Retail Traders Win 64% of Trades But Still Lose Money, Report Finds

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – April 10, 2026 – A comprehensive analysis of retail trading activity in 2025 has uncovered a stark paradox: while the average trader won nearly two-thirds of their trades, they consistently lost more money than they made. The findings are part of the 2025 Annual Trading Report released by FinTech platform Followme, which analyzed data from nearly 30,000 active accounts, offering a rare, data-driven glimpse into the behavioral patterns and financial outcomes of everyday investors.

The report lands after a year where global markets surged and artificial intelligence began to reshape the financial landscape. Despite a backdrop of positive market performance, including a 17.9% gain in the S&P 500, the data suggests retail traders faced significant headwinds, driven less by market direction and more by their own trading habits.

The Profitability Paradox: Winning Battles, Losing the War

At the heart of the report is a perplexing statistic: a community-wide average win rate of 63.80%, a figure that remained stable from the previous year. On the surface, this suggests a high degree of success. However, this high win rate was completely undermined by a profit-to-loss ratio of just 0.5. This means for every dollar traders gained on a winning trade, they lost two dollars on a losing one.

The numbers break down to an average gain of just $37.29 on profitable trades, dwarfed by an average loss of $74.03 on losing ones. According to the report, this highlights a classic behavioral finance trap: traders are quick to secure small gains but hold onto losing positions for too long, hoping for a turnaround that often never materializes. This tendency effectively erases the advantage of a high win rate, leading to net losses over time.

Interestingly, the report reveals a clear divergence in performance based on trading style. Accounts that engaged in copy trading—automatically replicating the trades of others from start to finish—achieved the highest percentage of profitability and the largest overall gains. In contrast, self-directed traders saw moderate success, while signal providers, those who offer their strategies for others to follow, recorded the lowest proportion of profitable accounts and the most significant overall losses.

This suggests that the structured discipline imposed by a proven copy-trading strategy can offer a crucial advantage in overcoming the emotional decision-making that plagues many individual investors. It also points to the well-known "80/20 rule," where a small minority of top-performing accounts are responsible for the majority of profits within the community.

A Cooling Market? Capital Retreats from Retail Trading

This struggle for consistent profitability appears to be having a chilling effect on investor enthusiasm and risk appetite. The Followme report documents a sharp, industry-concerning decline in capital flows. Total deposits by active accounts fell by 34.95% year-on-year, with a nearly identical 34.38% drop in total withdrawals. This synchronized decline points not just to less new money entering the market, but a broader contraction in trading activity.

Further analysis of fund movements reveals a telling trend: over two-thirds (67.47%) of investors with any deposit or withdrawal activity ended the year with net withdrawals. This indicates that a vast majority of traders were pulling more money out of their accounts than they were putting in, a strong signal that trading returns fell below their expectations.

This capital flight occurred even as global markets, particularly international equities, delivered strong returns in 2025. The disconnect suggests that the retail trading experience on the platform was not aligned with broader market opportunities. The report interprets this as a sign that the retail trading industry has entered a "period of contraction," driven by a more cautious investor sentiment.

The Siren Song of Gold: XAUUSD's Costly Allure

Despite a more cautious approach to funding, traders who remained active demonstrated an overwhelming focus on a single, notoriously volatile asset: gold (XAUUSD). An astonishing 87.7% of all trades within the community were on gold, totaling over 13.9 million individual trades.

This obsession, however, proved to be a financial disaster for the majority. The community suffered a collective net loss of $19,892,803 from trading gold. Only 30.36% of accounts that traded the precious metal ended the year profitably. The average loss per XAUUSD trading account was a substantial $1,155.

The allure of gold in 2025 is understandable, as the asset experienced a significant price appreciation, at one point topping $4,500 per ounce. Yet, the data shows that retail traders were largely unable to capitalize on this bull run. The high volatility that creates opportunities also magnifies risk, and the report's findings suggest that most traders lacked the disciplined risk management required to navigate gold's sharp price swings successfully.

Data from a trading competition held on the platform further illuminates this divide. Accounts with larger equity (over $10,000) exhibited more mature risk management and were more decisive in their positioning, resulting in greater stability. In contrast, smaller "Micro Group" accounts were found to lack disciplined strategies, making their profitability highly dependent on chance and their survival in volatile markets far more difficult.

The Path Forward: AI, Discipline, and FinTech's Challenge

Looking ahead, the report points to AI technology as a source of new opportunities for the industry, emphasizing a future focused on empowering traders with better tools and professional skills. In 2025, AI-powered tools for institutional-grade analysis and risk management became more accessible to retail investors than ever before. However, the data from Followme's community underscores that technology alone is not a panacea for poor trading habits.

Behavioral biases remain the key constraint on profits. While platforms like Followme, which serves over 1 million users, aim to make trading "easier and more transparent," the report is a sobering reminder of the persistent challenges. The relative success of copy trading highlights a potential path forward, where technology is used not just for analysis, but to instill the discipline that individual traders often lack.

As the retail trading industry navigates a potential contraction and grapples with these fundamental issues, the focus is shifting. Success for FinTech platforms may depend less on simply providing market access and more on creating ecosystems that genuinely improve trader outcomes through education, structured strategies, and tools that actively counter destructive psychological tendencies. The enduring challenge remains bridging the gap between having winning ideas and executing them with the discipline required for long-term profitability.