I didn't know ol' Abe was into daytrading!??? "Lawyerin' and studyin' by candle light, splittin' rails and daytrading during the day.." Probably had to use an old '386 and 14.4 dialup...Truly, an American legend.
Brokerage firms do. They obviously have to know their clients' account balances for their own balance sheet. I had a [bulge bracket broker, name withheld] report get sent to me a few years back detailing the statistics of their clients along with suggestions to their client service rep's to "make the client feel as good about themselves" as their account balances go down. Pretty eye opening for me.
As we testified to various regulatory agency's years back..."trading should be taken seriously, and performed only by those who immerse themselves into it. However, this is still America, and our citizens have the right to engage in any legal activities." Some come to Vegas and make millions (http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/Brightint.htm) Most come to Vegas and "donate" to our economy, which keeps us from having a State income tax. Casually attempting to play any "game" or engage in any business venture will obviously not have the same results as those who really get into it, and take it seriously. Trading is like most business ventures in this regard. FWIW, Don
Lindq's reasoning on the ecosystem of trading is IMHO spot on. However I would respectfully submit that high quality statistics on the subject do exist. By high quality I mean they are free from the usual naive biases and have been carefully thought through. These are not of US traders, AFAIK, because there are hurdles to getting clean datasets here, but in other countries you can get anonymous datasets of all retail accounts in the country.
The perennial problem of retail trading houses. If most customers made money, their accounts would grow over time and there would be no need for marketing. However, customers tend to lose money and a house that didn't aggressively market to get new accounts would see it's total assets shrink slowly over time as its customers deplete themselves. Of course 5% (or whatever that number is) do make money.
we have about 90,000 members on this forum who are probably serious about trading, so why don't we make a survey and establish our own statistics.
Exactly. Any idiot with $5,000 or $50,000 can "compete" with the Pros. It's as if you could play basketball against NBA players... if you had $5,000. People, especially TA types, believe the market is like "ether"... A completely esoteric entity... Not something composed of actual people. NO... it's just like pro poker... When you start trading... You are trying to take MONEY AWAY from the Top 10,000 traders in the world. And the 95% number pretty much applies to all Zero Sum Games... Trading, poker, sports betting... 5% win and 95% lose. If you do not understand EXACTLY why you are in the Top 5%... Then just stop gambling.
LOL. And I've seen at least 89,000 of those come and go. And they weren't serious about trading. They were serious about WANTING to trade, which is a different story altogether. I'll venture a wild guess that there are less than 100 active, fulltime, profitable (meaning professional) traders who visit or post to this site on anything approaching a frequent basis. Others are trying, in various stages of success or duress. That's not to take anything from E.T. It's a good resource. But were talking here about the reality of the business. The barriers of entry for a retail trader are nil. But the barriers to success are many.