In all seriousness, this is about the best write-up I have yet seen anywhere concerning the “short life of a Newbie trader”. A link to this post should be posted automatically after every new trader’s introduction post - it would probably save them years of wasted time and a lot of wasted money.
There are at least 3 simultaneous threads on this site that discuss why 90-95% of retail traders lose. Its all here, this post gives all the answers in one big nutshell.
Brilliant! Brilliantly written, brilliantly constructed and obviously written with sincerity and a lot of personal experience.
I would think that any trader will be able to identify with at least part of those stages if not all of them!
So, one might think, why should [I]anyone [/I]trade if it is not possible to gain?
Well for one thing, although the post describes many stages along the trader development route and the pitfalls that may occur (and often, no usually, do), it stops there. It does not describe actually [I]learning [/I]from those stages. It just describes a process of “oh, that didn’t work, what shall I try next”. It entirely omits at every stage the application of the main tool that every trader needs to use that is situated approximately between, and slightly above, the left and right ear lobes.
It also only deals with extremes like jumping from scalping to 1:10 risk/reward position trading, for example:
[I]“You learn about risk reward, and how you only need to be right once every 10 trades to make profit”[/I]
There is a whole world between 1:1 and 1:10
But the OP does not explain why he thinks R/R always fails, he just concludes with,[I] “You go back, and fail again, so you return to learning” [/I] - that is one [I]huge [/I]generalisation and assumption!
But this is a serious read for ANY new trader. Read and be warned - and if you take away [I]anything [/I]from it, let it be this: [I]Learn [/I]from your journey, [I]learn [/I]your instrument , use your brain - it is what every successful professional does in every other field - why would you think that forex is any different.
Edited to add:
In a curious, double negative, kind of way, it is intriguing to ponder that if over 90% of traders lose, then if they all did a mirror image of their own trading then they would be over 90% successful. I have even seen at least one trader ask in exasperation how could he find a broker that would automatically [I]always [/I]fill his orders in the [I]opposite [/I]direction, but without him actually knowing it himself, otherwise he would automatically take that into account as well and still lose!
But the intrigue here is that, in theory, it actually [I]would [/I]work. In which case it significantly changes the target area where the problem lies.
The OP builds his case on the argument that it is the market itself that prevents a trader making money because it is untradeable due to its pseudo-random characteristics. But the fact that if 90+% traders actually traded in the opposite direction to their actual trades then they would have profited suggests powerfully (IMHO) that the problem lies in the trader and not the market - that is a crucial issue - and why we still have bumble bees…