Why do 95 % of traders lose ?

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The most profitable traders I knew played with house money. Either they bought 50 or 100 cars (or more) and only did it maybe 1-2 times a day.

Trying to get rich over 1-4 lots is very, very, very hard. 5 lots is for serious traders, and 10 lots for people using their own money. 50 to 100 is real money.

one guy lost 3.5 million in a month from the same desk and they didn't fire him. now that is a good gig.
 
Quote from 50/50:

Something I have been wondering about for some time..

Can every, or most astute successful traders make lemonade from lemons?

Given 5 random time entries per day for the intraday trader, can most good traders be profitable at the end of 5 random entries?

You can pick long or short, but I pick the time of entry, and there will be 5 entries and exits by end of the day.

You can double up or double down, whatever, but you must place a long or short upon command, and be flat at end of day with a profit.

No matter how small, the object is to not lose money.

Is this possible for very good traders?
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It would be nothing more than gambling, but it could be done.
I would suggest that you could do it with money management.

Flip a coin for long or short or take the daily trend it shouldn’t matter.

When you enter, wait for a five minute candle to form. If the trades goes in your favor stay with the trade for another candlestick. If not scratch the trade. Keep a trailing stop on the trade until stopped out. The most you risk is one candle with a losing trade but you could see several candles form before your trailing stop is hit.

Give yourself a better set-up than having to enter at a specific time and you will increase the probability of success.

I doubt that you would be profitable at the end of every day but over a month you will more than likely show a profit.
 
Quote from oilfxpro:

Many traders use Junk science called technical anylysis.
This is another reason traders lose money , they bet on historic outcomes.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=248499
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Ok, I can't help it, this one is too easy to point out:

You've run a few journals on strategies based around TA, like your first one here:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110342

Even a few threads and posts talking about automated trading that was coded around TA.

Ok.. ok... most of that was a few years ago, but you did recently (2012 recently) want to hire a trading assistant who you'd teach to execute on patterns and technical analysis:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110342

You were going to have them trade your capital and even cover their losses, that's how confident you were in TA.


So now you're against TA and think it's part of why traders fail?

Little hard to believe such a successful trader would do a complete reversal of opinion (even going so far as to preach about it to others) after so many years of positive results by TA.

:P

Edit: Just pickin' on ya ;P The legitimacy of TA is always an interesting topic
 
Quote from Jack_Larkin:

Ok, I can't help it, this one is too easy to point out:

You've run a few journals on strategies based around TA, like your first one here:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110342

Even a few threads and posts talking about automated trading that was coded around TA.

Ok.. ok... most of that was a few years ago, but you did recently (2012 recently) want to hire a trading assistant who you'd teach to execute on patterns and technical analysis:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110342

You were going to have them trade your capital and even cover their losses, that's how confident you were in TA.


So now you're against TA and think it's part of why traders fail?

Little hard to believe such a successful trader would do a complete reversal of opinion (even going so far as to preach about it to others) after so many years of positive results by TA.

:P

Edit: Just pickin' on ya ;P The legitimacy of TA is always an interesting topic
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Thanks Jack - this is my beer and crisps post for the weekend. One of the funniest on ET :D
 
Quote from Xspurt:

Thanks Jack - this is my beer and crisps post for the weekend. One of the funniest on ET :D
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Mr Hindsight better.

How many traders would carry on being normal after two to three bad trading months?Would you be in the same mindset after losses?Would you carry on?
 
I lost for years.

Now I use a mechanical timer that helps me notice when strength is on the market, winning now!

google - RTT Market Timer
 
Quote from oilfxpro:

Mr Hindsight better.

How many traders would carry on being normal after two to three bad trading months?Would you be in the same mindset after losses?Would you carry on?
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It depends. Losses are normal part of trading business (and of any business really). If you understand your losses are normal event and nothing is wrong, why bother cause of them?

On the other side if your losses come from you violating your trading rules or something else going wrong, you've got the problem. Stop, take a break and think what exactly is going wrong.

Why do "bad" losses happen?
 
Well I don't really know what kind of criteria did they use to compile this statistics of 95% failure rate? How do they define as "fail" in trading? Closing account? Margin call? Making losses? Quit trading? Because all these three things have happened in about 100% of a trader's trading career at one point of another. So does that mean that the failure rate is 100%?! Most of the traders who have experienced this eventually bounce back and/or keep on trading after a certain period of time. Only a small % of traders actually quit trading permanently after one or all of those things happening to them. So the only % of traders who fail are the ones who quit trading permanently due to persistent losses and that's a very small proportion of the traders population because I wouldn't qualify a trader who quit trading for a while just to develop a better trading system and then came back and became a successful trader as a "failed" trader.

So maybe this 95% failure rate is the failure rate of traders at a GIVEN time? But that's an irrelevant and meaningless figure because at ANY given time, this is the failure rate for any investment instruments out there albeit stocks, bonds, mutual funds and etc. If you are able to poll any stocks, bonds, mutual funds at any given time, you will see that 95% of them is losing money and if they are subject to the same capital limitations as any individual traders, then they will also be subject to margin calls and account closing which would mean that 95% of them have "failed". So are the traders in the other investments necessarily better traders just because they can hide their losses behind their thick capital?

So in conclusion, is it fair to scrutinize on individual retail traders by slapping on a high "failure rate" just because their losses are more transparent and are exposed more swiftly? If taking all these into account, what is the REAL rate of failure among traders? Is it really as high as 95% as thought to be?
 
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