80% of traders lose money in the stock market?

What percentage of traders can be profitable?

  • 20%

    Votes: 13 34.2%
  • 30%

    Votes: 5 13.2%
  • 40%

    Votes: 1 2.6%
  • 50%

    Votes: 1 2.6%
  • 60%

    Votes: 3 7.9%
  • You specify

    Votes: 15 39.5%

  • Total voters
    38

MainCycleV

Junior member
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It seems to me that many traders in the Trade2win forums are too optimistic. They think it is easy to make money here. I donot think it is true.

What percentage of traders do you think can be profitable for a long period?

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

You specify
 
I browsed many threads and posts, it seemed to me that many people thought it was easy to make money in the stock markt. it is not a complete statistic report, it is just my feeling. Maybe it is wrong.

maybe you're right from your observations. though my thoughts on the general board consensus was that it was as low as 5% or less long term success, though broker data posted to the board puts the consensus higher than that. lets see how your poll goes :)
 
5% is still probably generous. The original question was : How man can be profitable. Probably 100% can be. The stock market couldn't work this way of course. How many will be? How many have the determination to learn a language or stop smoking or loose weight? Probably everyone can. But they don't.

Not everyone trades to be profitable in the long run. They are happy to make a couple trades a year and keep their day job. For those that take up tradeing as a full time job or primary source of income... I'll say 5% because I'm an optimist.
 
Thank you, Dogged and Lightening Q. You two are practical. Someone sounds like he is Warren Buffet, George Soros, Jesse Livermore...
 
It seems to me that many traders in the Trade2win forums are too optimistic. They think it is easy to make money here. I donot think it is true.

Do you have something better to do to waste your time? Why do you care anyway? Try to be in the 20% that wins. In every business area, whether it is restaurant, shop, or any other business, 80% eventually close down.

So what's new?
 
Do you have something better to do to waste your time? Why do you care anyway? Try to be in the 20% that wins. In every business area, whether it is restaurant, shop, or any other business, 80% eventually close down.

So what's new?

Why should we be so indifferent? If we see someone is falling into water, we should give a hand to help him/her out. Of course, maybe they are right, it is me who is wrong.

Thanks for your good view, though.
 
Is this the same 80% that lost the last time?

Thats a very good point. I read somewhere that if you took a snapshot of all accounts at a given time then indeed 20% or similar would be in profit. However this is misleading because they may not remain in profit. So you initial 20% could go on to lose money by the end of the year.
 
The loosing businesses is also more like 90% over a 5 year period. They fail for the same reasons. Lack of funding, no or poor business plan, bad location. Rarely is it just bad luck but that does happen. I've always thought it important to see what are the 95% doing wrong and what are the 5% doing right. Its amazing how each group is doing things nearly identically to its other members.
 
The loosing businesses is also more like 90% over a 5 year period. They fail for the same reasons. Lack of funding, no or poor business plan, bad location. Rarely is it just bad luck but that does happen. I've always thought it important to see what are the 95% doing wrong and what are the 5% doing right. Its amazing how each group is doing things nearly identically to its other members.

It's "losing" for f.sake:eek:

"Loose" as used in "loose" floorboard.:smart:

First "smut" appears on this site; closely followed by illiteracy:rolleyes:
I suppose the next thing to appear will be requests for "systems" that work; or anything that does not require time and intellectual effort - oh !:(

Pah !:cry:
 
It's "losing" for f.sake:eek:

"Loose" as used in "loose" floorboard.:smart:

First "smut" appears on this site; closely followed by illiteracy:rolleyes:
I suppose the next thing to appear will be requests for "systems" that work; or anything that does not require time and intellectual effort - oh !:(

Pah !:cry:

Well if anyone asks here's one of those 'just 10 minutes a day' systems. I didnt bother with it myself as its too much work for me. I prefer to use my millionaire club secret forex robot on autopilot. It never loses, or looses.

http://www.forexmorningtrade.com/#
 
It's "losing" for f.sake:eek:

"Loose" as used in "loose" floorboard.:smart:

First "smut" appears on this site; closely followed by illiteracy:rolleyes:
I suppose the next thing to appear will be requests for "systems" that work; or anything that does not require time and intellectual effort - oh !:(

Pah !:cry:

Oops, I was just going to ask that :eek:
Maybe I should find another forum that will give me answers so I will not loose my money.

