The real reason that most traders lose is that they have a false idea of the nature of markets. They take trading advice from brokers and Wall Street, but that advice serves the interests of brokers and Wall Street, not the independent trader's interests.
Many people think that the traders at Goldman are smarter and better. They may be smarter, but they obviously are not, in general, very good. If they were, they wouldn't have to rely on you and I to bale out AIG so that Goldman could be made whole. If they were, they wouldn't have to trade against their own clients. If they were, they wouldn't have to manipulate the market using their in-house analysts. (And I could go on with the many unsavory aspects of Wall Street IB's, but you get the idea.)
You broker advises you to use stops to control risk, then either holds your stop orders on their servers where they can either send them to the exchange later or internalize the order. They know where each client has their stop. They know approximately how much buying or selling will be required to reach them, and if they internalize them, these stop orders become easy pickings during low volume periods. It is more or less as difficult as taking candy from a baby.
Your broker also advises you to day trade; slowly grinding your account away while generating huge profits in commissions for your broker at your expense.
Your broker gets some economic data releases before you do, sometimes well before.
If your brokerage firm is large, it will spend millions promoting trading and "investing". Constantly fishing for new clients to replace those who have gotten discouraged at their prospects for easy riches. They will specialize in educating the new trader, but the education furnished will be in the brokers interests, not the clients.
If you want to make money trading in the U.S. markets you must start by understanding the nature of U.S. markets, and then rely on your own technical analysis and never use stops that are easily hit. You must not be under capitalized, and you must learn how to defend a position as well as how to minimize losses and when to take them. And above all, you must learn to be very patient in choosing entries and exits.
There are many different styles and ways of trading that can make money, but they all require that the trader have a correct understanding of the nature of the market they are trading.
