Most Traders Will NEVER Be Profitable (Here's Why)

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]You can give two traders the exact same strategy and setup and only one of them is going to make money. And it has nothing to do with the strategy to begin with. It's about something else [music] entirely because the strategy works.

[00:00:14]It's been proving it. But one person follows it and the other one, well, the second one gets a bit uncomfortable and then they start just making it up as they go. You see, it's so much easier to blame the market or go looking for a new indicator than it is to sit down [music] and actually find the root cause of your trading problem, which in this case, [music] and honestly in many cases, the problem is you watching [music] this. So, what I want to talk about today is loss aversion, which is really just the fear of losing. And I genuinely believe this is the reason why 90% of traders are never going to reach their goal. And I promise you, you're definitely going to relate to this. So, think about it this way. We grow up our whole lives being told that losing is bad. Like from the time when you were a little kid, losing a game, losing a race, whatever, it just felt awful. And on the other hand, winning feels good, obviously. But losing, losing hurts so much worse than winning feels [music] good. That's just how we're built. And then when we get into trading, we can't just expect our natural instinct to just go away. That is still inside of you. Except now, it's not a game. It's your actual money.

[00:01:29]Money that you worked for and that makes [music] the fear of losing it so much more intense. What I noticed with myself, and honestly with every student I've ever worked with, is that a losing trade haunts you. You lose $300 on a trade and you're sitting there for the rest of the day thinking [music] about it, analyzing it, beating yourself up over it. But if you made $300, or even if you made it $900, like with a one to three risk-reward ratio, you You good for 5 minutes and then you're just looking for the next trade. So, this imbalance is the whole problem because when your losses are [music] affecting you emotionally way more than your wins, every decision you make after [music] that is coming from a place of fear. And fear-based decisions in trading are almost always the wrong ones. So, let me walk you through [music] what this actually looks like in real time because I think when you see it laid [music] out, you're going to recognize yourself in at least one of these scenarios. The first one is bag holding [music] and I know you know what I'm talking about.

[00:02:31]You get into a trade. You had a plan.

[00:02:34]You knew where your stop loss should have been, but when price comes down and hits that level, you just sit there. You don't actually [music] close your trade and you don't actually use a hard stop loss. And you don't want to close your trade because that means that you were wrong and you're going to have to accept that. So, instead of following your plan, you start negotiating with yourself. You're like, "Okay, maybe it's just a wick. Maybe it's going to come back. Let me give it a little extra room." Even though that wasn't in your plan. And then it doesn't come back. And now you're way down more than you were ever supposed to be. And at some point, you're just so far in that you close it out of frustration. And you just took a big loss that was like five times of what it should have been. I've had this [music] happen to multiple students and it just makes zero sense. So, take it from me, plan a stop loss. Place a hard stop loss. Focus on your realized gains and losses. That's what matters. [music] Stop trying to be right all the time.

[00:03:31]That's not the way to trade successfully. A 20% stop loss, a 15% stop loss, that's manageable. That's part of the plan. That's the cost [music] of being wrong on the trade.

[00:03:41]That's the cost of taking the trade. But a 50% stop loss, that one loss can hurt you for weeks and shake [music] your confidence. And that's the part people don't factor in is when you let a loss like that get out of hand, it doesn't just affect your account balance, it affects how you show up to trade the next day and the day after that. So, yeah, you're not protecting yourself by holding a trade. You're being dumb and you're making it worse on every level.

[00:04:05]The second mistake is just staring at your P&L instead of the chart. So, let's say you're in a trade and you're up $400 and you feel good about that. Then maybe it pulls back a little bit and you're still up, but maybe it went from $400 to $150 in just a couple of minutes. And you've been watching that number the whole time. So, now your stomach drops and you're like, "I'm not giving back my gains. A green day can't turn a red day." And then you close the position just because of a number of profit and you exit out of $100 gain. But this is why we just follow our plan. We think about our entries and our exits with risk management. We only want to [music] exit trades at a small loss, 15% 20% Any loss smaller than that, break even or any win below like 30%, there should be no micromanaging and no adjusting happening in the middle of that trade.

[00:05:01]We [music] need to trust in our strategy. If you have a high-quality plan, you need to follow [music] it.

