I've been interested in this topic as well, and here is what I found so far: 1. All prop firms must employ decent day traders, especially as those firms don't allow holding positions overnight. We just don't know if there are any truly great day traders out there. 2. Times have changed in terms of edges being eroded by competition and automated trading. 3. Realization (by quant firms and individuals) that day trading is very limited to a few instruments and trader's time, which can all be done more efficiently by computers using thousands of day trading strategies at the same time, and be more risk averse due to uncorrelated results. From this point of view we may say that some top hedge funds like Rentec are day trading, as they stated at some point that they hold options for only a few minutes. 4. Possibly most relevant: American day traders have been deprived of leverage, which is absolutely required for great gains. There is competitive trading community in Europe where they're allowed 1:100 and up to 1:500 margin on Forex and some indexes/futures, for example. This year Europe is also decreasing leverage, and some of those day traders posted math formulas showing how it's not possible for them to make money using pyramiding systems like Jesse Livermore's if their leverage were to decrease to 1:33, for example. I believe currently one of the world's top, if not the top, day traders may be Rafal Zaorski in Poland. He speaks at day trading conferences, shares all info he can including his live trades and bank statements, and exposes all trading educators as frauds, asking them to make money trading not teaching. He is using high leverage and I believe is also utilizing Jesse Livermore's pyramiding, or its variant. And he is getting consistent results every year, though not every day. He had days when he made a $million, while last night he posted on his FB page a $15K profit on DAX, though I think he started with a tiny amount and pyramided it up, so it cannot be calculated as a percentage of specific capital. This is just an example that day trading is still possible and still works, but requires high leverage. That's why you'll find true day traders and day trading conferences only in Europe.
There are plenty of edges. Look at ES and CL today, there's plenty to keep a day trader occupied all day. They can automate, arb and spread all they want, there will always be plenty of work for a capable directional trader within the intraday timeframe. H.
Why go for pennies (have done it for many years) when you can go for dollars. Once you reach certain size, day trading no longer viable. If you day trade via algos and across plethora of instruments then it is a different story.
Thx for the heads up, I have all 3 books (the 3rd one being Wizards of Wall Street by Kirk Kazanjian) Will read the Tom Baldwin bit again, has been some many years since reading these classics.
Some market wizards have retired and now earn money selling books or giving speeches. Some market wizards are failures and hence earn money selling books or giving speeches. Day traders enjoy trading day after day. They don't have to earn money selling books or giving speeches. _________________________
On another hand, occasionally we see news like this (just happened today): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...options-trader-bags-10-million-on-jobs-report "Mystery Treasury-Options Trader Bags $10 Million on Jobs Report"
Most prop traders lose money and very often they are taught by losing traders. Their prop firms make them deposit money calling this a performance bond and when that money is gone so is the trader-- while the firm collects fees, commissions, etc. Shoenfelf was once the largest firm and they used to put up all the money, which is an excerption to the normal propoint firm moddel: Here is an excerpt from a 2010 lether from the most successful day trading firm, Shoenfeld, to it’s fully fully trained and fully backed traders before it fired most of them: "unfortunately, our vision of the future of trading has changed. It is getting much tougher for traders to make a living or get by. The direct competition from black boxes, stat arb and high frequency trading which continues to grow at exponential rates is here to stay and has caused us to change our outlook for lesser skilled traders." 11 pros I know from15 years ago all became losers and have stopped, even though some had made millions. So… I will not say there are no highly successful pros, but many of those who crush are highly automated and incredibly skilled. ______ P.S. You make many good points in your post and I will reread it again at a later time.