Are traders on EliteTrader better than average?

I believe traders on EliteTrader are better than average and one way to determine this is to set up a poll and compare the results to the disclosures of CFD brokers who are required by law to disclose the percentage of losing retail clients.

I think the poll will be pretty accurate because there will not be an incentive to lie for two reasons:

1. The poll is anonymous.
2. The poll is not asking how much you make, so there is no temptation to flex. The poll is simply asking are you losing money this year. Answering no, just means you are at least breakeven and doesn't necessarily mean you are making bank.

Let's focus on IG Group since it is the largest CFD broker in the world with 346,000 retail clients in 2024.

IG Group disclosed on its website that 72% of its retail clients are currently losing money.

I am pretty confident the percentage of traders here who are losing money is a lot lower than 72%.

 

Even average traders are making money the last couple years. Analytics like VAMI aren't all they're cracked up to be.

 

The poll is tricky.

1. The question isn’t the same as the thread title.
2. The affirmative is for “losers”.

But we can change our vote ^^

Maybe ET members are better than average because they at least try to educate themselves.

I’ve read that the average joe open an account, lose then quit trading. Only a few trade for a longer period of time.

ET is a forum that may attract the few that really consider trading for a longer period of time.

Therefore we remove from the statistics the bunch of people that lose then quit.

 

are you a better surgeon than an average medically educated doctor? the poll is moot.

 

The IG Group public disclosure is the percentage of retail traders who are losing money, not the percentage of retail traders who are winning.

Thus the poll question is created to be parallel to the IG Group public disclosure: are you losing?

 

You're assuming the demographic of cfd traders mirrors that of et

 

Virtually the entire sample of ET traders who are (honestly) profitable got there from market beta.

 

So what? Nothing wrong if we are beta traders.

 

Of course they would be, they are actively learning.

(But the "elite" are obviously SML, Wxy and Wildchild)

 

It's not trading. I'm stating the majority will claim to be profitable due to passive holdings in trackers. The rest are under-performing at best.

The true traders? Day or swing and generally uncorrelated to the broad market? Less than 1% outperform as traders.