How do you stop losing money in trading?

Why do most traders lose money?

Most traders lose money because they skip the groundwork and chase the result. In a Big Wick Energy podcast episode, two Team Ambitious coaches say the same five gaps show up in almost every losing trader they coach: no real edge, inconsistent execution, bad risk management, emotional decision-making, and no long-term plan.

According to ASIC Report 828: Risky business, 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money trading in the 2024 financial year. That is not a claim from the video, it is a verified regulatory finding, and it is the backdrop against which the podcast's five reasons should be read: losing is the default outcome for most retail traders, and the video frames its advice as a way to move out of that majority.

What is a trading edge, and why is it the first thing missing?

The video says an edge is not a taught formula, it is a repeatable sense of what to do in a given market situation, built through screen time. Without it, a trader ends up taking setups that "aren't really" theirs and then wondering why the trade fails.

One host describes edge as something you "see yourself repetitively in the market" rather than something handed to you in a lesson. The two hosts say they trade the same underlying strategy and look at the same charts, yet they enter differently, because their edge is shaped by their own psychology and the session they trade. One host says he trades the New York session because that is where he consistently recognises his setup, and that he would not apply the same approach to the Asian session because he has "no idea" what it does there.

The video also makes a point about strategy choice versus the trader. The hosts say they have watched profitable traders using ICT, SMC, trend-line breakouts, and even simple indicators, and concluded that the strategy itself is not what separates winners from losers, the trader's accumulated time in the market is. The video's stated route to an edge is repetition: back testing a single setup, then forward testing it, until the trader has built statistics that show them that setup working over and over.

Why does inconsistent execution wreck a working strategy?

The video says the second reason traders stay unprofitable is inconsistent execution: following the trading plan when it produces a win, then abandoning or "detouring" from it after a loss. That inconsistency, not the strategy itself, is what the hosts blame for most of the "why am I losing" moments they see from students.

One host describes walking a student through a chart where the same pattern, a break of structure, a pullback to a point of interest, and a continuation, repeated five times in a row. The student had missed every one of those entries because he was looking at the wrong timeframe rather than reading the setup across multiple timeframes the way it was taught. The video frames that as a comprehension gap that produces inconsistent execution, not a flaw in the strategy.

A second example in the video involves a trader who had learned a strategy elsewhere and tried to blend it with the one being taught, ending up with two conflicting views of the same chart. The hosts say mixing frameworks like this is a common mistake that creates confusion and, eventually, fear of entering the next trade. Their stated fix is narrower than it sounds: pick one system, execute it exactly as taught, and treat consistent losses as data rather than a reason to freelance. As one host puts it, if you stick to a trading plan and are still consistently losing, at least "you've got data to go off."

The hosts also describe a pattern they say they saw repeatedly when running a signals service: a new trader enters a trade with little understanding of why, gets a win, enters again, gets another win, then takes a loss. By that point overconfidence has already set in, so the trader raises their position size on the next entry and takes a much bigger loss than the wins that preceded it. The hosts say the trader is then too scared to take the next signal at all, because they never had a trading plan or risk framework underneath the wins in the first place, only a string of outcomes they did not understand.

How much do risk-management mistakes cost traders?

The video's third reason is bad risk management, and the hosts describe it as the point where an emotional mistake becomes a financial one: a trader gets overconfident after a couple of wins, raises their lot size, and gives back several trades' worth of progress in one loss. They call this pattern "two steps forward, three steps back."

On their own live accounts, the two hosts describe using a baseline risk of around 2% per trade, moving up to roughly 3% only at what they consider high-probability, extreme setups, and "d-risking" down to around 1% when a trade is closer to equilibrium in the structure or when scaling into an existing position. One host also describes running three separate live accounts at different risk levels, a larger account risking around 1% per trade, a mid-size account around 3%, and a smaller account around 7 to 10%, explaining that psychologically it is easier to hold a low percentage risk on a large dollar balance than the same percentage on a small one.

The hosts also share a specific personal account of a small live account, at the time worth around $300, that was being copy-traded without the trader realising it, and grew to around $13,000. The host telling the story is explicit that this was not a deliberate, repeatable strategy: he had not checked the account, it turned out to be risking between roughly 5% and 10% per trade rather than his usual 2%, and he frames the outcome as something that happened to him rather than a result he can promise anyone else. It is a single personal anecdote from one trader's account, not a stated typical outcome, and the video does not present it as one.

The hosts also note that funded accounts change the calculation. One host says trading with funded capital comes with more rules than trading a personal live account, and that the psychological relationship to risk shifts because the capital, and what the trader actually stands to lose, is different from money they put in themselves. The video does not quantify that difference, it is raised only as a reason risk management on a funded account cannot be assumed to match risk management on a personal live account.

How does emotional trading turn one loss into a losing streak?

The video's fourth reason is trading with too much emotion, specifically FOMO entries chasing a move that has already happened, and revenge trading after a loss. The hosts say beginners are especially prone to this because they want the end result without going through the process that builds skill.

One host says the antidote to FOMO is trusting that a missed move will often return to the level the strategy anticipated, rather than chasing price. Both hosts agree emotion cannot be eliminated entirely, since even experienced traders still feel it, but the goal they describe is reducing how much it drives decisions. One host says that reaching a more consistent emotional state only really happened for him once he had already become more profitable and had a financial buffer, which gave him room to sit back and trust the system rather than react to every swing.

