The results of my last poll regarding length of trade were: 50% In minutes or less. 25% in hours. 25% in days or more. I'm wondering how successful these traders are. If you account for overhead and expenses, such as reported to the IRS, have you made money trading in this time frame or not? JJ
Interesting that this poll shows 75% of day traders here make money. An SEC study reported that 77% of day traders lose. Why the big discrepancy? Losers don't participate? Elitetrader is really elite? People don't answer truthfully? What do you think? JJ
I think that at this point you can't really draw any conclusions. It's too small a sample. And,as you mentioned, you don't know who is participating and if they are being truthful. But, that's a common problem with surveys.
I think the reason we hang out here is because many of us are successful to some degree, or are doing whatever it takes to be successful. I mean, if you had been among the people that lost your wad trading and found a new career, probably the last place you would want to see is a forum of people doing what you sucked at. That's what I figure at least. -Jim
These figures of 70 or 90 % of traders losing money just dont make sense to me - and is this meant to be index, commodity, securities, bonds, currency etc, and is it meant to be by the amount they trade, the number of contracts or what? How long do traders who lose money - keep losing money? It would seem logical that the traders who lose are by extension the newbies, because they can't loser for ever, so they are not going to be trading big size - at least not for long! and since big banks can trade thousands of big S&Ps and Nasdaq contracts - let alone everythng else and there are thousands of these guys - so what is all this percentage stuff about. And if the percentage was of the number of new people, how long is someone new? and does it mean retail or institution, the whole world or what? Does anyone actually know the truth or is this a figure which by default has become the rule?
stevet--- Good questions. I think the "powers that be" probably want to keep things undisclosed as much as possible so that idiotic rules like the PDT rule and the uptick rule can remain in effect. Obviously, whatever works to their benefit is what the rest of us have to deal with. While the PDT rule doesn't affect me, it certainly had a great effect on many of the posters on this board. UNFAIR for them. Of course, we ALL have to deal with the uptick rule. What nonsense! BSAM
I saw figures in the WSJ about a year ago. There were two different pieces of statistics: 1. 90% of all retail commodity traders lose money 2. 75% of all active traders at Schwab do worse than buy & hold. I'm sure there is stats from the retail daytrading shops. I'd be surprised if most are not losing money; but that's just a guess
That number is a rule of thumb legend that grew out of some obscure study. The actual percentages don't really matter, it's just a generalized opinion often trotted out by fundamentalists and sour grapes random walk types. It's a generalized cliche and as such does not have much actual value. What would be interesting to know is, what percentage of traders lose who a) have at least three years experience under their belt b) understand money management and use it without fail c) devote three hours or more a day to trading on a regular basis d) show clear evidence of at least moderate intelligence, self discipline and common sense I bet if you ran a trading study with those four qualifications as a filter on the participants, you would find that the failure rate would be something like 25%, the success rate (breaking even or better) being at least 75%. If you have those four things and you are willing to pick yourself up when you fall down, you can learn to make money in the markets. It's not rocket science. It's not even high school algebra. The truth is that the majority of those who try trading are undisciplined hackers who never put themselves in the running in the first place, and that even most of the "traders" on wall street are actually either slippage extractors working an engineered spread or slick salesmen finessing money from naive clients. People who are lazy, arrogant, starry eyed or accustomed to rationalizing with themselves on a daily basis are done before they start.
Take heart, bsam. Single stock futures will be launched before the year is out. All electronic, 20% leverage, no margin cost, earn interest on trading funds instead of paying it out, never again worry about not getting your short located...AND...no more uptick rule. SSF's are gonna be a smash hit.