Originally published in French on objectifeco.com, December 11, 2009. The site was purged in 2016; this text survives only in the Internet Archive (Snapshot). Translated, not rewritten: what follows is the original argument as it was made, including what time has since proven wrong. Where that happens, you'll find a note from the desk, dated 2026.
85% of retail traders trade counter-trend. They have a high win rate, often above 60, even 70%.
But when they lose, they lose heavily, often the gains built up over several months, plus part of their capital.
The average lifespan of a counter-trend trader is three accidents. After that third accident, they generally no longer have enough money left in the account to ever hope of turning positive again.
To this day, I've only met one counter-trend trader who was able to prove to me he'd won for several consecutive years.
15% of traders trade the trend. They have a low win rate, around 30%. They lose little.
Only those who manage to hold on to winning positions long enough make it through over the long run. Roughly one in four trend traders makes money over the long term.
Desk note, 2026: the 85/15 split, the "three accidents" lifespan and the one-in-four figure above are Samuel's own observations of client accounts at the time, not published statistics.
Choose your camp carefully when you build your trading method.
Part of a series. This article belongs to Trading Styles: Every One Sends You a Bill. Related: Trend Trading: The Key to Success and Counter-Trend Trading: The Key to Success. Background: trend following in the Ouinex glossary.
About the author. Samuel Rondot has traded since 1995, self-taught. Between 2009 and 2017 he published around 300 articles on objectifeco.com, abcbourse.com and his own blog, many of them drawn from what he saw in hundreds of client accounts. Objectifeco wiped its archive in 2016; the Internet Archive kept a copy, and every article republished here links to its original. He now runs the Strategy at Ouinex.
Trading leveraged products carries a high risk of loss.
