For some strange reason there is a lot of hype about daytrading. Every article I write about daytrading gets 3x more hits than any other (perhaps not that strange since they may be looking for such articles on this domain called "daytrading", lol). The publisher of my two books, Hegnar Media, also notices this effect. This is quite strange to me all the time what matters is return to risk, no matter time frame. However, realistically there is no reason to get enthusiastic about daytrading. Sure, some do make a good chunk of money daytrading, and the profit potential is almost unlimited for the few good traders, but the majority of the daytraders are just prey for the predators. The problem is to quantify the rate of unsuccessful traders. But a courtcase form California ha shed some light on this:

Tuco Trading, a professional trading form based in San Diego, were taken over by the SEC in March 2008. The reason was "illegal trading" in securities (I won't go into detail about this case). However, the courtcase revealed a lot about the profitability of the traders. The traders are mostly higfh frequency traders, and typically daytraders, and the numbers were disappointing: 77% of the traders were net losers! (However, those getting overrides are the winners, as always....)

Running through the numbers on these pages I came up with :

• About 206 active traders

• 33 profitable - 16%

• 7 with 50k + profit - 3%

• 173 unprofitable - 84%

• 57 with losses over 10K - 28%

Below you can see some pages from the courtcase. The names are of course left out.