Why You will FAIL as a Day Trader - 97% of Day Traders LOSE Money

Day trading has to be one of the hardest

ways of actually making money in the

world, with only about 3% of people

remaining profitable after 5 years.

What makes you think that you can possibly

win at day trading?

Are you some kind of genius?

Do you have some kind of insider edge?

Probably not.

And yet so many people think they can

actually make a living off of day trading

when it's probably impossible for most

people.

In today's video, we're going to be

discussing day trading using my own

personal experience of winning and losing

and asking the question, why do so many

people seem to be deluded into thinking

they can actually turn this into a real

job.

As some of you may know, I kind of have

this new obsession recently, and that is

day trading.

I'm really into day trading, and I have

tried it before a couple years ago.

I started a couple years ago and I just

kind of randomly took potshots at the

market trying to day trade, and I lost a

couple thousand pounds.

Recently I've started to day trade again

because I'm trying to find a new way to

make some extra money, and I'm taking it

very seriously this time, using proper

strategies and risk management.

And I have a few things to say about day

trading, why I think it's not really going

to make anyone any money for the majority

of people.

First of all, day trading sounds extremely

appealing to a certain type of people.

It's a job where you could do it anywhere

in the world as long as you've got an

internet connection.

You don't need a boss.

You don't need to apply for an interview.

You literally just download an app, any

kind of day trading app.

You add some money and you can start

trading.

There's zero barrier to entry.

So to me personally, it sounds like the

perfect job.

You don't need any customers.

You don't have to rely on viewers like you

do when you do YouTube.

You can't get banned, you can't get fired.

As long as you've got money to put into

the account, you don't keep blowing your

account.

Theoretically, you should be able to make

money on your terms anywhere in the world,

anywhere you are at any time.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

Otherwise everyone would be doing it.

Everyone would quit their jobs.

Society would fall apart and collapse

because everyone's just sitting at home

trading stocks instead of actually

providing any value to the world or

creating anything.

So I decided to start my day trading

adventure again a couple of months ago,

about 3 months ago to be precise, to try

and get get some extra money because

money's kind of tight these days.

And I decided to fund my account with only

£20.

I know, chump change, but I didn't want to

risk big amounts of money when I didn't

really feel like I knew what I was doing.

So I put £20 and I blew the entire £20 in

about a month.

I think I started at £20, highest I got it

to was about £22, and then at the end of

the month it was down to about £2.

I had to put more money into it because I

couldn't just trade using £2 making 10p a

trade.

So I put another £100 into the account And

I decided to sign up for one of these

trading Discord memberships.

You know, these YouTubers, like trading

YouTubers, they also have these Discords

and courses they sell for a certain amount

of money.

So I paid $100 a month to join this

Discord, trading Discord.

I won't say who it is because I'm not

really trying to bash the guy.

This video is not about bashing him or

anything.

It's just my experience of being part of

this trading Discord for about 2 months

now.

And ever since I joined the Discord, I do

feel like I've learned a lot.

I've been able to observe what these these

other traders do who have been doing it

for years and seem to actually know what

they're doing.

I've been able to observe what they do,

their processes, and kind of copy what

they do.

And I have actually grown my day trading

account from currently £100 to £100 and I

think £148 I'm currently at.

So that's a 50% increase, and it sounds

pretty good, but I'm not going to try and

get ahead of myself because you never

know.

One fatal mistake, I could blow half of

that in several bad trades.

So in the trading Discord, basically

they'll have trade alerts to alert you of

what trades take, and I do copy them

sometimes, but a lot of the times I copy

them and it doesn't work and I lose money.

And they also discuss strategies and

tactics and stuff like that, and

psychological stuff.

So there's like a million different

strategies.

There's patterns, there's different

signals, there's shapes like, oh, fair

value gaps, breaker blocks, SMT, ICT, CSD,

MMSM.

There's all these different terms that you

have no clue what they are until you start

learning about it.

And to be honest, you follow these

patterns and tactics or strategies, and

50% of the time they don't work.

50% of time you follow the patterns and

these patterns emerge and you spot them

and you think, oh wait, I see the

patterns, I'm going to take the trade, and

then it doesn't actually do anything.

Like, the fair value gap doesn't get

respected, so it might as well not even be

in the first place.

So if these strategies only have a 50%

chance of working most of the time, then

what even is the point of them if they

don't have any edge?

If it's only 50% chance of winning, you

might as well just go eeny meeny miny moe

and put press buy here, sell there, buy

here, sell there, because the market's

only going to do 2 things.

It's either going to go up or down, or

it's going to go sideways before going up

or down.

So you literally have 50% chance of it

either going up or down whether you just

go any mini money mo or do one of these

complex strategies.

For example, you could literally have

every single confirmation in the world,

like SMC divergence confirmed, CSD

confirmed, 5-minute fair value gap closed

below confirmed, and you think, oh, this

is definitely going down, I'm going to go

short.

And it just goes up anyway.

So it might as well— none of that stuff

might as well not even been there in the

first place because it was all

meaningless.

So half the time these stupid strategies

don't actually work.

