stock777's hyperbole math works better than yours. In 2011 IB had $1.36 billion in revenue and Knight had $1.4 in revenue. That is just two out of many brokerage and market making firms. Who do you think paid all the tens of billions in 2011 to all the brokerage firms and market makers? You can have your "1000 1k losers, or 500 2k losers, or 250 4k losers, or some combination of losers totallying 1MM" without having a single 1 MM winner.
??????? .... and from that you conclude that the losers are losing 25 times as much. There may be 25 losers for every 1 winner, but the value of that win won't add up to 25 times the sum of all the losses. I repeat, Stock777's math is very wrong.
You are missing the subtlety. "As rich as Bill Gates ONCE WAS". At some point Bill Gates was worth nothing.
Yep, couldn't agree more. When I was trading Prop, I had this great short position that was getting wildly profitable, very quickly. I held for 30 minutes...and said "I'm going to let these profits run....I'm not going to be shaken out". Well, 5 minutes later, there was a giant short covering rally, and I lost 50% of my profits almost instantly. I got out for a meager profit. My manager came over and said "what the hell are you doing ?". He thought I should have taken that big profit early...and he was right. I, of course, was a newbie to daytrading. However, later that day, that short trade went on for huge profits.....and if held overnight, it was a major winner....we are talking several thousand dollars on a small 500 share bet. The stock had cratered 5%. The bounces and "head fakes" intraday just make that old adage worthless.