You claim that a good trader "makes his $ a few days of the year" but this is true only to a trader who liquidates his positions only a few times a year and clearly is not a day trader. A day trader will liquidates his positions a few times a day. Please explain how trading is different from any other business. TM Trader.
Some thoughts: -- There are edges to be found in any market, in any time frame -- intraday emini trading is no different. And you can be sure there are traders out there taking advantage on a daily basis. -- I agree that a true, consistent edge is extremely difficult to extract for the emini market, but I can say this much: the person who has that edge won't be making 5k a month or 100K a year -- they would be making far more than that. -- For certain instruments the electronic market is the floor; I don't see why use of an electronic exchange would eliminate the possibility of consistent short-term profitability. Successful scalpers have always been around in the Chicago pits, it's not a big stretch to claim that they have their electronic counterparts. -- A couple people have mentioned the difficulty in sitting in front of the screen each and every day while being patient in waiting for their spots; someone mentioned that being an intraday trader is not the same as being a daily trader; these are great points and probably the main explaination for the dearth of profitable futures daytraders in the NY metropolitan area -- Trend Fader, if those you've known in the business for 20yrs were successful during that time, it's likely they would stick with what made them successful in the first place, which might explain why you've not found any profitable traders in the relatively newer market of intraday/electronic trading. Retail electronic futures has only been popularized these last few years; it's my guess that anyone who has survived the learning curve for the emini's would not necessarily be known in the usual trading circles.
I find this is an interesting thread. usually they die faster than that. yes, it's like any other business. many business have cycles, ie they are 'profitable' 6 months per year (or less !) still they open everyday. some are opened a few months a year, but daily then. most business have slow months. also, if you look at the reports of brokerage firms with specialists branch, you may see they are profitable most of the months but not all. anyway, I stand by my remark. it's like any other business. although every biz is different, with different capital utilization, risk profile, etc.. we should always treat trading like a business. you don't have to, it's fine. when the time frame is real pure daytrading it is even more important to do so imho. but if that's the only thing you disagree with my reply, it ain't that bad. there are other futures than emini and there are long term consistent daytraders futures. I don't know rich ones, although we all love what we do. I also know that a very important aspect is to know when NOT to trade. which is usually missed out by most.
I agree with virtually everything you're saying, illiquid (great moniker BTW!). As a former local trying to make the transition upstairs, there are two factors that I've mentioned in previous posts that mitigate the success of short term traders on the screen who are trying to duplicate the strategies of pit traders. One, the pit is not time prioritized. That means locals can and often are filled at their price ahead of paper. While that makes it more advantageous for a customer to trade Globex or ACE vs. the pit, time prioritization is also a reason why pit traders can trade "sloppier" than e-traders and get away with it. Secondly over the course of a year, commissions for a retail short term trader are Death!! I have a discretionary strategy to trade NQ that is immensely gross positive. Net, it's not even a scratch. With IB's low retail rates I'm still giving up a quarter point edge in juice. That means little too a swing trader but to a scalper who is trying to produce 1 NQ pt per 4 trades it's a no can do. I'm sure many guy's on this board are gross positive yet barely staying in the game after costs.
We can only judge others by our own standards. When someone thinks everyone else lies, they are the biggest liar.
Ok first of all I can't speak for futures traders, because for one I don't trade futures and neither do any of my peer traders. But I can speak for NYSE stock trading. And I would like to point out that there are people day trading NYSE making consistent money nearly every day. One trader I know had 2 losing days in an entire year. And this was verifiable. This particular trader was the most consistent within the group but other traders in the group have been pulling numbers averaging about 230 winning days out of 255 odd traded in the year. And as you can imagine they are making a good living. They all use essentially the same trading set up and software and of course that is a big part of the edge. And yes, a few of them have made more than 1 million in year. (2 out of the group of 6 traders) The point is that most who attempt to day trade aren't consistenly profitable (probably about 97% fail). But that 3% are out their and do exist. Obviously they are few and far between which explains why you haven't met any.