There is a phrase that traders hear but rarely understand deeply:
'Trading starts with a negative mathematical expectation'.
Not because you are 'entering poorly', 'didn't guess', 'the market is complicated' or 'manipulators have twisted the candle again'.
But because the system itself is arranged in such a way that a newcomer enters the game already at a loss.
Why?
Because the market only pays for discipline—and most people only develop discipline after pain.
🔻 Expenses, commissions, slippage
🔻 Emotions, FOMO, the attempt to 'get what's yours'
🔻 Stops that are set too close
🔻 Averaging that turns into a snowball
At the start, it's not just a minus—it's a mirror.
Your character, your weaknesses, your illusions about easy money.
Negative expected value is not an enemy; it is an honest teacher.
Most are afraid of these words.
But the truth is: if you do not accept negative expected value, you will struggle with reality.
If you accept it, you start building a system.
And this is where the most interesting part begins.
Positive expected value does NOT arise from 'signals'.
It is born from simple, yet disciplined steps:
1. Limit losses when the market goes against you.
2. Allow profits to breathe when the market goes with you.
3. Work not for the trade, but for the distance.
Trading is not about finding a magic button.
This is a path where the minus teaches you to think, while the plus confirms the correctness of the way.
The paradox is that positive expected value emerges exactly where most give up.
Where emotions give way to mathematics.
Where dreams become systems.
Where chaos stops being scary because you have rules.
And yes—discipline is boring.
But it is precisely this that provides what gambling does not: predictability of the outcome.
Negative expected value is the starting point.
Positive expected value is a reward.
Between them lies the character of the trader.
And in this context, trading becomes not a game, but a road where the one who wins is not the fastest, but the most resilient.
📊 #Trading
