I disagree with that theory.I must imagine every major tidal wave (market crash) clears out a significant majority of traders...to basically never hear from them again![]()
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The late 90's dot com market crash, and the 2008 housing market bubble.
Even without those major tidal waves...people still drop like flies in this game.
It's rare for people to survive long in this game...the people who do survive, I must imagine their % returns are just very conservative, or more or less...just in line with the major market indexes.
I would like to see, or know, who are the rare people out there who are able to fly high for very prolonged periods -- and basically never sustain a substantial hit,
Many traders I know (myself included) had their best years ever in crash years (2000 and 2008).
It was the slow overnight gap up years with little intraday volatility that wiped out impatient traders during the 2000's.
Then came HFT which was like the Black Plague to the industry.