If you are making consistent money, who cares what you are trading? We'd all trade tulip bulbs if there was a liquid market for that product. Unrelated, but go Hawks!
Funny thing is I know someone that traded flowers and made millions. Went on a trip to Hawaii and came up with a plan to buy flowers from the locals and sell them in the NYC area. I agree, whatever works (That is legal).
I agree on Rmorse in that one would be better off keeping his mind open about what's tradeable out there but you completely missed OP's point if you reduce stock trading to highly mediatised momo stocks, although among the ones who made a lot of money in the financial markets are those who bought those stocks early enough and rode with them for a while.
"what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing." --Gordon Gekko, Wall Street. 1987 ...it's not just Equities alone, it's in addition to a little something called Options that will make all the difference. in all seriousness though, it depends on how you look at it...for the collective whole picture...sure, you can say Buy n Hold stocks will hold better than the collective cowboy speculators. like everything, you have to know what you're doing...but for the masses...most will fail or be average.
A boxer, a wrestler, a judo guy and a karate man all entered the ring together. The last man standing was the one who used his ability to the fullest with what he knows better than most.
Your friend is right. If you research all the big money real traders on this site you will see they traded equities. Index futures might move up 12-15% a year. Many biotech stocks move up 200% in a week. I trade everything but 90% of my capital gains come from swing trading equities. A lot of guys don't have the 25K min to intraday trade equities which is why they start with FX or futures.
I see that there used to be a pnl thread with blotters, and all of the winners traded equities, but hardly any Futures or fx winners. Interesting. I wonder if it's easier. I might try stocks next.
I may be wrong, but I believe that the percentage of retail FX traders making a consistent profit is miniscule.
To make your analogy consistent with evidence from MMA, the last one standing is the one who has cross-trained, is a superior athlete AND learned to adapt his art to real fighting. I'm not sure how that applies to this discussion, but it's reality.