So called gurus like Timothy Sykes or Ross Cameron cannot be making over 500% gains yearly because, if they were, they would not bother teaching students how to trade for a couple of thousands a piece? That is how they make their monies now! If you charge a student $3,000 x 100 students is $3,000,000, they can have even just 25 students and make a decent amount each year before taxes. If you had a trading system able to generate 500% gains yearly, you would not be sharing it but, keep trading it for those huge profits! You will be a billionaire in a short period of time! The best hedge funds with top traders managing the monies make around 20% per year on average and have losing years once, in a while. Think the so called day trading gurus can do better? I highly, doubt it!
The guys like Cameron who consistently make big returns off their *trading* (aside from yes, big money from their *trading services*) can't become billionaires despite their high % annual returns because their styles of trading aren't infinitely scalable. Cameron generally seems to trade < $10, low-float stocks, for example, so there's a limit as to how much size he can put on.
I've also heard a couple other very successful daytraders say that they and others they've seen start getting a mental/emotional block when their risk goes above say, $1,000 per trade. It just becomes too stressful, and they don't need that. They're fine making whatever they're making (typically somewhere comfortably in the six figures annually) relative to their lifestyles, and they usually diversify into multiple revenue streams at that point (almost always at least separate swing trading accounts). You'd think they could just shift their psychological baseline the more demonstrably successful they get -- but maybe that's easy in theory and hard in practice.
So anyway, what they typically do is "zero out" their accounts at say, the start of every year to whatever beginning balance they need to trade comfortably. They may be making X00% annual returns, but it's not being compounded.
As to why anyone would want to share a "system" that generates huge (actual trading) profits vs. keeping it to themselves? The ones I've seen are primarily discretionary traders, not algorithmic traders... so they aren't really "sharing"(/selling) a proprietary "system," but rather more of a method or approach. And from what I've seen, at least, even if their methods are fairly specific, they're really just different versions/combination of the same underlying methods & concepts that have been shared/taught/sold for years by others -- but put into their own "unique" package.
And
even then -- I think many here would agree that: 1. Most traders won't study and learn a given method to the depth required to master it. 2. Even if they do
learn a method to a sufficient degree, they won't
execute or
practice it properly -- they'll break rules. 3. They also won't be able to overcome the numerous other challenges that can make or break a trader -- risk control, money management, psychology, failure to adapt to changes in the environment, etc.
So in the end -- if say, the failure rate for traders in general is ~95%, I'd *guess* that the failure rate for students in any given "proven-successful" method is maybe say, 90%, lol. So not really enough to have an effect on anyone's edge (that was never truly proprietary anyway)... and especially long-term, because most traders will inevitably fail due to #3 above.
All that being said -- some bigger players, algos and even just competing services do apparently play off consistently successful traders who are widely known... or at least, their general approach. I've seen allegations that some algos actually sub to certain trading services to do that.