This discussion keeps coming up on ET. To those of us who trade for a living, the question is silly.
I have friends who know what I do and they want to try it too. So for them the question is not silly as they try to find out what it is all about. They try to find out what to do: try or not try.
And to know what is needed to have some chances to succeed.
The answer is....daytrading is difficult. There are many endeavors which are more difficult, becoming an astronaut is more difficult, transplanting a kidney is more difficult, making the Olympics is more difficult as is becoming fluent in 6 languages, playing Paganini flawlessly by sight reading, becoming a Grand Master in a martial art etc etc.
I think the answer is not complete. The answer depends on the person who asks the question. Each person has other abilities and disabilities. So what is difficult for A can be easy for B. So difficulty depends on "who is trying to do something" and "what is he trying to do". The combination of both factors defines the grade of difficulty for that person. He wants to know HIS chances not the statistically probability of thousands or even millions of people.
So becoming an astronout can be more easy or more difficult, depending on the person. Same applies to all the other examples.
Usain Bolt runs without doing any efforts much faster than 99.9% of the world population. So not difficult for him but impossible for the others. Depends on the person.
They (we) may fail but the surest way of not succeeding is to not try.
I don't encourage to get into this as most will not do what it takes but I will not discourage anyone who understands the difficulty and goes forth anyway.
With this I complelety agree.
I never watched global statistics in life. I started businesses that statistically where risky, but I made good money. I started daytrading, where over 90% seam to lose, but I make money.
Most rewarding things in my life where things that statistically where not a good thing trying to do. To make good money you should be able to do something that not many people can, as then you have a good profit margin because of lack of competition. If you do something everybody can do, you will work hard for small money as there will be lots of people offering what you offer. Then prices follow (huge) offer and (smaller) demand resulting in low profits.
You want to do something that is not difficult? Flip burgers at Mc Donalds.
Statistics are only reliable coming from a statistical representative amount of data, and projected on a statistical representative amount of data. You can never use it reliably for 1 person. In my personal life most of thes stats were completely wrong.
If people live on average till the age of 79, how old will you become then? Nobody knows. Theoretically you can die the day you are born or in 100 years. There is no reasonable probability to tell you with high certainty the outcome for you. The same is valid for the question posted by OP. Only future will tell what the correct answer was.
