Why do I keep losing money trading? The causes that repeat for most beginners

You are not alone - and the numbers are published

If you have been losing for months and think the problem is yours alone, the figures say otherwise. Regulated brokers in Europe must state on their website the percentage of client accounts that lose money. It usually sits between 70% and 80%, depending on the broker.

That does not mean trading is impossible. It means that what a beginner does by default - without a plan and without measuring - is exactly what loses. The good news is that the causes are few and they repeat, and most have nothing to do with forecasting.

Cause one: the position is bigger than the account can bear

Losses are not symmetrical. Lose 10% of your account and you need a 11% gain to get back. Lose 50% and you need 100%. The bigger the loss, the further the way back is than the way down.

That is why a professional starts from the question: how much do I lose if I am wrong? - not: how much do I make if I am right? The common rule is to risk a small share of the account per trade, 1% to 2%, so you can survive a long run of mistakes without the account collapsing.

This site has two calculators for exactly this: the stop loss calculator sizes a position from a risk percentage, and the recovery calculator shows what gain you need after any loss.

Cause two: no written plan before entry

Whoever enters a trade without knowing where to exit if wrong will decide to exit from inside the loss - the worst emotional state there is.

The plan does not need to be complicated. Three lines, written before pressing the button:

• Why am I entering? (the reason in one sentence)
• Where do I exit if I am wrong? (the stop loss price)
• How much do I lose if the stop is hit? (in money, not in points)

If you cannot answer all three, you do not have a trade yet.

Cause three: moving the stop and chasing losses back

A stop that is moved away as price approaches it is no longer a stop. It is hope wrapped in a price.

And the next trade opened to win back the previous loss is opened bigger and with a worse decision. Traders call it "revenge on the market", and the market does not know you exist.

Both come from the same place: decisions made from feeling, not from the plan. A sharper forecast does not cure it. A written rule that is not edited during the trade does.

Cause four: too many trades quietly eat the account

Every trade starts with a small loss: the spread between the buy and the sell price, and sometimes a commission on top. It looks tiny, but it is paid every time, whether you win or lose.

Someone who opens twenty trades a day pays that cost twenty times and has to win more just to break even. Which is why fewer trades is often not laziness - it is arithmetic.

Cause five: nobody measures

Most people who lose do not know why. They remember the last trade and not the hundred before it. Whoever does not record their trades cannot tell whether the problem is in the entry, the exit, or the size.

Record for every trade: the reason, the size, the stop, the result, and what you felt. After thirty trades a pattern appears that you cannot see now.

What you can do from tomorrow

• Reduce the position size until the maximum loss on it is 1% of the account.
• Write the three lines before every trade, and if you have not written them, do not enter.
• Never move the stop in the direction of the loss.
• Trade less, and work out the cost of the spread over a whole month.
• Record everything, and review the record every week, not every day.
• Test any change on a demo account before applying it with real money.

In short

• Most individual trading accounts lose, and the figures are published by the brokers.
• The recurring causes: a large size, no plan, a stop that gets moved, too many trades, no measuring.
• All of them can be changed, and none requires you to forecast the market any better.

Which is why everything that happens in the account is published on this site as it happened, winners and losers, because the full record is the only way the truth gets known. It makes no recommendations, and it promises no result.