What's behind traders' constant losses despite their skills and strategies

It seems like crypto traders are always losing tons of money, no matter how much they know about trading or how long they've been at it. Just today, there was a lot of talk about the potential for ETH positions to get liquidated if the price fell only $50. It makes me wonder, what really causes all these losses for traders, even the experienced ones? I've had my share of losses too, and I sometimes think the exchanges might be messing with the market, but I can't really back that up with any solid proof.

“You can’t always win” It’s that simple, as a trader you’re bond to taking risks and when so ever you take a risks it either a win or loss…so it is a must for traders to lose some amount of money at times no matter their experience or expertise. The market is very unpredictable, no matter how experienced you think your are, you can’t actually predict the future…you can only be close to predicting it, so it’s pretty normal for traders to lose money sometimes..

Losses have no exception from trading, even the experienced traders are still losing. But when traders are consistently losing, it only means one thing, they are trading the wrong way. Successful trading is not just all about being knowledgeable, skillful or strategic, its more than that. Those who are trading using their emotions are most likely losing at times because being emotional does not contribute any positivity to the trade, but it will only distract the trader's focus and attention on how to succeed on their trades.

It is obvious that in addition to the ability to earn, it is necessary to have the skills to save what you earn. For example, you can add 10% per month to your deposit for a long time and diligently, but then in just one deal, the exchange will liquidate your entire deposit. This means that such a trader ignores risk management, which is necessary for saves a deposit.

Who says that traders with good experience and knowledge lose money? The ones you are talking about are not proper traders but they are like gamblers in the crypto market, because they use very high leverage for their trades without stop-loss only so that they can make a lot of money, and they probably do make money using this method because if they are spending $1m in a single trade and losing it, they are probably using a larger amount in another trade and making more than $1m in profits, so it's not like a regular trader who loses their capital and then starts regretting it, they play with their capital, because their capitals are too large. Now, those who do proper trading, with enough knowledge about the market and enough experience in trading, knowing all the techniques and patterns, and they know when they should and shouldn't use stop-loss, they know what percentage of their capital should be used in a specific trade, and they also know their targets and they don't get greedy and lose their aim. Such traders cannot be in loss, because they don't trade like those who have no knowledge but are simply gambling with their money.

What will they achieve if they: have all the skills but can't apply which ones to use in specific situations?have experience but never learn from it?and finally, how can they have an intuitive strategy if both are missing?Regardless, what level of trader are we talking about? I think there are many secrets to long-term trading success out there, and lower-level traders will always be a few steps behind.

One thing OP actually needs to realize is that this is a prediction market and there is absolutely no way that the market will be perfectly guessed all the time no matter the experience, trading is speculation and that’s why the most usually the closest comparison is that it’s actually close to traditional gambling. No amount of knowledge can actually make someone to always be on the winning side or correctly guess the price or trend of the market always so certainly the losses are definitely inevitable even for great analyst. Now with losses inevitable what successful traders have is that they stay consistently profitable no matter the number of losses they get and this is possible with the right risk management applied to each trade.

The suspicion of exchange manipulating the market can be true if the market is B-BOOK and act as a counterparty against the trader. They have more incentive to do so especially if the exchange is shady and not reputable. The real reason beside that is because trading is a speculation, whatever strategy or skill doesn't really matter when everything is just possibility. You can draw all those lines analyzing chart etc and still lose because you can't predict the future.

So maybe it is not wrong if there is an understanding of trading like gambling. Although I do not believe in that, sometimes when there are losses in trading, one can only blame insufficient skills, or perhaps I am just unlucky.  I don't know, I am also not sure. But maybe it is true that there are hands working behind the exchange that can influence the market.

Its very normal for traders to lose money but whats important is not to lose all your money in trading and end up as a broke. In start its a reality that everyone of us lose money but the successful traders are the one who learned from their mistakes and try to come up with improved strategy. If you are not learning from your mistakes then in trading you will end up with huge loses. The key take away is that after you incur loss in trading, stop and take a look at what mistake you have committed. That's the only way to move forward in trading.

Greediness will be one of many reasons they lose money, if they see the profit, they don't close their trade but still waiting for the next bigger profit. They seems forget that the profit can changes to lose especially if they don't monitor the market and aware of the changes. They have skills, experiences, and strategies but they lacks of controlling themselves. The market may manipulate but if they can close their trade in the right time, they will still profit. It is not easy as it says as they must close the trade and hodl their greed.

Sometimes a trader would have experience and even strategy but would still lose to the market because of poor trading psychology. A poor trading psychology will have you reacting to the market and not trading. Some other times, it is not your psychology or your strategy, but just the market reminding you that no one knows it completely. There are times the market will react to fundamentals that were completely unforeseen; that is just trading; you can't win all the time.

