Should you trade at all?

Every number in this course comes with a base rate: how often something happens across everyone who tries it. Here is the base rate for trading itself, from studies that used complete trading records rather than surveys or success stories.

What the records show

In Brazil, of 1,551 people who day traded the main equity index futures for more than 300 sessions, only 3.0% had positive average net daily returns, and only 1.1% earned more than the minimum wage (Chague, De-Losso and Giovannetti, "Day trading for a living?").

In Taiwan, less than 1% of day traders could predictably earn positive abnormal returns net of fees (Barber, Lee, Liu and Odean, 2014).

In the European Union, national regulators found that 74 to 89% of retail accounts trading CFDs typically lose money. Since 2018 every provider must show its own percentage in a standard warning (ESMA).

Why the number is so low

Costs come first. Fees, spreads and slippage are paid on every trade, so a method has to beat them before it earns anything; in the Brazilian study, 11% were ahead before fees but only 3.0% after. Then survivorship: the stories that reach you come from the few who won, because the many who lost do not post their results. And luck: over a few dozen trades, a method with no edge can look brilliant and one with a real edge can look broken. Lesson C1 shows how many trades it takes to tell them apart.

What this means for you

It does not mean nobody can trade well. It means the default outcome is a loss, and the burden of proof is on the method. This course is built for that: you plan every trade with defined risk, size it so a losing streak cannot end you, and test whether an idea beat a random entry before you believe it.

If, after all of that, the numbers say your plan has no edge after costs, deciding not to day trade is a good outcome of this course, not a failure. You will have learned it with simulated charts instead of your savings.

What to practise here instead

Start with the trade plan, learn position sizing, and see how a pattern is put on trial. Not sure where to begin? The placement takes about six minutes.