Quote from monty21:
Not sure where you will get actual statistics, but maybe you can contact these firms... these are top in the business:
FirstNY, DE Shaw, Wolverine and Citadel.
These firms are more complex than just daytrading in equities. They are set up similarly to hedge funds (with no outside money) where they do arbitrage, pairs trading, algo type trading... and surely intuitive daytrading in equities. My opinion is that Chicago has the most respectable firm. Many of these firms make markets in options.
All firms with prop divisions have high turnover rates... Like I said earlier, they hire trainees and let them trade small size for some time. They play a numbers game and they expect only one or two guys from a class to become profitable. This model doesn't cost a lot of money for the firm because the daily stop loss is usually no more than $200 dollars. Eventually the negative P/L guys get fired and the profitable P/L guys start trading real size.