Hi Tradester,
Poor risk management is a major factor that prevents traders from being profitable. For example, the chart below shows the results of a data set of over 12 million real trades conducted by FXCM clients worldwide in 2009 and 2010. It shows the 15 most popular currency pairs that clients trade.
The blue bar shows the percentage of trades that ended with a profit for the client. Red shows the percentage of trades that ended in loss. For example, in EUR/USD, the most popular currency pair, FXCM clients in the sample were profitable on 59% of their trades, and lost on 41% of their trades.
So if traders tend to be right more than half the time, what are they doing wrong?
The above chart explains it. In blue, it shows the average number of pips traders earned on profitable trades. In red, it shows the average number of pips lost in losing trades. We can now clearly see why traders lose money despite being right more than half the time. They lose more money on their losing trades than they make on their winning trades.
Letâs use EUR/USD as an example. We know that EUR/USD trades were profitable 59% of the time, but trader losses on EUR/USD were an average of 127 pips while profits were only an average of 65 pips. While traders were correct more than half the time, they lost nearly twice as much on their losing trades as they won on winning trades losing money overall.
The track record for the volatile GBP/JPY pair was even worse. Traders were right an impressive 66% of the time in GBP/JPY â thatâs twice as many successful trades as unsuccessful ones. However, traders overall lost money in GBP/JPY because they made an average of only 52 pips on winning trades, while losing more than twice that â an average 122 pips â on losing trades.
That data above are from a
series of studies into trader profitability conducted by the analysts at DailyFX. I hope you'll find the information useful for your project.
Good hunting!
Jason