How many daytraders are there worldwide ?

Hi,

I'm just wondering, how many daytraders do you think they are in this world ?

10.000 ? 100.000 ? 1Million ?

Just wondering.

I guess that the brokers just have the numbers, they will probably share it with each other so they can see how much market share they have ?

 

that depends on whether or not you count paper traders.

And what is your precise definition of Daytrader? someone who is flat every night? Does not seem so important, as there are a number of short term/position traders, who might hold on for a few days, or until the signal says to get out/reverse.

I suppose some kind of formula could be done by counting some type of brokers, such as forex or futures (stocks or mutual funds tend to be held for months to years by many), adding up their total holdings, and postulating what % of their customers are day rather than holding on.

 

no paper traders, just day traders who are out every day

what do you think ?

 

The number of winners are about 0.3% of people in the future market.

Only a few of winners are daytraders.

 

and what about the people at firms who daytrade around core positions?

 

I once heard that there are about 300,000 in the United States. I'll presume that this number includes guys like myself who aim to slow things down a bit and only end up entering/exiting the same position once or twice a week.

If you just look at the account assets of the top 10 discount brokers and then realize that the average account size is probably less than 30K, that's a lot of folks trying their hand at this. If you presume 5% are doing it in place of more traditional income, that's still quite a few people.

 

Tough answer that only world brokers and government income tax agencies would only have access to.

It's got to be over a million considering we're talking about worldwide if you don't get into the debates of whom is profitable and whom is not.

Mark

 

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that tradestation averaged ~100,000 trades per day. I don't know if that was overall or for stocks only. It would be hard to wring out a number of traders from just this number, though.

 

Personally, I think there are only two. Me and that other guy I keep trading against.

 

ha, a looooooooooooooot , believe me, a lot. But only 2 guys here on ET that "seem" to make money, do a simple search and you will find them...;-)