I've been interested in this topic as well, and here is what I found so far:
1. All prop firms must employ decent day traders, especially as those firms don't allow holding positions overnight. We just don't know if there are any truly great day traders out there.
2. Times have changed in terms of edges being eroded by competition and automated trading.
3. Realization (by quant firms and individuals) that day trading is very limited to a few instruments and trader's time, which can all be done more efficiently by computers using thousands of day trading strategies at the same time, and be more risk averse due to uncorrelated results. From this point of view we may say that some top hedge funds like Rentec are day trading, as they stated at some point that they hold options for only a few minutes.
4. Possibly most relevant: American day traders have been deprived of leverage, which is absolutely required for great gains. There is competitive trading community in Europe where they're allowed 1:100 and up to 1:500 margin on Forex and some indexes/futures, for example. This year Europe is also decreasing leverage, and some of those day traders posted math formulas showing how it's not possible for them to make money using pyramiding systems like Jesse Livermore's if their leverage were to decrease to 1:33, for example. I believe currently one of the world's top, if not the top, day traders may be Rafal Zaorski in Poland. He speaks at day trading conferences, shares all info he can including his live trades and bank statements, and exposes all trading educators as frauds, asking them to make money trading not teaching. He is using high leverage and I believe is also utilizing Jesse Livermore's pyramiding, or its variant. And he is getting consistent results every year, though not every day. He had days when he made a $million, while last night he posted on his FB page a $15K profit on DAX, though I think he started with a tiny amount and pyramided it up, so it cannot be calculated as a percentage of specific capital.
This is just an example that day trading is still possible and still works, but requires high leverage. That's why you'll find true day traders and day trading conferences only in Europe.
1. All prop firms must employ decent day traders, especially as those firms don't allow holding positions overnight. We just don't know if there are any truly great day traders out there.
2. Times have changed in terms of edges being eroded by competition and automated trading.
3. Realization (by quant firms and individuals) that day trading is very limited to a few instruments and trader's time, which can all be done more efficiently by computers using thousands of day trading strategies at the same time, and be more risk averse due to uncorrelated results. From this point of view we may say that some top hedge funds like Rentec are day trading, as they stated at some point that they hold options for only a few minutes.
4. Possibly most relevant: American day traders have been deprived of leverage, which is absolutely required for great gains. There is competitive trading community in Europe where they're allowed 1:100 and up to 1:500 margin on Forex and some indexes/futures, for example. This year Europe is also decreasing leverage, and some of those day traders posted math formulas showing how it's not possible for them to make money using pyramiding systems like Jesse Livermore's if their leverage were to decrease to 1:33, for example. I believe currently one of the world's top, if not the top, day traders may be Rafal Zaorski in Poland. He speaks at day trading conferences, shares all info he can including his live trades and bank statements, and exposes all trading educators as frauds, asking them to make money trading not teaching. He is using high leverage and I believe is also utilizing Jesse Livermore's pyramiding, or its variant. And he is getting consistent results every year, though not every day. He had days when he made a $million, while last night he posted on his FB page a $15K profit on DAX, though I think he started with a tiny amount and pyramided it up, so it cannot be calculated as a percentage of specific capital.
This is just an example that day trading is still possible and still works, but requires high leverage. That's why you'll find true day traders and day trading conferences only in Europe.
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