Just finished listening to a presentation by a Brad Barber, professor at UC Davis. He is studying day trading performance in Taiwan (where I live.) Trading data on the local market is clearly identified as individual or institutional, and individual trades make up 25% of liquidity, so it is a good market to study. Anyway, he said they have looked at the records of ~2-million "daytraders" over a 15-year period, and have identified about 500 who are/were consistently profitable. So, in a nutshell he is telling us 1 in 4,000 daytraders are profitable. Look to your left, look to your right, gentlemen. If you don't see 3,999 losers well, you get the point.
in 1998-1999 i saw a room full of guys and girls who didnt know a stock from a bond who became millionaires in that time frame ....not 1 in 4000 it was more like 30 out of 50...in other words who cares about numbers....peace
who needs 15 years to make it? if you haven't made enough in 10 you are playing with fire too long to never get burned~
Yeah, there was a massive bubble. Taxi drivers made, and then LOST millions. They still love to talk stocks ...
So... with the 100,000 or so ET members, that means there should be only about 25 true winners... I'll bet if there was a poll, about 25,000 would claim to be one of the "25"..
Not surprising. Daytrading only works if you can frontrun your large customers orders. Now I'm only a long term value investor.
More like his study is telling us a bunch of nothing since its going to be hard to quantify "day trading" and "consistently profitable"..and using data starting in Taiwan in 1993? are you kidding.. Just sounds like another professor who got burned trying to trade and now has something to "prove".