just curious，since about 90% of the traders lose money, what's the percentages of winning trader in the forum. Are you the 10% who makes money?
I think the internet is the wrong place to ask about winning traders. Go look on Twitter, everyone seems to be making $10k - $50k a day as if it was a walk in the park. Having said that, the 90% figure, if correct, is somewhat disingenuous because you have to take into account the actual number of traders around the world. There has to be at least a few million meaning there's hundreds of thousands of profitable traders. So why can't another trader join the ranks? They can if they put in the work but the work tends to be years of practice and most don't have the time or the intestinal fortitude. Think about it, if the winning traders have all put in those years, often painful, the odds of someone coming along, doing 3 months work and then expecting to beat them are very slim... A successful professional trader is basically PROOF OF WORK...
To know if you are in the top 10%, you should know all details from all the other traders. If not you cannot calculate where you are. If you voted above, you are clearly not in the top 10% as these people never vote.
The customer data released under regulations in the UK and the EU indicate that about 20-25% of active private retail traders have profitable accounts at any one time. So the odds are perhaps not as bad as some people make out.
For a professonal trader I define it as making money every month (unless you're very long term, then it's not so possible). LOOK at the action in the markets, almost EVERY day there are great moves, doesn't matter which market. So to be a pro, you have to be able to harvest some of that whilst keeping losses under control. If you're not making money every month then you need to work on your game-plan. Interestingly I'm just reading Soros's Alchemy of Finance where he details his trades and thinking from the mid-1980s. Fascinating how he gets suckered by the markets here and there, buying the high, selling the lows, fucking up his profit taking (like most of us!) and so on. He scores massive FX gains on the 1985 Plaza deal but admits that all those profits pay off all his FX losses for the past 4 years! So here's one of the best money managers and for several years all he gets is losses in FX. Of course, those losses are more than made up via profits from the rest of his portfolio. The advantage that most of us have against a massive portfolio is we can be in/out all day long if need be. That's a REAL EDGE so use it...
Thanks for all the replies, there are lot of comments on the preciseness of the vote. I know different people have different standard on "consistent", so my definition of consistent might not be the same as yours. But I was just asking in general. I was just curious how many in the forum are actually profitable? Thanks,
So making 6 figures annually (but with losing months) is not profitable but doing $200 every month is profitable? In the end it's what you have in your account that matters. There are no rewards for consistency.