Why do 95 % of traders lose ?

Status
Not open for further replies.
a few reasons why most aspiring traders fail:

#1: assume it is easy, like mastering a game
#2: assume they will make money quickly
#3: assume they must make money every day
#4: desire to compete with others
#5: desire to "prove themselves"
#6: assume everything needed to know is available free
#7: assume highly successful traders post live calls in message boards
#8: assume they must master one market or symbol, period
#9: assume they must know where market tops and bottoms are

#10: most failed traders try to logic, reason or figure out which way the market is going from every bar on the chart, every second of every minute on the clock.

Successful traders do the exact opposite of all those natural human-behavior failures. Very simple :)
 
I do not agree with #1. trading is easy, enter hold and out. just like weight loss, diet and exercise, but how many people will follow!

#2, i should correct it. people bring in money concept into trading, how can they follow trading plan objectively?

#3, the same. if I want to make a certain amonut of money in a day, just like NOdoji, $400/day, take a regular job, no risk, even with lots of other benefits, like social support, .... trading is not a regular job. you can make millions in matter of days, if not like that, better take a certain regular job.

#4, the ego is the enemy. but it is good too. it drives you to do better. all depends on how you use it.

#5, the ego problem.

#6, do not understand the market. be openminded,any thing can happen in the market

#7, serious traders will not do that. it is a business.

#8, I do not agree. based on foucs rule, most people do the opposite, they try to master everything, trade any thing. most people even told some setup proven to be profitable, but they goof around for others.

#9, do not buy it. bottom and top is easy to spot. most people wait when they see a bottom, they want to buy it there, of course they can not get in, and end up, they chase the market to the top and buy.

#10, logic on every tick is riduculous. the problem is here most people have a small account. that is why they pay particular attention to those little moves. in order to conquer this problem, do some good trades and move up. or trade size insignificant to those little noise. take an example of future crude, 300bucks move is noise to many $50k account, but to a $3k account, it is a huge move, %10. they do not kown what suits them.

logic is good. you need it to figure out the inbalance of buyers and sellers or what they are thinking (try to break through, or bounce, ...)







Quote from austinp:

a few reasons why most aspiring traders fail:

#1: assume it is easy, like mastering a game
#2: assume they will make money quickly
#3: assume they must make money every day
#4: desire to compete with others
#5: desire to "prove themselves"
#6: assume everything needed to know is available free
#7: assume highly successful traders post live calls in message boards
#8: assume they must master one market or symbol, period
#9: assume they must know where market tops and bottoms are

#10: most failed traders try to logic, reason or figure out which way the market is going from every bar on the chart, every second of every minute on the clock.

Successful traders do the exact opposite of all those natural human-behavior failures. Very simple :)
More...
 
There's a long pop up on my IB account today when I try to open it, among the information is the following :

PERFORMANCE OF INTERACTIVE BROKERS RETAIL CUSTOMER FOREX ACCOUNTS FOR PAST FOUR CALENDAR QUARTERS:
The table below sets forth the percentage of non-discretionary retail forex customer accounts maintained by Interactive Brokers LLC that were profitable and unprofitable for the past four calendar quarters. The accounts were identified and these statistics were calculated according to the definitions and interpretations set forth by the CFTC and NFA1.
TIME PERIOD NUMBER OF ACCOUNTS PERCENTAGE OF PROFITABLE ACCOUNTS PERCENTAGE OF UNPROFITABLE ACCOUNTS
Q4 2011 45053 51.0% 49.0%
Q3 2011 45058 51.2% 48.8%
Q2 2011 41651 38.8% 61.2%
Q1 2011 40370 40.4% 59.6%
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS.


It looks much better than 5% winners, yet why are they considering only non discretionary forex customers (does that mean only automated ones ? )
 
Quote from emg:

Here is an interesting article from prestige school University of California, Berkeley (HIGHER EDUCATION) did a study traders just lose.


http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day Traders/Day Trading Skill 110523.pdf




On average, individual investors lose money from trading. Barber and Odean
(2000) document that the majority of losses incurred at one large discount broker in the
United States can be traced to trading costs. However, trading costs are not the whole
story. On average, individual investors have perverse security selection abilities; they buy
stocks that earn subpar returns and sell stocks that earn strong returns (Odean (1999)). In
aggregate, the losses of individuals are material. Barber, Lee, Liu, and Odean (BLLO,
2009), using complete transaction data for the Taiwan market from 1995 to 1999,
document that the aggregate losses of individual investors exceed two percent of annual
Gross Domestic Product in Taiwan.
Recent



Recent research documents that a host of variables (e.g., IQ, cognitive abilities,
geography, portfolio concentration, age, and past performance) reliably predict crosssectional
variation in performance.1 But even the most skilled stock pickers in these
studies are unable to deliver a return that covers a reasonable accounting for transaction
costs. Thus, it remains an open question whether some individual investors can profit
from speculative trading.
More...

Quote from emg:

I always believe that paying higher commisison to your broker, which I' am, for getting the best service will help u trade successful. Unfortunately, I notice many small traders in ET haggle lower commission which i think ridiculous

http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day Traders/Day Trading Skill 110523.pdf

Finally, day traders incur
substantial trading costs and receive quick feedback about their trading ability. It is
among this group that we are most likely to identify persistently good traders.



another quote from the article:

Two points are worth emphasizing in these results. First, the spread in returns
between the top and bottom performing investors at 67 bps per day is enormous when
compared to most other studies of cross-sectional ability in investor performance. For
example, using data from Finland, Grinblatt, Keloharju, and Linnainmaa (2010)
document that the buys of high IQ investors outperform those of low IQ investors by 4.4
bps per day in the days immediately following the purchase. Using data from a large U.S.
discount broker,





HIGHER EDUCATION is the key to become a successful trader.

Higher Education
More...
 
Quote from zedDoubleNaught:

I saw that movie -- "Idiotocracy". They get some guy of average height, weight, IQ, career, age, hair color, personality traits, pets, hobbies, etc, and choose him to be the volunteer for an experiment to send him into the future. By then, the average IQ has sunk from today's 100 to today's 50 (or something very low). This leads them to declare he is the smartest human that ever lived, and then all his problems start ... was kind of a funny movie.
More...

It was called "Idiocracy".
It wasn't just a fun comedy, there was a lot of truth in it. The correlation between a very high number of children and low IQ has been established, it's a scary reality. I guess we really do need more wars in that sense :)
People also thought Orwell's 1984 was science fiction. Well, we are living it now.
 
"The correlation between a very high number of children and low IQ has been established."
it doesn't seem to affect mormons or hasidic children.
 
Quote from zdreg:

"The correlation between a very high number of children and low IQ has been established."
it doesn't seem to affect mormons or hasidic children.
More...
I quit having kids about 30 years ago, and I've noticed since then I have gotten a lot smarter.
 
Quote from luisHK:

I was surprised to read this, but a google search came with several links, starting with :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence
More...
yes, it's a survival mechanism. Same thing with body weight, skinny people are more fertile.

But there is a difference between being fertile and having kids.

They need to do a study and see if people in China have become more intelligent since they implemented their "one child" policy.

You could also make a case for abortion. Get pregnant, get an abortion, get intelligent.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top