[igf]

Restricted to the publically-available data from one particular and rather odd site, but probably not crazy.

At first it seems counterintuitive, shouldn't it be roughly 50% gaining and 50% losing? But I guess that people typically put in a modest amount of play money, and then tend to trade until either they run out or get discouraged from losses.

[joosters]

1) There's a spread between buy and sell prices, so after many trades, both sides can lose.

2) As there is high leverage, traders are encouraged/forced to put up stop loss orders. These limit the amount you can lose on a trade, but effectively kick out a trader at maximum loss in even tiny amounts of market turbulence. Plus in times of volatility, the automatic market sell orders may get even worse prices. The market volatility kills many a trader.

[criddell]

One thing I've always wondered, if you take a day trader that was wiped out in some time span, and reversed all the trades (ie sell rather than buy and buy rather than sell), would they still be wiped out?

[sidlls]

Possibly. Also, due to the nature of trading, they may have been wiped out in this hypothetical "reverse all trades" scenario before they were in reality. For example, they could have had one potent stochastic windfall early in their career that, had it gone the other way, would have wiped them out.

[3chelon]

I agree. The nature of the spread acts like entropy.

[pliny]

>shouldn't it be roughly 50% gaining and 50% losing

1) They aren't trading against each other (they're trading against professional investors)

2) When you trade randomly you should expect to lose money (paying fees, paying spread, getting 'good' executions rarely and getting 'bad' executions often, etc.)

[3chelon]

50% losing and 50% gaining, without any spreads or commissions, would eventually destroy all your wealth. It's the classic "random walk" or Brownian motion study in finance, and it destroys your wealth because every time you lose 50% you have to gain 100% to get back to where you started.

[danieltillett]

I am sure someone will come here and say they have made their fortune from day trading, but every single person I know personally who has tried has lost a fortune. It is like lotto - sure someone wins each week, but nearly everybody loses.

[weavie]

Well, I don't make a fortune from it, but after losing a fair amount of money day trading, I wrote an iOS app where people can practice their day trading. The income from it has covered my losses from trading. So, yeah I can say I make some thing from day trading!

[pm90]

Do you see what the parent's point is? You may not be one of the people making money directly from day trading itself, but you are an outlier, in that you used your experience to create a product. Which is something that only you did.

I do think its a smart idea though. My comment was directed more at the appropriateness of the parents' observation.

[acjohnson55]

It's also like the casino in that people tend to advertise their big wins, but not so much their losses.

[danieltillett]

Yes this is totally true. I am not much of a gambler (outside of my investments, but at least I can lie to myself here that I know what I am doing), but I was stuck on my last visit to a casino how nobody was having fun. I saw hundreds of miserable people losing masses of money and not a single smile or laugh.

[matwood]

Depends on the casino and the game. European casinos are very depressing. The Monte Carlo for example should be fun, but it's extremely stuffy. The 'american' style part is a bit more fun.

But, find a cheap casino in Vegas and you can have some fun. Last time I was there, Casino Royale (across the street from the Belagio) had $2 craps with 50x odds. Craps is social to play and $2 is super cheap to learn with.