Of those that traded for a single day, roughly 30% turned a profit. Conversely, only 3 percent of the people that traded for over 300 days made any money.
In fact, the researchers found that the longer that someone traded, the more money they lost. This pattern can be seen in the casino roulette, said the academics.
>> If day trading is not profitable, then why do people still do day trading?
Trading is a high turnover occupation. Losing traders are constantly exiting the market but new blood is always taking their place, drawn in by dreams of big gains. That's one of the reasons day traders are sizeable in number: because so many of them are new and haven't lost their shirts.....yet.
Some losing traders are addicted to it like gambling, which probably explains the loss distribution resembling that of casino roulette. I've seen lots of people like this over the years. They come in guns blazing, overconfident, taking way too much risk, and then they blow up account after account after account. Then they disappear when all their money is gone.