Number of traders in the world???

I was thinking about this lately so I'll post this question...

How many currently active individual (retail) traders do you think there are in the entire world?

By individuals I mean guys who are trading on their own, including small fund managers, but excluding anyone trading for an institution (banks, hedge funds, arcades).

Futures only?

Stocks Only?

Total?

 

I think there are about:

4,456,378,422 active traders out there.

 

4,456,378,420....2 just blew out here accounts!!!

 

Perhaps I should have asked this instead...

How many active douche bags are there currently roaming this site posting nonsense so that they can chuckle at their elementary humor?

I guess I should know better. Stupid questions get stupid answers...

 

Yeow.. pussy has got some claws.

 

who doesn't trade, its the world wide video game for adults~

 

This is just a guess, but the SEC website might have those numbers. I'm probably wrong on this, but I think that full time retail traders are only in the 450k's range (in the U.S).

 

I think you might be in the ballpark. I remember reading something like 250k in futures from the NFA

 

My last tabulation showed approximately 4500-5500 "licensed, professional, discretionary traders". Including exchange traders, prop traders, specialists, market makers...but excluding "retail" traders and those who are "employee" types without fully discretionary powers.

This is U.S. only.

This came from some think tank a couple years back.

FWIW,

Don

 

I was asking myself this very same question as well.

After a lot of contemplation, I had the following epiphany:

It doesn't matter.

It's not the amount of traders that move a stock up or down, but rather supply and demand.

One guy clicking his mouse somewhere on the planet can have a bigger impact upon the course of price action of a security than thousands of other traders.

After all, size does matter