So if 90-95% of traders are losing money why do we still trade?

Robo trades
I don’t know how to use these sites, but they seem quite valuable.This Laughing Charlie’s advise was really spot on in every area. I have never found a US broker that is ethical as far as trading against their clients. I finally connected up with Finviz in Finland and they legitimately make their money on trading volume. But as soon as I got going they were forced out of the US market. They sent us over to Tallinex who was also soon forced out. I have no idea what is going on in these cases. Tallinex transferred me to Capital City Markets and they are really good also.
I have found out I only became successful when I learned principles that went contrary to “Accepted wisdom”. Like every thing else unless you know something unique many ideas will ruin you. Is it true that picking tops and bottoms will ruin you? Sure, unless you know what your doing! Trading Forex will ruin you unless you know what your doing.

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The most basic answer to the original question is that we all hope we’ll be part of those 5% that do make money. We strive, we hope, we work toward it, but we don’t always succceed.

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Well said.

I think its important to remember that even the top 5% of traders had to take their losses and pay their dues.

Failure is only truly failure when its accepted as final. Temporary failure doesnt mean you have failed. It means your on your way. Its the price we all have to pay for success.

Keep going without accepting temporary failure as final, and eventually you will succeed.

Good luck and happy trading to everyone.

The people who are losing in this business due to lack of knowledge, experience and interest, forex is good and lucrative business but also risky and tough. Only few are getting success who are performing this business after having good knowledge and interest.

In general it’s newbies who lose money. Trade because you still end up in the profit. If the traders were to see that with forex money is only lossing then such a trader won’t even try trading.

It occurred to me to ask you why you still trade, robotrades?
I mean, I did say why I still trade, but since you are here and interested in trading you surely have your reasons too. Will you share them?

Those who have decided to stay on forex seem to be certain of their powers or are ambitios people. For others there’s nothing to do on forex without those qualities.

I trade because I like it and it’s fun haha and yes who wouldn’t want to become rich from it haha personally my plan is to keep some of my profits to go to building my account from my winning trades and a % to go in to a charity pot of a few charity’s I like.

I guess I don’t have the normal out look on trading but it would be good to get it up to level where it was like a second income but not something I need to depend on if that makes sense but if my account was much bigger then my charity pot would be bigger :slight_smile:

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I think most people get into trading naive and you only stay in if you are gutsy enough to take a few punches. People with guts, tend to believe they can beat the odds, 90 - 95% quit. The ones who do not, are not quitters.

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Good Question and actually quite a worthwhile one at that. It isnt so much a case of a hard division line between those that are in the 95% and those that are in the 5%, but maybe more along the lines of a math problem that has been handed out. maybe initially only 1% of students get it right. Then you take the same or similar tests every single day. some students study a bit more and pass. Some students refuse to learn - or learn the wrong stuff or whatever. After a week or a month or 5 years 5% of students pass the test or any equivalent problem… and so in this way - those that learn and correct their bad habits and gain years of experience gradually become part of the 5% (and of course it may not really be 5% but that just seems like a nice number to use).
Some traders mean well - but find themselves continually trading against the trend or trading too much or trading more to recover an earlier loss, and so they end up in the 95%, and then try and learn to stop the bad habits.
Yes of course all traders think they will not be part of the 95% and that’s fine, learn from your mistakes, but you will continually remain in the 95% if you continually feel the need to touch a hot stove to find out if its hot. You may not get burned today, or tomorrow, but you will get burned.

Another aspect which may or may not be true, but is worth considering is the strategy. It is very unlikely, that coming into forex trading, and studying it and practicing demo for months, that you are going to develop or stumble on a wonderful strategy, a holy grail, and hence rely heavily on what you believe you have found. But this may very well be true for a few select traders. Maybe the truth lies something closer to the fact that you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, how strategies may work or fail and use them as appropriate. But most of all … stop doing a few key bad habits and you will start having an improved level of success. Apply a few good habits and your success improves a bit more. I am not sure if all the successful traders (and I mean successful for years and years ) regard themselves as always learning. I am not sure if they reach a point where they just trade without anymore learning, but certainly I would imagine that you can only gain by learning long term.

I trade because i’m greedy and ambitious. Maybe i have inferiority complex. I really don’t know. I just want to achieve financial freedom. So that i may have more time with my loved ones and give them a good life?

People who are successful have 2 attribute.

  1. They got lucky.
  2. They are not afraid to die trying.
    Those who succeed are those that who didn’t die in the process.

Risk management is essential but too subjective to be quantify
Risk management may be an illusion. I’m not too sure.

Risk reward ratio are different for different win loss ratio.
Get the combo right you make money.
Get the combo wrong be prepared to die and WILL yourself back to life.

I don’t think that the 90 to 95 percent ratio is completely correct. You can look on Interactive Brokers website and find out how many of their retail traders are making money quarter to quarter. I think when I have looked at it in the past, it has been about 40 percent that were making money. Now, these are the more serious traders that have 10000 dollar or more accounts. There are so many casinos out there. They are designed such that you will lose. Yet, people go to them. It makes no sense to me, but I guess it is just a cost of entertainment for some people. The reality is that you can make money consistently trading. It can take a lot of time to start doing it. Think of it this way. If you feel like you are trading like you are a master card counter at the casino, (which will get you kicked out of the casino), you are probably doing something right trading. If you feel like you are trading like you are high stakes gambling at the roulette wheel, then, you should probably go down to the casino and just give them your money as an entertainment cost.

these are well funded, experienced traders, way above average

this figure does not apply to normal retail brokers at all

Interactive Brokers is a different market and a different kind of market completely, those are traders in the interbank market

“So if 90-95% of traders are losing money why do we still trade?”

Because 5-10% make money.

Agreed. My point was that traders can make money trading. The more knowledgeable traders with a decent amount of capital who become serious about trading have a much higher probability of making money trading.

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yes, i agree

they are a tiny minority, tho - unfortunately, so the success rates are very low

Not helped by the fact that most ‘new’ interested retail traders are plain lazy, under capitalized, inexperienced, don’t understand basic statistics, can’t manage data sets in databases, can’t think logically and rationally and to top it all off are emotionally unstable with not enough free time to even consider learning enough to become successful.

It’s actually cringeworthy reading some of the questions here which essentially shout from the rooftops “I don’t have what it takes, but hey I’ll give it a go” - and then you have the opposite side of the same coin; reading hyped up BS statements from apparent professionals who are actually being pretentious vendors.

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Your English much better than mine, but you speak for me also, thank you

this is not how i remember the Babypips forum from long ago when i was here, things changed a lot and not for better unfortunately

That’s the general consensus of opinion, for sure.

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To be fair it’s not much different in ET, either.

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