#美国贸易赤字状况 Why have I been trading for years but my account remains stagnant?

There's a particularly painful phenomenon: making small gains during winning trades, but losing everything in a single loss. When floating profits appear, I can't wait to cash out; when floating losses occur, I cling to the hope of recovery and refuse to cut. Over time, small profits accumulate, but a single big loss wipes everything out. This is almost a common path for every beginner.

Where does the root cause lie? You're being hostage to individual trades. Human nature is inherently short-sighted—unwilling to accept losses, eager to recover and break even; afraid of profits, worried about giving back gains. Continuing like this creates the worst scenario: holding onto losing positions longer and closing winning positions too early.

But the market doesn't care about the success or failure of any single trade. What truly affects your long-term gains is the cumulative profit and loss of hundreds of trades. Yet, our brains are precisely most averse to making decisions based on long-term logic.

There's only one way to break this deadlock: use the risk-reward ratio to constrain human nature.

At the moment you place an order, you must clarify three things:
1. If you're wrong, what's the maximum loss you can tolerate? (Stop-loss level)
2. If you're right, how much do you expect to earn? (Take-profit target)
3. Is this ratio worth executing?

If the risk-reward ratio isn't satisfactory, even the most promising opportunity should be abandoned. This is the most basic yet often overlooked entry standard.

If you can achieve these three points, you'll already be ahead of most traders:
• Set a clear stop-loss for every trade.
• Expect a reward at least equal to or greater than the stop-loss range.
• Do not close the position prematurely if the take-profit level hasn't been reached.

There is no absolute standard for the risk-reward ratio; it entirely depends on the current market environment. When the market is clear, you can be more relaxed; during choppy, oscillating conditions, you need to be stricter. The primary goal is to stay alive and continue trading. I personally often use a ratio around 1.5, not to get rich quickly, but because this number is easiest to stick to and won't crush my mindset.

The most crucial point: mature traders never get entangled in the win or loss of a single trade. Their focus is on a broader dimension—multiplying the risk-reward ratio by the win rate to calculate the long-term expected value. When you truly step back from "this one trade" and view your trading system on a monthly or yearly scale, you've reached a threshold. The rest is just letting time verify.