The two fundamental mistakes Retail Traders make when buying :

1. They buy after a move up in price.
2. They buy into supply.

The two fundamental mistakes Retail Trades make when selling :

1. They sell after a move down in price.
2. They sell into demand.

They do this consistently for the following reasons :

They are taught to wait for trends in price to develop which means that the Institutions have already started buying. Therefore, Retail traders are always late into a move so their entries are further along the price curve and carry greater risk and less reward.

They trade based on emotion. In other words, they need to have confidence that a move in price will continue before they will join in. As a move continues to develop, they feel compelled to join in which typically has them either buying or selling after the move is extended and into either supply or demand. A classic real world example of this is the Real Estate market where buyers get in late because they are worried about missing out on capital growth, only to find that they bought the high of the market and then end up having to sell for a loss of tens of thousands of dollars when prices ultimately retrace or interest rates rise.

They are taught to rely on indicators which lag price which means, they won't enter a market unless they have confirmation from a tool which tells them to buy or sell after price has already left supply/demand.

To paraphrase a great quote from Sam Seiden (Online Trading Academy) in relation to the use of Moving Averages for timing market entries.

Moving Averages show the average price over a period of time, if price is above the average price the idea is to buy, if price is below the average price the idea is to sell. When the fundamental way to make money is buying at the lowest price and selling at the highest price, why would anyone want to buy above average price or sell below the average price??

You can hear that conversation by clicking here.

They don't look at the big picture. Most retail traders trade very small time frames, either tick charts or 1,3,5 minute charts to keep risk down. Because they trade such small time frames they don't look at the bigger picture to see if they are buying or selling into a Monthly/Weekly/Daily supply or demand. For this reason, they are trading in the chop where Institutions are taking profit and adding new orders, causing price to consolidate until there is a new directional move. It's these periods of consolidation at bigger picture demand and supply that leads to confusion and frustration for the Retail trader and ultimately has them sitting on the sidelines until the new directional move is well established.

Always think like an Institutional Trader and the Retail Traders will transfer their money into your account.