Why Knowledgeable Traders Lose MoneyI've been trading for 20+ years and I believe I have almost seen it all. I've had big winning trades, and huge losses. Some of my biggest wins came when I was a beginner aka fomo trader, and my biggest losses came when I become more knowledgeable of the market. My most consistent trading came in my latter years when I gained experience and felt real pain, and I would like to share what I observed. I believe most retail traders naturally follow the same path if they stay solvent and interested enough to stick through it.
1. Beginner trader (1st year trading) : These traders generally tend to be profitable. You can call it beginners luck, but it's what gets most people to learn more about trading and put them into the 2nd class of traders (knowledgeable traders), which are the losers in the market. You can recognize a beginner trader as they believe in generalities. Those who believe "stonks only go up bro", yes they likely outperform you. It's only a matter of time before they don't, but this is where they get their confidence to invest more.
2. Knowledgeable trader : I believe most Tradingview users fall into this category. They likely had some great luck starting out by fomoing into a stock that was in an uptrend which made them want to learn more about trading, and with this newfound knowledge and tools like Tradingview they can't figure out why they are consistently losing money. They theorize in the back of their mind that the more they learned, the more they lost, and they are correct, but it's hard to accept this realization. The frustration they feel only leads to further losses which results from deleting stop losses because they're sick of losing. These are traders who upgraded their account to margin trading and they now have the awesome ability to short stocks. They imagine catching the top of a trending market and riding it all the way down. It's a fantasy I believe we all shared at one point. Instead of trading with the trend, they trade in the direction of their emotions, namely disbelief. They believe stocks are too oversold or overbought, and they look for setups to match their bias. In general, they are against the long term trend which makes their amazing setups likely to fail. When they're stuck in a trade, they resort to media and other traders to give them hope that the market will go their way. In general, the media is only adding to the traders disbelief and giving them false hope. Most traders fit into this category, and they are part of the reason for these extreme trends. They consistently get squeezed by going against the market, adding fuel to the trend. High frequency traders / institutions make a killing running these traders out of the market, while the beginner traders enjoy the gains from their fomo trades which are generally aligned with the trend of the market.
3. Experienced trader : These are traders who have been trading for 4 or more years and have stayed solvent enough to make it through phase #2. They have likely lost a lot of money trying to catch reversals and they has since realized most money is to be made in the middle by trading with the long term trend within the context of larger patterns. They also know how to take a stop loss and see it as an opportunity for a new trade. They realize they are wrong at least 40% of the time and they are at peace with it. They still get frustrated when a trade doesn't go their way, but they know this is a game of risk and reward, it's not about fortune telling. They know they will generally feel more pain if they don't take their stop, and while they may delete their stop in their weakest moments, the largest majority of the time they take the stop or exit with a loss before the loss becomes greater. The hardest part is knowing it's okay to be wrong, and it's okay be to be stopped out 4 or 5 times in a row and not be a failure. They see themselves as risk managers, not traders. They know there is no such thing as oversold or overbought, and have likely removed stoch and RSI indicators as they cause fomo to bet against a trend. They know nothing is oversold or overbought unless price reaches an area of extreme on a higher time frame chart or price is contained inside of a large well defined pattern that at least appears on an hourly chart that spans for days if not weeks.
This analysis will likely not help anyone as emotions overpower logic 20:1. Most traders need to feel enough pain before they transition from phase 2 to phase 3, it's not something that can be taught. They need the financial and emotional scars. They need the natural feeling of pain in the moment they feel they might delete their stop loss or bet against a trend when the price is not at strong resistance / support in a longer term pattern. In general human behavior, most people have a plan but the plan is usually thrown out the window in the moment a decision has to be made.
The purpose of this analysis is just to let you know that it's okay to be in the middle, and if you can at least have the control to trade with smaller amounts when you're in phase 2, you'll one day likely make it to phase 3. This analysis wont make anyone transition from a phase 2 to a phase 3 trader, I mainly wanted to make it clear that your emotions will likely continue to rule your trading, even in phase 3, the big difference is that you'll naturally feel pain before you make a mistake a phase 2 trader will make. Embrace your scars and the journey ahead.