The concrete tool the video offers for managing this is journaling and data collection. The hosts say building a track record of a single setup, first through back testing and then through forward testing, is what actually reduces emotional decision-making, because a trader who has already seen a setup work repeatedly is less likely to panic or chase.

The hosts are also direct that emotional swings track dollar exposure, not just percentage risk. They point to the same small account that grew from $300 to $13,000: watching it move by hundreds of dollars a day at 5 to 10% risk was, in the hosts' words, far harder on a trader's psychology than watching a large account move by a smaller dollar amount at 1% risk, even though the large account's percentage exposure was lower. Their conclusion is that emotional control and risk sizing are the same problem viewed from two angles, not two separate skills.

What is the difference between back testing and forward testing?

The video defines back testing as reviewing historical chart data to see how a setup would have played out. Forward testing, also called live testing in the episode, means placing a simulated or small live position and letting it play out in real time on the current chart instead of historical data.

The hosts say the two serve different purposes. Back testing is faster for building statistical confidence in a setup, since a trader can review a week of moves in a short session. Forward testing is described as more useful for building trading psychology, because the trader has to sit with a live, unresolved position the way they would in a funded or live account, rather than clicking through history. The video's stated order is back testing first to prove a setup works, then forward testing to build the real-time discipline to execute it.

Why does trading need a long-term plan instead of a side-hustle mindset?

The video's fifth reason traders stay unprofitable is having no long-term plan. The hosts describe trading as something that cannot be picked up casually and treated as a quick side hustle, and say that mismatch in expectations is why a lot of people conclude trading "doesn't work" or call it a scam after a short attempt.

To illustrate what a long-term plan looks like, the hosts describe the structure of their own mentorship program, run over roughly six months. The description below reflects what the hosts say about their own program in the video; it is a business claim made by the speakers, not an independently verified outcome, and it is not a promise of results for any individual who follows it.

1. Months one and two are spent building a knowledge base, covering beginner and intermediate course material without live trading.
2. Months three and four apply that knowledge in a trading replay tool, with mentors present on calls pointing out setups on historical charts so students start recognising the pattern for themselves.
3. Month five shifts to forward testing, applying the same setup recognition to real-time price action and pre-market analysis instead of replayed history.
4. Month six works toward getting the student's account funded by a prop firm.

The hosts also stress that any long-term plan needs to stay realistic and simple rather than "noisy" or overcomplicated, comparing an unsustainable trading approach to a crash diet: a short burst of intensity that is abandoned once it stops producing fast results. One host frames his own longer-term goal as growing his live trading account over multiple years, describing it in the video as a personal ambition rather than a guaranteed outcome.

What do the numbers say, and how do the five reasons compare side by side?

What do the numbers say, and how do the five reasons compare side by side? ASIC Report 828: Risky business found that 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. That's an independently verifiable market fact, separate from anything the video claims — most retail participants in this asset class finished the year down, not up.

Separately, the BIS 2025 Triennial Survey reported that average daily OTC foreign-exchange turnover reached US$9.6 trillion in April 2025, a figure that reflects the scale of the global market retail forex traders are trading inside of, dominated by institutional and interbank flow rather than retail volume. Neither figure comes from the podcast, and neither should be read as a comment on any individual trader, strategy, or mentorship program; they are cited here only as independently sourced context for how difficult retail trading has been shown to be at a market-wide level.

Laid out together, the video's five reasons traders lose money and the fixes the hosts describe for each one form a checklist rather than five separate problems, since each fix builds on the one before it.

| Reason traders lose (per the video) | What it looks like | Fix described in the video | |---|---|---| | No edge | Taking setups that aren't really yours, no consistent sense of what to do | Build repetition in one strategy until entries feel intuitive; back test then forward test | | Inconsistent execution | Following the plan on wins, abandoning it on losses, mixing strategies from different sources | Stick to one system long enough to gather real data, even while losing | | Bad risk management | Raising lot size after a win streak, then giving it back in one loss | Fix a baseline risk per trade (around 2% in the hosts' own accounts) and scale down near equilibrium setups | | Emotional trading | FOMO entries, revenge trading, wanting the result without the process | Journal every trade and build a statistical track record through testing | | No long-term plan | Treating trading as a quick side hustle | Follow a structured, multi-month build: knowledge, then replay, then forward testing, then funded |

Read across the table, the pattern the video describes is cumulative: an edge without consistent execution produces random results, consistent execution without risk control produces one large loss that erases many small wins, and either of those without emotional control and a long-term plan collapses the first time the trader hits a losing streak.

The hosts sum up the whole list with a single image near the end of the episode: a trader's expectations sitting far above their actual skill level. Their point is that every reason on the list, no edge, inconsistent execution, bad risk management, emotional trading, and no long-term plan, is really one problem seen from five angles, a trader wanting the outcome of a skilled trader before doing the work a skilled trader has done. The video's closing suggestion is not a shortcut around that gap, it is to close it deliberately: build the edge, execute it the same way every time, size risk before conviction, log the results, and give the process the months it takes rather than the days a trader might hope it takes.