On the contrary most traders i know had numbers which were exponentially better then their previous best in the market collapse in 2008, alot of traders basically got their retirement package out of that. Traders will make out like bandits, hedgefund/mutual fund managers will get crushed though
I would seriously challenge that supposition. I'd argue that a very small number of guys came out of that madness with record years. I look at this site as one indicator of how many guys still play the market and the amount of participation is way, way below what it was 4-5 years ago. The volume in the markets is way down from where it was in 2007. The list is endless. I'd also remind you that many shares were impossible to borrow, a few times the rules were changed in mid-stream. There were days in which an hour before the close the market could swing from down 5% to up 5% or more. That wasn't volatility as much as it was a complete liquidity vacuum (i.e. the market structure had been destroyed in the years leading up to 2008).
Boehner and Obama would have a duel? Wow! Imagine the TV ratings. This would blow the NASCAR and SuperBowl ratings out the window.
The guys who were not pros got railed in that stuff, no doubt about it. But of all the big traders i know (mid six figures) they made massive coin that year, and im not just talking about a few of them, i mean every single one. I know so many guys who had their first seven figure year that year, and blew their previous best out of the water by 3 or 4 fold, and they werent doing it primarily from tossing hail mary's and shorting banks that were falling apart, they were just sticking to their systems and taking 10 times the normal amount of trades that the volatility was generatting. I was the only knob who didnt make big money that year out of the guys i talk to, because i was focused on a strategy where i was trying to move stocks around and it was not conducive to the market. For the most part the people who got wiped out were the pikers who were buying dips and averaging into stuff from 2002-2008, and they mistook a bull market for an edge. I agree that the market has pretty much sucked balls since the crash, with the lack of volume and the increase in HFT it has become almost impossible to get into or out of any big position right off the open, even if you post a couple hundred shares on a stock that trades like 500k per day, the stock will trade around you and avoid filling you, so you have to pay up/down to get any size on.