If someone reads the published figures which put the fraction of accounts being profitable in a given quarter in the 30-40% range, then you might be led to believe what service had to say. As I’ve written before, though, those stats can be really deceptive.
But then you have my findings on the trader success subject. 
Everyone loses money in this business. There is no doubt. We all have losses, I certainly still do and I do not expect that ever to change. The reason for this is that you cannot predict with 100% certainty what will happen next.
There is no problem with losing money, you just have to make sure that you’re losing less than your are winning (money that is). This sounds very easy but in actual fact is very hard. If you are prepared to do what’s necessary, you will get there in the end.
If you mean that 90% of traders lose as in they blow up their account, that’s a different thing. And I would say that sounds about right.
Trading can bring you immense riches, but like with everything, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
But no one ever said it was easy to become rich. you just gotta be prepared to do what most aren’t prepared to do. That’s the key IMO.
It is true the majority are losing money in the forex market but many are earning as well, the difference is only of attitude.
You can’t predict with 0.1% certainty - no one can :58:
All about probabilities!
A prediction is the same as an assumption, and as we know assumptions are the mother of all fu*k-ups
Frankly, I’ve never seen any official statistics to support that 90% losing traders claim. That said, the washout rate really is very, very high. Reaching the point where a trader’s consistently profitable requires a lot of time, education, training, effort, energy and money, and few people are able to go through all that and not give up on the idea.
Yeah, I’d love to see some actual stats saying that 90% of traders lose money. Everyone seems to say it as if it is a well known fact but I’ve never seen any real evidence of this. I do expect it to be true as I don’t know that many traders who actually make money
take a look here - it’s in black and white, search away! - I’m pretty sure we can assume futures markets will be akin to spot rate account.
My own guess would be that the proportion of futures traders who are profitable will be [I][U]significantly[/U][/I] higher than the proportion of spot forex traders … when you think about the comparisons between the effective entry-barriers to each, experience-level effectively required for each, etc. etc. So I’d think that far more forex traders will be losing money than futures traders. :33:
I’m not so sure about that, though it depends on how you judge and measure. I’ve seen research on stock market day traders - who in the US are required to have significantly more money - that show very comparable win rates as those for retail forex.
Yes, I see what you mean …
Again, one could say that stock traders are a different group of people, as the overlap with “investing” there is much higher than is the case with futures? I don’t know whether that’s true in America, though …
That’s why I specifically said stock market [I]day[/I] traders. No question of them being investors, really. The broader research on investors is that they underperform market bechmarks. But then so too do most professional money managers.
As for futures, it’s my understanding that the 95% failure rate often cited actually originally came from futures brokers. But you have to define what “failure” means.
One thing that has long worked against futures traders is the large fixed contract sizes. Soooooo easy to be undercapitalized. Yes, that’s gotten better with mini contracts, but those are still large for some traders. You don’t have the likes of OANDA where you can really customize your risk down to the penny.
Not that everyone uses that capacity wisely, of course. 
is it 90% now, during my time it was like 95%? lol and yes what kind of failure are we talking about…
Its around 90-95%, the majority keeps on failing after joining the forex market.
Yes maybe right, but although many trader fail and might losing huge money in forex, in fact they still trade and want to making money with forex business because many trader still having positive mindset if forex as online business to making money
From my understanding of that, it is not as if they are losers all the time, but painting a clear picture of what might result to loosing which affects more persons in forex than expected.
The main reason for the over 90% failure rate in Forex is the absolute deceptive nature of the market.
I traded (invested) stocks for over 10 years before starting Forex. The market does not use leverage, moves slower so losses can be contained quicker and positions are generally held for weekly or monthly periods. Forex is like shares on steroids, much more volatile and therefore larger losses can be generated in a significantly shorter time frame.
Stocks are also ~70% fundamentally driven and ~30% supported by technicals. Forex on the other hand is possibly the exact opposite with Price Action being the most successful strategy.
Price Action in FX is a must due to the absolute deceptive movement (by the insto’s) of the indicators, driving new Forex traders cash straight into their accounts.
When I first started to trade, I could not believe how often the the trades would go instantly negative (80%+) after placing a trade, you feel the need to trade in reverse of the direction that you see. This would also destroy a lot of newbie traders from the get go. Hence the need to learn price action as quickly as possible.
To be successful at FX you have to invest HUGE time to find your edge, strategy or system. Demoing or trading a small live account with micro lots. Most people would quit before they started if they knew how difficult it really can be.
The only real saving grace with FX compared with stocks is a lot less cash is required (leverage) trading FX as opposed to the larger sized positions required for the stock market. Most successful share traders are very dubious of the FX market.
Actually, the numbers I’ve seen suggest that active stock traders have a similar success/failure rate as forex traders. I’m talking here about folks in the short-term time frames. Since there really isn’t long-term investment in forex, it’s not really reasonable to compare it to stocks in that context.
I traded (invested) stocks for over 10 years before starting Forex. The market does not use leverage, moves slower so losses can be contained quicker and positions are generally held for weekly or monthly periods. Forex is like shares on steroids, much more volatile and therefore larger losses can be generated in a significantly shorter time frame.
