so looking at the annual earnings poll, there were 26 people who said they made more than 50K last year so far. I suppose that could be considered successful (i.e., not losing money, enough to pay the bills). There were 195 people who responded to this poll so far, and 21 of them are not trading so let's say there are 174 people who are actively trading and who are responding to ET polls. simple arithmetic shows that maybe out of the people who regularly visit ET and respond to polls, 26/174 = 15% of people are successful, which is slightly higher but close to the often-quoted statistic (10% make it)... I am assuming that the percentage of people who are making > 50K and who responded to the earnings poll is similar to the percentage of people who are trading and responded to this poll. This might be reasonable, as people who make money will more likely not be reluctant to disclose their earnings over those who didn't make money.
