Day trading for a living?

• Autor(a) principal: Chague, Fernando
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: De-Losso, Rodrigo, Giovannetti, Bruno Cara
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/28801
• topic: Day trade; Day trading for a living; Retail investors; HFT; Course providers; Futures market; Economia; Especulação diária (Finanças); Mercado futuro; Investidores

We show that it is virtually impossible for individuals to compete with HFTs and day trade for a living, contrary to what course providers claim. We observe all individuals who began to day trade between 2013 and 2015 in the Brazilian equity futures market, the third in terms of volume in the world, and who persisted for at least 300 days: 97% of them lost money, only 0.4% earned more than a bank teller (US$54 per day), and the top individual earned only US$310 per day with great risk (a standard deviation of US$2,560). Wefind no evidence of learning by day trading.