90% of people lose money in the stock market. But do you know why? Why your portfolio is at a loss when the market is upward, why most of the stocks you bought are underperforming; why aren’t you able to beat the market? If you go through all these thoughts, then you are one of those 90% people. So, today I am going to give you the top 5 reasons why most people lose money in the stock market.
1. Trying to make money quickly
This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make while investing in the stock market. People are always in a hurry to make money. They always want to become rich quickly. Always wanted to be like ‘Warren Buffett – Rich and Powerful. However, what they don’t understand is that Mr Warren Buffett has made the majority of his fortune after his 50s. It’s a fact that he got more than 90 percent of his wealth after the age of 50 and has accumulated a large sum through his long-term investments for a period of over 5 decades. Success in stock market needs time and patience.
But this is not how the people invest. They enter the market. Then select a stock which they heard on a news channel that ‘It has a huge growth potential’ and they invest heavily in it. Then they pray that their money becomes 5-10 times. However, it turns out that they lost 30-40% of their investment. So, out of frustration, they quit investing in stocks and started searching for another way that can make them rich quickly. This is how the non-achiever in stock market thinks and loses money in the market.
2. Not doing enough research and investing based on ‘TIPS’.
This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they start investing in the stock market. They easily trust the tips they hear from a friend, or colleague or from a financial magazine that they just read. Moreover, most people blindly follow the recommendations from their brokerage firm which later turn out to be a major loss on their investment. Now, you can argue with me about what’s wrong with taking tips and suggestions. Your friends and the brokerage firm have more experience than you and surely can help you in getting good returns. But if you think like that, then you are missing the point. No one else cares about your money more than you do. You can easily rule out the broker’s recommendations as they will only earn when you trade. They don’t care whether you win or lose.  They are getting their brokerage fee as long as you are buying or selling. Hence, they will always try to give you suggestions so that you can trade more frequently. And the more you trade, the more brokerage fees they will get. Now, let’s come to the suggestions from friends and colleagues.  There are a few things that a beginner should understand that no one is going to tell them. First, All your friends will always boast about their profits & returns. Second, none of your investor friends will tell you about their losses and bad investments. It’s sometimes a matter of pride. Overall, you will think that your friends or colleagues are always doing great, but they are not. You might take their suggestion thinking that they have researched a lot about that company and they are always right in investing. However, in the end, you will end up losing your money.
3. Holding onto losses while booking profits early
Let us imagine a scenario. You have bought 5 shares. Three of them are doing great while two of them are underperforming. What will you do? What will you sell first? The shares that are doing great or the one who is defeating?‘Sell the winners and hand them on to the loser stocks. The majority of the amateur investors follow this rule. They think that it’s safe to sell the stocks first which gives them good profits and holds the loser stocks. In this way, the loser stocks will get time to recover and they might get their initial investment back. Moreover, in the meantime, they can get some profits by selling their good stocks. However, this is the wrong approach. In this way, you are limiting your upper level and increasing your lower level. That is, you are limiting how much you can get profits as you have already sold your good stocks. But, you can suffer even greater loss as the loser stocks are still in your portfolio.If you want not to lose money in the stock market, then you should use the opposite approach. You should limit your lower level and maximize your upper level. This can be achieved by holding to your winners and cutting your loser stocks.
4. Lack of patience
Patience is the key to success in the stock market. The only thing that you need to do in the stock market is to buy good stocks and give it time. This is the only way to make money here. However, most people who lose money in the stock market do not have patience. Although many of these people are able to find good stock, they aren’t able to get good profits from them. Why? Because they don’t have patience. They can’t even give 2-3 years time to their stocks to grow. They want a quick result. However, this is not the only problem with such investors. In some situations when their stocks lose 20-30% of their worth, they become highly impatient and sell their stock quickly. If they have held their stocks for a couple of months, they could have got good returns of around 40-50% on their investments. Here, the lack of patience misfires in their intelligence in choosing a decent stock.
5. Blindly following the crowd.
This is the last reason that I want to mention why people lose money in the stock market. BLINDLY FOLLOWING THE CROWD. Imagine a scenario. Your neighbour bought a stock which increased its value by 50% in a few days. Then your colleague bought the same stock and the stock has now risen to around 80% appreciation from its initial value. Everyone is talking about that stock and it’s making a lot of noise in the news. What will you do now? All your known people are getting great returns by investing in that stock. Will you invest in that stock too? If you blindly follow everyone and buy that stock, then you are most likely to lose money. Everyone has some plans and strategies for their investment.  You just can’t read the exit strategy of your neighbour. Maybe when you thought to buy, he was planning to sell the stock in a few days thinking it was overpriced. But you just can’t know this. What you can do is read about the company’s fundamentals, and its financial reports and figure out why is it in the news so much. And after studying the company completely, if you are satisfied, then only invest in that stock. NEVER INVEST BLINDLY FOLLOWING THE CROWD.