Why Only 10% of Stock Traders are Successful (and 90% Fail)? No clue what the actual successful % is..., nor do I care (lower the % leaves more for me...., and my colleagues) =============================== Boils down to a choice..., each of us make Make it happen..., watch it happen..., wonder what the fuck happened Chose well Trading is not an endeavor for the weak of fortitude RN
Over the years there has been broker account records posted on the internet a few time...once here at Elitetrader.com About 10% were profitable. In addition, back in the 90's there was some congressional hearings after a few shootings at a day trading firm and then another day trader killing his family. The owners of those firm stated about 10% were profitable. My guess...someone saw one of those brokerage records and every since...its been used as the norm ever since.
I think many people fail because they confuse luck with skill. Once their luck runs out, they have nothing to go on and ultimately find out they weren't so lucky after all.
I think it's just like in any other profession, some people raise higher and some stay where they are, because some people don't progress. They keep doing same things day after day.
1. Trade & risk management. 2. Practice (paper accounts) and experience. 3. Methods and some system to one's approach. I have been full-time day trading for about 3 months now. I lost about $900 in the first 7-8 days (some due to mechanical errors).. now I've been profitable every week since .. about $200 / day is usual will little risks, doing real day trading. I've made about $6K in several trades as a result of knowing (or lucking into) something about the stocks in advance. I made some very fortunate large investments that turned out well (TWTR $24.60 , SHAK $27 and FB $78 (during the flash-crash)). before I began trading live, I spent several months writing a program to handle my transactions, bookkeeping and scanning for stocks, so I can setup buy/stop loss/profit taker and execute with single keystrokes, scale in/out etc.). Then I spent 5-6 weeks testing and practicing with a paper account. Tracked and reviewed every trade and the results.. (before that I had been very active in stocks .... talking with my broker twice a week for years about my investment).
Actually it is 35% profitable and 65% not profitable (at least in Forex): http://www.financemagnates.com/fore...x-profitability-report-accounts-fall-profits/