Be careful characterizing forex as more volatile. Individual stock prices are generally much more volatile than exchange rates. For sure, the leverage used in forex can lead to the [I]performance[/I] of forex traders being much more volatile. And leverage is most certainly used in stocks. Mainly it’s day traders, but margin trading definitely happens. In fact, technically anyone who shorts a stock is using leverage.
Stocks are also ~70% fundamentally driven and ~30% supported by technicals. Forex on the other hand is possibly the exact opposite with Price Action being the most successful strategy.
I have a hard time agreeing with this - and I’ve traded both markets as well. In the long term fundamentals dominate both markets and in the short term fundamentals play a relatively minor role in both markets.
Hi Rhody, thanks for your reply.
Sorry should have clarified more. I traded the ASX (Aust.) which is no where near as volatile in comparison to the Dow. The whole trading experience was in slow motion… a large percentage of Stock Market “investors” are long term holders, 1, 3, 5, 10 years so the failure rate is no where near FX levels. Most active traders that are struggling to profit will transform into MT / LT holders.
No leverage and no ability to short with my stock broker yet was still able to quadruple my account over the 10 years.
In hindsight after now trading FX, it was like trading with both arms tied behind my back, but I didn’t know any better…
I invested in the nu-energy / mining sector ie: Lithium, Carbon, Zinc etc. (which have now collapsed) who’s stocks where 100% fundamentally driven… no news for months on end… price remains stagnate or edges down… positive news releases and price would jump 20 - 50% in a day.
Currency prices are moved (1m, 5m, 15m TF) by shear volume of money in the market.
FX is better (and worse) for its liquidity… prices are moving 24/5
Hi mate
My name is Martin
I’ve been trading for around 5 years now (Very successfully)
here’s what i can tell you
you are basically where i was around 5 years ago
so here’s the run down
THE STATISTICS SAY
"95% of all Traders will Lose ALL THEIR MONEY (Blow out their account) within 3 - 6 Months of opening the account "
and… Aint it the truth
Most people blow it out in a month or 2
further to this
of the 5% Remaining
73% of those remaining will be successful at forex and earn pretty good money
and the remainder 27% will Earn Bloody ridiculous amounts of money (in the Billions)
i put myself in the 73% Category at this stage
i don’t have a need to get to the 27% stage, i do not ever need that amount of money.
but… i digress
back to the point
is there truth to it… HELL YES mate
but you need to look at this more closely
let’s ask
WHY DO THE 95% LOSE ALL THEIR MONEY?
well. simple answer …
Because they are bloody stupid, that’s why
Most of them can be seen on those Binary Options you tube forums, asking stupid questions like
"I have $200, how can i use binary options to make $900 a day"
hehe… idiots
absolute idiots
so then the sharks come along and start phishing, because… (here’s a trade secret),
the sharks know they are stupid
and…Stupid enough to take the bait
and Forex is the same
if you have $200 in a trade account
and you just start off
and you figure 0.01 lots (which is 10 cents per pip) is not really doing it for you, because after 20 pips, that you worked your arse off for, you only get $2
these idiots ramp it up to 0.5 Lots (so… that’s $5 per pip) and after 20 pips that’s $100
sounds a bit better huh
so , they do that
but then the market turns on them
they have no Stop loss in place (let’s even say that it’s Non Farm Payroll that’s occurring) and the market spikes up 150 pips against them
now… 150 pips x $5 risk per pip - blown account , or ($750)
so even if they risked half, which would be 0.25 lots, they still don’t make it with $300 in the account
Basically newbies need to understand the following things
so… that’s why 99% of people lose
basically, they are stupid, Non Motivated and absolutely lazy to begin with
and want a **** load of money for no effort
to prove how dumb they are
they actually believe statements like
"here is a trading robot that you can use you make limitless amounts of cash with NO EXPERIENCE and NO PREVIOUS TRADING KNOWLEDGE and NO SCREEN TIME"
now tell me, what moron would believe this
i mean
if you want to be a mechanic and you want to fix a car, A NORMAL PERSON understands, you need to go to school and learn
and you’re not really going to get it until about 2 years time or so
and you’re not really going to be that good at until around the 5 year mark
so. why should Trading be any different
the only difference though is this
The car DOESN’T TRY TO BREAKDOWN ON YOU on purpose and stuff you up
the Markets however, DO hehe
so, that’s another thing you need to account for
the Markets are intentionally trying to take money from you
so then the final question is this
“if that’s true martin, then… wouldn’t that mean that no one can win”
No… it doesn’t mean that.
people can win at forex , ( I personally have ) so , that’s proof
but, the catch is this
the Markets understand that they need to GIVE in order for newbies to KEEP PLAYING.
Since the Markets do Give
it means
IF YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH YOU CAN TAKE , you’ll win
if you try to take too much…
THE MARKET MAKES AN EXAMPLE OF YOU AND WIPES THE FLOOR WITH YOUR ACCOUNT AND PUTS YOU IN YOUR PLACE and makes you feel soooo low that you don’t dare make that mistake again
that’s why a lot of people lose
but… the Majority of people in the market, are the people who think they can get rich quick,
that’s why the figure is so high
be cool
I can only concur with this sentiment: it has long struck me that a plethora of aspiring traders really have far too many latrines. 