Wait a minute here, I have a question about this list. It makes no mention that these people daytrade. So it could be people's portfolio values. So someone that has a million dollar portfolio at E-Trade and the SP is up 2% on the day, that person could easily make 150k to 200k just being invested in stocks for long term holdings. That makes the top 10 list completely useless.
Wait a minute now, let's not confuse idiots that bought every dot com name in 1999 with those that simply own large mutual funds and diversified stock holdings that correlate to the sp 500. Equity markets have risen about 8% a year the last 100 years and most people that either put money way in good quality stocks, fund IRA's or 401k's or keep their money in index funds or mutual funds, do not lose their hard earned money. The dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about in the political world is the stock market is actually pretty safe if you hold blue chips. Now if your idea of investing is buying mama.com and TASR and holding a bunch of biotechs, then that's another story. But don't give me a sob story how mom and pop investors lose all their money buying and holding. That is a load of crap. And another point on daytrading and my remark as to why there is no one on the Forbes 400 that daytrades. Daytrading is pretty much a small piker sport. The reason for this is because the more money you have to daytrade, the harder it becomes to earn a high yield. You simply cannot move an infinite amount of stock in and out of positions all day without liquidity and slippage becoming an issue. I am referring to stocks here also, not sp minis, bonds, or currencies.
It only tracks the current day's marked profit or loss. If I bought some OSIP yesterday, held it last night, and closed it this afternoon, it wouldn't count on today's mp&l because the stock has to be bought and sold on the same day to be included. I take home penny stocks almost every night for the morning gap up, and it's never included with my present day tally of realized gains regardless of how high it may have ran before the close or in the aftermarket. Eventually, they're gonna tell us what # of the ~680 traders we each are.
I don't understand what the point of that is. They are showing numbers from daytraders but leaving out the numbers from people who swing trade, or trade on a longer term horizon. Strange company. If they are going to manipulate their data, how do you know they are not manipulating all their data? Follow?
Sure, I agree that it's not the most important thing to know, but I've always found it kinda interesting to see how the best of the best at our firm did on a given day. Most of the prop guys are using 10:1 intra-day leverage, but are only allowed 2:1 overnight.. so they don't do much swinging in their trading accounts. Our whole options buying/hedging process is cumbersome as well, so they mostly just pocket their gain or loss nightly, and come home cash. We all have other brokerage accounts for our long term holding. The top ten list should be pretty accurate.
They also show us which stocks made us the most money that day. It doesn't get me as juiced as seeing two guys make 60 grand a piece, but it does give me a few ideas on what stocks to track, and might still be in play tomorrow.
I can see that you are "hung up" on the term day trader. That is your problem, not mine. My buddies are multi-millionaires and they do some day trading along with other techniques. So, are they day traders or not? Second of all, Steve Cohen is on the Forbes richest PARTLY due to lots of quick trading, some of it probably intraday.
All right dude, you are missing my point. If you have millions, you will be an investor. It's too easy not to put away a few mil and collect easy interests/dividends. If I was given a few mils, that is exactly what I would do. I would still trade and day trade but mostly for fun. I know multi millionaires that made it in day trading thanks to 1999. They are excellent traders so it was partly skill during the easy times of 1999. First of all, they hide the fact that they have money. Second of all, they trade just for the game not for the money nowdays and still pull in some nice loot. I think it is just a natural evolution from day trading into investing as your funds grow larger. But there is no reason you cannot acquire a fortune day trading. Just look at 1999-2000 and even the current Naz high flyers. Someone in our office clipped OSIP for 40 points with 6000 shares overnight. I would not exactly call that piker.