You claim your four-word question is "simple", yet you did not provide parameters for 50% of the words in your question. How do you define "profitable" ? How do you define "consistently" ?
My trading mentality is to "sleep well at night." Therefore I look for trades that offer 80%-90% probability of success with effective rules to limit losses to no more than 20% of required margin. Credit spreads is my primary vehicle. I've still got a lot to learn here.
What a naive and moronic question! No, I'm not consistently profitable. Profitable? Yes, hell yes. Consistently? No, NOBODY IS. Not even GS. I only trade (and win really big some years). Other years I'm cash. You have been suckered to believe this consistently profitable, make a living of peanuts, frequent-trading BS by brokers. You are a commissions generating fool. If you want to be profitable, trade very long term (years). If you want to make a living from peanuts, buy an burger cart.
But there are so many people who trade well short-term using even 5 minute time-series? I think if you are trading using Macro Analysis, then it could come good in a 'big' way (or go bad in a big way) but you also need the capital to make it big when you feel you have a good bet. But it is definitely interesting-- because there is a lot of judgment and reasoning involved and its very, very subjective.
You are right. They are having like 5 days of losses per year out of their trading activity. GFY now.