[00:05:06]Because if you just let it alone and you followed what you laid out before you ever got in, you would have made way more and you would have managed your risk much better. You cannot let the number on the screen [music] make that decision for you. I know that this has probably happened to all of us, but we need to learn from our mistakes. So, one thing that helped me is just closing the profit and loss tab. Literally, I do not look at the dollar amount that I'm up or down when I'm in the trade. I just look at the stock chart and the options chart. Because once you take the dollar number out of the equation, it's so much easier to just trade what you [music] see on the chart without the the fuzzies. If you're struggling following your plan, you're probably not setting a stop-loss order and a target limit order to automate your exits on your plan.

[00:05:56]That is called an OCO bracket, and I just created a video on exactly how to set up these automated exits on ThinkorSwim for options day trades. So, check that video right here. The third mistake is when you're so scared to lose that you never even enter the trade. You see a setup. Everything's lined up. All your confirmations are there. You should be entering, but you just sit there. You just watch. You don't do anything. You don't click a button. You don't pull up an option contract. You don't set a stop-loss or a target. You just watch this chart move. Maybe you're just waiting for one more thing to confirm, [music] one more candle, and then all of a sudden the trade moves without you.

[00:06:33]And now you're mad at yourself. Or you just keep talking yourself out of every single trade that you see because what if it goes wrong? I remember feeling this way. I'd be sitting there with my plan in front of me. I could see exactly what I was looking for, and then I just freeze. That was my main struggle with trading, hesitation. And then I'd watch the trade go and feel even worse because it hits my target. And it feels worse when you're not making the profit that you planned for, that you analyzed for.

[00:07:00]You were sitting there for hours watching that chart, and not getting that profit [music] of that winning trade hurts me more than taking a loss. So, you can have the best system in the world, but if fear is the one deciding whether you get in or not, you're not trading the right way. You're not thinking the right way. Trading is based off of probabilities. You should know your win rate by journaling and feeling confident in that data. And you should manage your risk strictly, and that will get rid of your fear. Your emotions has nothing to do if the trade is valid or not. The only question you need to ask yourself [music] is does this meet your criteria? And if it does, you take it. Simple as that. So, as you take each trade, it doesn't matter if this trade wins or this trade loses or that trade wins or that trade loses, it doesn't matter. The idea is execute consistently if your criteria is there and if it's a valid setup and then after review your journal, review your data, check your win rate. You don't need to be right on every single trade. It's all about the probability. Manage your risk and you'll be okay. So, what do you actually do to avoid this? Because I don't want to just tell you what the problem is and leave you there. What you have to understand is that losses are a natural part of trading. You have to accept losses. [music] I lose plenty of trades. Every single trader you've ever looked up to loses trades. It's built into the game. The goal is never to make zero losses. The goal is never to be right every single day. It's making sure your process [music] is right with risk management so that your wins consistently outweigh your losses. The other thing I tell you is to journal. I [music] know it sounds boring, but stick with me. When I started going back through my trades, like really sitting down and looking at them and analyzing them, I could see exactly where I did something wrong, where I got emotional, where I closed too early, where I held for too long.

[00:08:55]All the data's there. And once you could see the pattern, you can actually work on fixing it. And with your journal, you get actual data, your win rate and your risk-reward ratio. It's useful. You don't need a complicated spreadsheet.

[00:09:08]You could get a paid trading journal, like Trade Zella or Trader Sync. Track every single trade. And after [music] you do that consistently, you're going to see the same mistakes showing up over and over again. And that's a good thing cuz now you know exactly what you need to work on. It's not a mystery anymore.

[00:09:22]And honestly, the last thing is [music] just get out of your own head about the market. You're not fighting the market.

[00:09:29]The market doesn't even know you exist.

[00:09:31]What you're actually up against is yourself every single time you sit down to trade. Your impatience, fear, ego, that's your real opponent. You can't control the market, but you can control whether you're following your plan or not. So, the moral of this video is [music] have a strategy first, of course. If you've already proven and tested your strategy, you just need to follow your plan. Stop getting so emotional and manage your risk. So, if you've been feeling stuck and you can't figure out why, genuinely ask yourself if it's [music] any of these things that I just covered because a lot of the time, we go looking for a new strategy when we really just need to deal with what's going on mentally first and make sure we're actually following our strategy correctly. [music] And if you want actual one-on-one help and guidance and mentorship through building out your trading, I can help you with the consistency, the system, the mental side of it, the risk management, and all the strategies and the things you need to know in order to become a profitable trader. The link to apply for my one-on-one mentorship is in the description below. And if you are a complete beginner and want to learn options trading from A to Z, I suggest that you watch this video right here.

[00:10:41]I'll see you in the next video. [music] Bye.