Well if your mechanical system is your main system then how much does this pull in a week? Please add it to the poll.
Great results: 100% of ETers make money, according to the poll. Never underestimate the power of asking the right questions.
Poll with wrong assumptions. 1) Looks like someone is looking for a weekly, monthly salary kinda thing. 2) Assumes that the only thing that traders make is profits. Missing out entirely on something called "loss", which alas, is not very uncommon Give the 95 % crowd some place in your poll. Maybe 99 % since you say intraday
This poll does makes some sense if people vote based on average weekly profit, over the last 6 or 12 months. It is interesting that there are fewer discretionary traders at higher $$$ amounts. It is easier to scale up with a mechanical system.
I think we need some statistics refreshers lol What does an ET poll tell you about daytrading when ET is such a small sample of daytraders? Neither does looking at the people who post daily blotters. If all posters were profitable is that really telling of the market. One main reason many traders fail is they look to others for an ego confidence booster that one can make money doing it which totally ignores the fact of whether you specifically have the skills and abilities to do it for real. Lots of people can get a hit off of the top MLB pitchers but I doubt I could. What one or a few people do has no bearing on what you as an individual can do nor is it indicative of what the market can offer you.
and to follow up optioncoach... ignoring whether all replies are honest, the polls tend to be self-selecting. i'll give one example of this: my college would annually post results of "here's how much the salaries are of our recent graduates, and what degree they received." i was astounded at how high they were relative to the national avg, and what i thought the graduation salaries were. so, when i finally graduated, i found out what they did. they sent out a form which said "please return this, let us know where you work and what salary you make.". so the only people on the study were those who replied. it EXcluded: -> people who were in graduate school, some of whom went to graduate school because they couldn't find a job. -> people who couldn't find a job and were doing the equivalent of burger king. -> people who took a job but felt embarrassed about their salary. -> people who didn't feel like telling their salary. so, putting those together, you basically had results which were skewed to the upper end of the results. there was no requirement / incentive / force to make everyone report back on their salary. to not be invasive, the question you want to ask is NOT how much "you" make, but how much others make, a reasonable goal for a (discretionary / mechanical) trading methodology based on whatever markets / size of account, etc. but those questions are answered tons of times over on ET. by the way, i didn't answer this poll. my profits are between myself, family, accountant and IRS.
Its really worthless because so few people can control themselves in the big anonymous internet and you wont get real answers