Do you think this is the truth about day trading?

Do you think this is true?

  • Total voters
    27
Most of the time the market is not volatile enough to justify day trading.

Most would lose money, there are people who can make some but IMO swing trading is the best.
 
The real truth is it is easier to bring home the bacon
doing day trading rather than swing trading or investing.
But you have to work extremely hard in order to
be successful.

Almost all the traders in the trading houses / hubs are
day traders.
 
those charts completely understate and ignore the compounding effect of churn

in other words

bullshit

that said, for the average dingleberry, buy and hold has been and might well continue to be , the best bet
 
There are numerous papers on day-traders performances. Data paints rather dim portrait of day traders.
What I have gathered from research papers published after 2000. Too mind some of those papers used older data from 90's.

  • Collectively day-traders are net-negative. Over 6 month period most traders individually are net negative.
  • Around 35%-20% day-traders made money on pre 2000 data sets. For newer papers this number has drastically decreased to 5-15%

For the paper in question, quoted in article is latest. Truth is, it is getting even worse - data from 2013 to 2015 in the Brazilian equity futures market, the third in terms of volume in the world, shows that 97% of all traders who trader more than 300 days lost money. So 3% (or 1551 individuals) made money.

Only 17 individuals (1.1% of 1,551) earned more than the Brazilian
minimum wage (US$ 16 per day), only eight individuals (0.5% of 1,551) earned more than
the initial salary of a bank teller (US$ 54 per day), and the individual who earned the most
earned US$ 310 per day on average.9 Moreover, the eight individuals who earned more than
the initial salary of a bank teller did so with great volatility: the standard deviation of the
daily prot of these eight individuals ranged from US$ 632 to US$ 3,308.
 
AYUA said:
There are numerous papers on day-traders performances. Data paints rather dim portrait of day traders.
What I have gathered from research papers published after 2000. Too mind some of those papers used older data from 90's.

  • Collectively day-traders are net-negative. Over 6 month period most traders individually are net negative.
  • Around 35%-20% day-traders made money on pre 2000 data sets. For newer papers this number has drastically decreased to 5-15%
For the paper in question, quoted in article is latest. Truth is, it is getting even worse - data from 2013 to 2015 in the Brazilian equity futures market, the third in terms of volume in the world, shows that 97% of all traders who trader more than 300 days lost money. So 3% (or 1551 individuals) made money.

Only 17 individuals (1.1% of 1,551) earned more than the Brazilian
minimum wage (US$ 16 per day), only eight individuals (0.5% of 1,551) earned more than
the initial salary of a bank teller (US$ 54 per day), and the individual who earned the most
earned US$ 310 per day on average.9 Moreover, the eight individuals who earned more than
the initial salary of a bank teller did so with great volatility: the standard deviation of the
daily prot of these eight individuals ranged from US$ 632 to US$ 3,308.
More...
I would like to respond to the above post because those numbers are highly accurate. it takes a lot of risk to make it in day trading and what is making it?

what were the account sizes of these losing and winning accounts? the question of return when it comes to day trading is really an absurd question. i could make 100 dollars in a daytrade in a 1 million account just as easily as i could make 100 dollars in a 1000 dollar account.

I am doing a sac. a small account challenge and it has really re opened my eyes and brain to understanding trading once again on a different level. it has forced me to to take much bigger risks % wise than i would normally ever do but i also % wise have made more in a day overall than i would with less risk taking

there are winners and there are losers in all durations of trades. day swing long term holds. it took the nq what 10 or 11 years to get back to new highs again!!

there is a ton of euphoria right now in the mkts. it is a great time to be trading period.

Professional dayvtraders at firms and prop shops have extremely small commissions and fees!! if you look at your accounts trading costs n fees as a whole and reduce those by 90% i bet a majority of dayvtraders would be net positive.

the study is spot on about the volatility of returns. look at my SAC. ha ha!! my day to day net returns are extremely variable!! this is a problem obviously.
 
maxinger said:
The real truth is it is easier to bring home the bacon
doing day trading rather than swing trading or investing.
But you have to work extremely hard in order to
be successful.

Almost all the traders in the trading houses / hubs are
day traders.
More...

Daytrading is more consistent. But the real truth is that those who make big fortunes are all longer term swing traders..Guys like Jesse Livermore, Richard Dennis, Ed Seykota etc..
 
cafeole said:
I have studied charts ad infinitum and took courses and read many books and so far I suck at day trading.
More...

you are an extremely intelligent person and expect the market to be the same........

markets are intelligent........they are emotional......this is the problem: you can never predict an emotional man...an intelligent man ,yes, you have a chance

the fall in world markets after 9/11 of some 70% .......was a pointer towards this.

the fall of twin towers did not and could not reasonably seen to affect any fundamental such a earning growth of any company ....yet the markets crashed. this cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be called intelligent behavior by markets
 
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