It means that there’s other trader much better with them doing the opposite of what the loser trader doing. There’s always a loser and a winner on trading since trader is against other trader which means there’s always someone better on you are doing including the timing on when to purchase and sell their holdings. Exchange just facilitating the trading and charge fees per trade. There’s a potential for manipulation since most crypto exchange is not fully regulated.

Well theres a different factors to that. Yes like market manipulation also impacted on the market prettt big. If the charts says a good movement for the trend then suddenly it didnt happened, the likely reason it changed is due to unforeseen event ( sometime its pure manipulations by whales or cex indeed) Dont stress too much. Losing even with profound skills is really a normal thing on trading and thats something we cant change. Nonone is 100% accurately trading without havinf any loss at all.

Sometimes we are meant to believe that we losing to other traders but on the assumptional base I think sometimes we have whale trader's and other market manipulators even exchange actors will reduce the level of profit potential on human trader's. Some facilitate in both ways, we still have insider traders although rear but still exist in most cases.

It is actually impossible for a trader to always win, no matter how smart or professional you are, you must experience a loss or losses, because that is what trading is bond to. You must win and also, you must lose and nobody can change this scenario. Trading is more suitable for individuals who enjoys active involvements in trading but doesn't lose their focus on anything, neither do they let their emotions control them. The future of every single thing is unpredictable including trading and too much excitements and expectations from trading can actually lead to the other opposite. Every trader must be extremely careful for any misinformation either from their minds or from any body to avoid doing anything that can cause them to lose their investment.

First of all, always losing shouldn't mean that you're not profitable. Honestly, most known and good traders always lose than winning and if I am not mistaken most of them have an average of 40% win rate, the difference is that, they know if the position is gonna be worth it or not through risk and reward ration, most of them look for at least 1:2 but it's better if 1:3 so it doesn't matter if they lose too much as long as the R:R is 1:2 in minimum. Now, regarding your statement that a lot of traders are losing, well you are right most of the traders (including me) loses most of the time since we really can't predict the market and we only use available data to predict what would likely to happen, it's possible to manipulate the market if the volume is low especially the meme coins or community driven coins, that's why if you are going to trade it's better to go to the coins that has a large volume such as BTC, ETH, or the top 10 cryptocurrencies, because there's no way they can control it.

I remember the words (thoughts) of Poptop (an authoritative Bitcointalk forum member in 2017): "Traders typically remain effective for no more than one market cycle. As soon as a new cycle begins, the trader dies. What remains is human." 🙋 I find his words very wise... Indeed, each new market cycle is a complete reversal of all trends in the cryptocurrency market. That is, a trader has learned something, gained experience and knowledge, but as time goes on, all their skills and experience not only become completely useless but also begin to work against them. What is experience? It's effective and efficient behavior patterns... However, when the market changes, old patterns cease to work. Where a trader once made a profit, they will now suffer losses. A novice will be more effective than an experienced trader. That's the paradox...

I would say cryptos are highly speculative and volatile markets and that is what makes people bear loss. People often compare crypto trading with stock/forex trading which are way different in their own way. The risk appetite is much higher when it comes to crypto trading as even a single fundamental news can crash or pump the market with no limit. People are still make money with crypto trading but they are really keen on following their instincts and making the most out of a minor change. Crypto trading is risky which also maximizes the gains. The more risk we take, the more profits we can land onto but this also means the chances of loss are pretty high. You should be prepared to face loss if only you want to make profits. Consistency can make you learn ample of things which will boost your trading journey. Liquidations are pretty common now with cryptos. I have seen millions and billions wiping out of the industry just with a slight change in price. That is where majority of people trade their emotions. We should be able to identify the point where emotions might be involved and ignoring those levels can eradicate risk by a lot.

There's no such thing about perfect trader on whose the one that making out profitable trades of all he had placed on on which we know that this is impossible. This is why it would be that something delusional if you would be trying out to make yourself that to be perfect because it would definitely making you desperate and this is something you should avoid. What matter most on here is that you do able to sustain this very speculative market and this is something that you should be having in mind. We cant be perfect because no matter how good your analysis is but still it wont really be that giving out the guarantee that you would be able to make yourself profitable because the market is always been that speculative and there would be no guarantee that you would be able to win everytime. So its recommended that you should be that having that risks management and thats the most important that you would do as a trader. Come to think that learning up the trading skills is never been that instant or would be able to do overnight. This is why this is a battle of patience and persistence on how you would be able to handle yourself when it comes to market volatility and on the risks involved. Never ever make yourself that thinking about being a perfect trader.