders. Odds of 20% is pretty good compared to other difficult things in life. If you have ever done something difficult and ended up in the top 20%, then in theory you can be a successful trader.

Go for it and quit finding excuses. YOU are the reason you haven't succeeded up until now.

thanks for your nice reply.

95 % lose threads on every forum, here they go as far as 99% lose which is probably true.

There is no smoke without fire!Why would they discuss 99% and become history.

95% or 99% , it’s not a big deal , by means of this statistic we the traders can predict most of the traders are loser from this stock market.

Unfortunately, everything is guilty of human greed ...