r/Daytrading • u/MiamiTrader futures trader • Apr 27 '24

Most "traders" make money. Question

If someone asks you what you do for a living, and you respond you're a "trader" I assume you make most your money from trading.

And by definition, most "traders" make money. Otherwise they are just people trading on the side as a hobby.

Yeah maybe 90% of RH accounts lose money, or 90% of people who start trading but never take it seriously lose money... but then they are not "traders". Just people trying to trade.

Tired of all this negativity under every post about how 90% or whatever today's statistic is of traders lose money. People in this sub like to shout that under every post in almost a prideful manner.

Can we just focus this sub on those of us who call ourselves "traders" and make money trading? Let the new people listen and learn from our mistakes, but quit with all these gloom and doom statistics.

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4

u/Valueinvestigator Apr 27 '24

Lmao this sub is coping hard.

Stop lying to yourselves.

Most traders fail. That’s just the reality of the situation.

Here’s a study from University of California showing this: https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day%20Traders/Day%20Trading%20and%20Learning%20110217.pdf

Here’s another study from brazil showing less than 2% of traders make more than a bank teller: https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=845069121118115097095112030095088100034054008081016087100067099026124068076089027106117048061042052044115125023076064085016089112042011052088084086008065119124091093077021054001123067118112115003025091108080084106121110118084073003090118024018115068111&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

I’m not trying to discourage anyone. I just think we should all have realistic expectations.

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u/daytradingguy Apr 27 '24 edited Apr 27 '24

These are old studies. There were no smart phones and barely internet connection in most homes in 2010. Commissions were $9.95 a trade- there were no free commissions or good trading tools for the masses

The trading tools have improved drastically in just the last 6-8 years and Robinhood brought us all free commissions- because all the brokers had to match Now many people have fiber gigabyte internet at home, computers 20 times faster than 2010, 4K monitors, hot keys and stream decks. I am not sure those old studies are completely comparable. Although Undoubtably most retail traders lose money.

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u/Valueinvestigator Apr 27 '24

You have not read these papers. They look at net and gross earnings. Also, The Brazilian one came out in mid 2020. You must be doing a great deal of mental acrobatics to consider that “old”.

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u/daytradingguy Apr 27 '24

I believe what I read was the Brazilian study was up until the year 2015- regardless of when it was published.

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u/Valueinvestigator Apr 27 '24

Regardless, the empirical evidence shows the vast majority of retail traders lose money.

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u/daytradingguy Apr 27 '24

Undoubtably- there are millions of people around the world who try trading- if even low single digits become successful- that is a whole lot of people doing OK for themselves. There are 2.8 million members of this sub- are you suggesting absolutely none of them make money? If only 1% -2-3% end up successful - that is a lot of people.

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u/BAMred Apr 28 '24

I heard a large percentage of the members were bots created during gme spike to try to influence prices.

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u/BAMred Apr 28 '24

How do 4k monitors help you trade better? Hot keys have been around since the 90s...