And the point is you're supposed to only

take a trade when you spot a strategy, but

if it doesn't work, you're supposed to get

stopped out and only losing a couple

percent of your account.

But when it does work, you're supposed to

let it go and make profits, and those

profits are going to make you more money

than what you've lost from the times it

didn't work.

So the way I grew my account by 50% hasn't

actually been by following any kind of

strategy or looking at any kind of setup.

I literally have just been using pure luck

by randomly shorting the market and hoping

that it's going to go down.

That has made me 50%.

Now, a lot of times I've gone short and

the market's just ripped because Trump

said some kind of stupid thing on Twitter

or, I don't know, tariff deals this or

tariff deals that.

And then it's just gone up and I've lost

like 50%.

But because I didn't sell, and I just

waited patiently for it to eventually

reverse.

It ended up reversing and I made money

instead.

And that's kind of risky.

And I guess it's kind of like gambling

because sometimes it just doesn't work.

Like you are patient and you think, I

don't want to sell because I'm not going

to accept the loss.

And that becomes very dangerous because

then you just never take losses.

I mean, you never accept the losses until

you are forced to because now you've lost

so much money, you kind of have to.

And the market's never going to reverse

back down to where you entered the trade.

But so far I've just been being patient

and waiting for the market to eventually

reverse.

And that's been my tactic.

So I guess you could say with that tactic

is basically no different to gambling

because you're just hoping.

So I have tried following the strategies

and tactics and the setups.

And to be honest, I've lost more money by

following the setups than I have from just

randomly shorting at random points and

hoping it goes down or waiting for it to

reverse if it didn't go down in the first

place.

And just being patient or eventually just

accepting the loss if it seems like it's

never going to come back down again.

I think from my personal experience, the

hardest thing about it has to be losing a

trade, but then not accepting that you've

lost the trade and staying in the losing

trade and letting the losses balloon and

balloon and balloon until it gets to a

point where you are forced to accept the

trade unless you put more money into it.

And then if you put more money into it,

you just lose more and more and more.

So eventually you just lose everything.

So it's really hard.

To actually accept the loss and take the L

because you have pride and ego and your

whole goal is to make money, not lose

money.

And you feel like, oh, I could cheat the

system if I just stay in the trade.

I technically haven't lost anything.

That is a very dangerous precedent to set.

And I've blown my first account by 85% by

doing that because the market just ripped

continuously since I shorted it and I

could never make the money back without

putting more money in.

And the reason why I think most people

aren't going to make any money doing this—

and there's a famous quote or statistic

saying that only 3% or only 2% of people

actually remain profitable after 5 years

of day trading or something like that,

some crazy stat that says most people

won't make any money.

And the reason why I believe that's true

is because the psychological requirement

to be able to continuously take L's

without getting all emotional and

desperate, because desperation will just

lead you to make more terrible decisions

and lose even more money.

To be able to remain calm-headed whilst

you're losing money is so difficult.

And having discipline and self-control not

to get greedy— a lot of it is also greed.

Like you're winning a trade and instead of

taking profit, you're like, oh, I'm going

to make more money.

Oh, it's going to go down more.

It's going to go up more.

I want this amount of money before I take

profit.

And then before you can take any profit,

it just reverses and then you lose money

and then you're like, damn it.

Now I'm gonna have to take another trade,

and then I'm gonna get the money back.

And then just starts a dangerous spiral of

getting desperate and chasing and revenge

trading, as is known.

And then you just lose and lose and lose,

and then you get pissed off, and then you

get angry, and you've taken so much

emotional damage that you just give up and

you think, I'm never going to do this

again.

That happened to me.

I traded, day traded first time about 4

years ago, and I lost a lot of money.

And it hurts, honestly.

So I thought, I'm never going to do this

again because it didn't feel good.

It felt terrible.

I lost all this money.

Why would I do it again?

So I gave up.

And I think a lot of people are going to

be like that.

And once you give up, given up, you're

basically just part of the statistic that

never made any money and you gave up and

you're not going to try again.

So you just, you will never make money

now.

So I wouldn't say to people to give up.

I think if you are interested in it,

definitely give it a shot, but definitely

just use small amounts of money because

you're probably going to blow the money

and you're going to get over— you'll win

some trades in the beginning with

beginner's luck, and then you'll get cocky

and think, I'm a genius, and then you put

more money and then you just end up losing

it because you got overconfident and you

didn't put a stop loss.

So I would say definitely give it a shot

if you're really interested in it, but you

need realistic expectations and realize,

well, from my experience or my opinion, is

that it's nearly almost all random and

luck-based.

The only thing that's going to help you,

give you an edge and make you any money is

your risk management.

I think risk management is way more

important than having the best setup or

the best strategy, because all the stupid

setups, they only have like a 60% win rate

at most.

So it's literally just 50/50 at that

point.

But if you have good risk management and

you're good at stopping losses before you

take too many losses, cutting losses, I

mean, then you might have a better chance

of making money if you can just cut losses

and have good self-control and discipline.

But if you're someone who doesn't really

have good self-control or discipline,

you're never going to make money doing

this.

You're just going to end up getting mad,

getting unlucky, losing a lot, and just

blowing it all in the end.