Guys, guys.... back up a little bit, slide the chair away from the screen and look.... this info about how we are not going to make it as daytraders has made it's way to a site built by guys that made $200 million from daytrading... I ain't a gonna worry 'bout no asademic shit no mo', no way....
4,000/1 Odds
- Thread starter BlueHorseshoe
- Start date
Quote from BlueHorseshoe:
Just finished listening to a presentation by a Brad Barber, professor at UC Davis. He is studying day trading performance in Taiwan (where I live.) Trading data on the local market is clearly identified as individual or institutional, and individual trades make up 25% of liquidity, so it is a good market to study.
Anyway, he said they have looked at the records of ~2-million "daytraders" over a 15-year period, and have identified about 500 who are/were consistently profitable.
So, in a nutshell he is telling us 1 in 4,000 daytraders are profitable.
Look to your left, look to your right, gentlemen. If you don't see 3,999 losers well, you get the point.
Of the 2 million people, I bet 1.9 were people trading at work or after work as a hobby.
So that leaves you 100,000 traders. And that gives you a 1 in 200 chance.
And a 15 year timeframe is long enough to weed out all but the most serious traders. It wouldn't surprise me if all 500 traders were multimillionaires.
One thing you have to realize is that Steve Cohen is a day trader and so is Jim Simons, PTJ, etc. Just about every hedge fund is a daytrader.
Yeah, but none of those 25 could pay the rent with their 'winnings' either ...
Expectations...
Why do most fail? Probably because they have not done their research and do not posses the right behavioral traits (and do not understand they can be fine tuned and learned).
Also, how many of these failed traders want to make millions? I would say most fail because their expectations were too high.
Then, out of how many successful traders, what was the starting expectation? "give it a try" "play it like a game" and make just a FEW buck$? Then probably that is why they succeed...
My buddy has just started trading. Is now up 750% and how did that happen? He used money he could live without, and "played" the futures like a "game" with very low starting expectations. That's how you create success...but the real traders need to find a way to keep the $ucce$$ and not blow it
Luck is also helpful...
"Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb can explain that...
Why do most fail? Probably because they have not done their research and do not posses the right behavioral traits (and do not understand they can be fine tuned and learned).
Also, how many of these failed traders want to make millions? I would say most fail because their expectations were too high.
Then, out of how many successful traders, what was the starting expectation? "give it a try" "play it like a game" and make just a FEW buck$? Then probably that is why they succeed...
My buddy has just started trading. Is now up 750% and how did that happen? He used money he could live without, and "played" the futures like a "game" with very low starting expectations. That's how you create success...but the real traders need to find a way to keep the $ucce$$ and not blow it
Luck is also helpful...
"Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb can explain that...
Are most of the trades of the mentioned people daytrades ?
Indeed a very interesting view is presented by Mr. Taleb in this book...
http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Random...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227546414&sr=8-1
I am currently reading it. It claims that sometimes luck is confused with skill etc.. For example, all the (in the beginning...) successfull daytraders in the dotcom bubble weren't skillfull but had big luck... Right time, right place...
Well there are around 15,000 day traders in the US. Meaning only 3.75 of them are profitable. Gee I must know all of them then. 