Why do retail investors lose more than they earn when trading contracts?
Many people feel this way after doing it for a long time:
As soon as you set a stop-loss, it gets hit;
If you don't set a stop-loss, you end up getting stuck at the liquidation price.
It feels like you are being 'targeted'.
But the real issue isn't luck; it's cognition.
You think you are playing against the market, but you are actually trading under a set of rules that are extremely unfriendly to you. Your position size, leverage, and liquidation line are essentially all transparent.
The result is that—
When you win, it's a small profit; when you lose, it's a deadly blow.
Earning ten or twenty times looks very smooth;
One wrong judgment wipes out all previous efforts.
This is the root cause of long-term losses for most people.
It's not that you can't read the trends, but your profit and loss structure has been predetermined to be wrong from the start.
If you have no direction now, it's much better to follow the rhythm and layout in advance than to make random bets.