Ya, many genius type people are weirdos. Not sure what I prefer, weirdo genius or Mr Joe Average. One thing for sure, 'tis easier to herd cats than get agreement on day trading.
The studies you posted don't show day trading is impossible, just difficult and only a small percentage can achieve, which everyone already knows. The purpose of this study was to see is Day Traders can learn by trading. Majority of traders fail and a small percentage succeed. So they don't "all" lose money. Study said NOTHING about whether traders made money by "chance", just whether they made money or not in the 21 month period. Again, majority of traders failed while a few succeeded. The best trader made $197K during that time. Again, the claim that they all lost is wrong. A small number succeeded, as the following chart taken from the study shows: Brazil minimum wage is $16/day so clearly a few are doing quite well for the time period of the study, 300 days. You can make the case that the Brazil study shows high risk for the highest gainers, but the traders are nonetheless making consistent money. It's always been the case that out of many that try, a small percentage will succeed, as shown. There was no conclusion that day trading failure was inevitable. So to say it's impossible or destined to failure when the studies say nothing of the sort makes no sense.
Doing 10% trading an indice when there is a bubble and it goes up 500% is really good. I know some people that did experiments with their dogs... dogs did better than most human day traders... Anyway I'm thinking... If a clown small day trader magically managed to find an edge big enough to cover not only the "market" spreads - hard to believe since one needs to be pretty dumb to day trade in the first place - but ALSO his broker costs (can't negotiate them unless one is huge and then you can't really be a day trader if you are huge) AND beat simple diversified buy and hold strategies, and the cost of leverage, at that point the edge is so enormous wouldn't brokers would look into it? So... only way to actually make real money is by having an enormous edge (or becoming a licensed broker and directly connecting to exchanges etc?), so I mean they'd want to stay undercover otherwise the brokers/academics/market makers/exchanges/regulators/my neighbour can recognize them and steal their magical strategy. But since day trading has enormous costs something like 1/5 of their risk+reward, taking additional trades to stay undercover decimates their profits... No matter how I twist it, unless there is a flaw in the system like in the SOES days, I don't see how any one can possibly make money day trading in this universe. Maybe in fantasy land idk.
I don’t know about herding cats but long term investors are more scared than a cat with a long tail locked in a room full people rocking in their rocking chairs...ROFL