Not really. Most people think daytraders are scalpers. A scalper makes small profit on each trade but cost more energy. But there are other kind of daytraders. I have an ES daytrading strategy and a forex daytrading strategy. ES strategy only make 1- 3 trades each day. Forex trades are a few trades more but both do not need me to watch market closely. I have hard number on my system to help me decide when to enter and exit. Each trade have a stop set as soon as the entry is placed. Both entry and exit are stop orders.So I can move my attention to read novels or watch sport games. I only need to occasionally come back to see if my stop is hit.
I just research Mark Minervini and I believe the number 182.6% is for his annual profit. I guess this achievement can beat most scalpers but I am pretty sure it falls far behind other type of daytraders.
True but they don't have to. I spend an hour a day max. Trade one market, rarely have more than 5 or 6 positions.
It's tough to compare because there are few audited records. I'm not sure a day trader has ever won the trading championship. You would think one or two would enter.
Today, NQ had an RTH linear range of 185 points. NQ closed up 111. The number of points traveled/traversed between 9:30am and 11am EST was over 400 points.
I'm currently in 55 positions with another 30 waiting to enter. Money is made or lost without hardly any labour, as mentioned previously, overnight holding is often advantageous, no trading required.
What time frame are you using? With daily or weekly time frames you can spend weeks or months waiting for a trading signal, so how can you possibly spend "an hour max" and find the trading pattern you are looking for in just one market??
i don't think daytraders need to play a contest. I don't think a contest winner represents the best trader in this world.