Peter
 
It's "losing" for f.sake:eek:

"Loose" as used in "loose" floorboard.:smart:

First "smut" appears on this site; closely followed by illiteracy:rolleyes:
I suppose the next thing to appear will be requests for "systems" that work; or anything that does not require time and intellectual effort - oh !:(

Pah !:cry:

Does trading addiction cause one to lose women or gain
loose women?
 
As I've said I consider trading to be an abstraction from the normal economic processes of society, it is purely speculative so the rewards reaped will necessarily be hard won, traders are basically placing loads of bets on stuff; no efficient society would reward them, as a class, massively. This is not to say there aren't very wealthy traders, obviously there are, but there are not that many of them, there simply can't be if society is to function. To be an effective trader you need an edge that only you are privvy to. Or you need massive balls and a big bankroll so you can double down or put money on 10 to 1 bets.

I don't understand people who just jump into trading with a certain sum of money and a target like, "I want to make 3% a week and quit my job in 3 years :cheesy:"; no offence but I really can't get my head round such a childish mentality. Why not focus on finding a niche in the market, something you can trade profitably day after day, do it with small sums (or on a sim, although sims don't provide a real picture of certain technical features of the marketplace, slippage, execution lags etc). When you have a strategy that gives you 3% a week (or whatever your target is) then pour your money into it and watch your wealth grow, but don't expect anyone to hand you the strategy on a platter.

As to what percentage of market participants are seriously profitable (by which I meant they derive a steady income which exceeds £50,000 a year from it) over the long term, I don't know but I'm guessing it is less than 10%. You probably can eek a living out of the market without having a terribly original trading strategy, but for the money you'll make you may as well spend your days saying, "Any fries with that". And aside from the perks of being able to work from home in your pajamas and tell everyone you meet you're a trader I don't see the point.

I can't see myself wanting to become a full time trader for less than £3,000 a week (and making a steady £3,000 a week trading from home will require me to see something no other market participants have clocked, which I don't see happening without very dedicated work on my part for a fairly long period of time). If I can't make that I had may as well be a lawyer, which is what my degree will equip me for anyway, or a property developer or a scrap metal merchant for that matter; there's a much greater chance of making serious money in any of those areas, obviously the potential reward from trading exceeds the potential rewards you can get by being a barrister or a scrap dealer but there are, proportionately, more wealthy barristers and scrapmen than there are wealthy amateur traders.

P.S. £3,000 a week may sound like a lot but with the effort you would have to put into developing a profitable strategy you would be getting stiffed if you were making less than that once you actually got around to putting your plan into action.
 
It seems to me that many traders in the Trade2win forums are too optimistic. They think it is easy to make money here. I donot think it is true.

In defence of my T2W brethren I respectfully disagree. They don't think it's easy to make money, at least none of them who have actually traded think it's easy. The fact that most of them don't make considerable sums of money proves they aren't labouring under false optimism.

I have yet to be pointed in the direction of anyone who is making £5,000 or £10,000 a week, at least not without assuming huge risk and going bust eventually. So I'm guessing such people are very rare or they don't frequent T2W.

And even if people on here are taking home what are apparently large sums of money think about the hours put in on a daily basis (reading every news report about every little thing, talking to brokers, monitoring the prices of loads of different securities etc) and the many financially painful years they inevitably spent becoming profitable and their adjusted hourly rate is probably not terribly competitive. I think trading is a labour of love for most people on here, at least for the ones who stick around and don't move onto the next little hobby.
 
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