Risk disclaimer
Trading can cost you everything you put in. Most retail traders lose money. If losing your deposit would change how you eat, sleep, pay rent or repay a loan, do not trade.
Why this warning is not a formality
Regulators in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America all require platforms to publish the share of retail accounts that lose money. The published figures cluster between roughly 65% and 85%. These are not the numbers of a rigged game — they are the numbers of a hard skill practised mostly by people who have not practised it.
Specific risks you are taking on
- Market risk. Prices move against you, sometimes suddenly, and no analysis prevents that.
- Leverage risk. Leverage multiplies losses exactly as it multiplies gains. A small adverse move can wipe out a leveraged position entirely.
- Total-loss products. With fixed-payout products such as digital options, an individual trade that finishes on the wrong side loses the entire amount staked on it.
- Liquidity and slippage. In fast markets your order may fill at a worse price than the one on screen.
- Platform and counterparty risk. A platform can suspend withdrawals, change terms, or fail. Offshore-registered platforms usually offer no compensation scheme, so if the company fails your balance may simply be gone.
- Currency risk. If your account is in dollars and you live on another currency, exchange-rate moves change what your balance is worth to you.
- Tax. Trading profits may be taxable where you live. That is your responsibility to check and to declare.
Warning signs of a scam
- Anyone guaranteeing profit, a fixed daily percentage, or "no-loss" trading.
- Anyone offering to trade your account for you, or asking for remote access to your phone or computer.
- Anyone who contacts you first on WhatsApp, Telegram or by phone about an investment opportunity.
- Any platform that will not let you withdraw a small test amount before you deposit a large one.
- Anyone offering, for a fee, to recover money you have already lost. This is a second scam aimed at the victims of the first.
Our position
Trade Basics is an educational publisher. We are not licensed to give investment advice and we do not give it. We publish general information for adults, and the decision to trade — and the consequences of it — remain entirely yours. If you are unsure, speak to a licensed adviser in your own country before you deposit anything.