Leverage most likely. I recall a conversation with an old schoolmate years ago, he had no trading skill nor bankroll and that's why he was so excited about forex. This is why I believe forex also has such an image problem because it attracts the poor only to rob them.
Very true, most people i know who trade FX don't use anymore leverage than 50:1. Even that they consider high.
I don't really understand what are bad with these stats: GFT: a bit more than 3,000 accounts that are profitable OANDA: 11 thousands accounts in profit Interbank: 4 000 accounts profitable etc The type of stats that would be interesting is for each year, percentages as function of how long the account has been opened and active. For instance at oanda, on the 11,000 profitable accounts, what proportion has been active more than 3 years.
over 75% lose statistics in current year, the other 25 % may lose with other brokers in the following years The evidence is basically conclusive that only ~2% of day traders can actually consistently turn a profit. Oanda in particular have been guilty of some creative accounting – their data from Q3 2010 showed that a spectacular 51% of accounts were profitable, 18% more than the nearest competitor. However it turned out that included in their definition of “active” accounts were accounts that contained no trading activity but had simply accrued interest on the account balance! The CFTC quickly put their foot down and 6 months later we see that the percentage of winning accounts at Oanda has dropped to 38.1%. As disclosure requirements tighten in the future, these winning percentages are expected to fall even further.
However it turned out that included in their definition of “active” accounts were accounts that contained no trading activity but had simply accrued interest on the account balance!
These are your own extrapolation : what evidence? the stats are only showing the number of profitable accounts, nothing more. Oanda alon had more than 11 Thousands winning accounts, based on a 30% profitability. May be you want to believe that only 2% of forex traders are profitable, and may be that is actually not true. Forex is not like stocks or future : it is not a "closed" money fund, as the money comes straight from Central banks printing.
The number 70 % of losing accounts is quite high , some are only profitable on interest or options related profits , but forex alone results are poor. http://www.financemagnates.com/fore...ers-profitability-falls-accounts-on-the-rise/
In this article again, the stats are around 30% of the accounts are profitable. There seems to be some cognitive dissonance between your belief of 2% profitable forex traders, and the actual 30% of profitable forex trading accounts.
May be you are not understanding what it means that forex is not a zero-sum game like stocks or futures. On this enjoy the rest of your day, as I am about to.