re: How many of you guys/gals day trade and have made it your career?

Flip a coin a thousand times winning at least more than you lose on the other and you have positive expectancy. Most people don’t have either enough edge to have a predictable win rate (50% in the coin example), or they have an edge but still don’t know the statistical win rate. Because the “win” rate depends on far or close your take profit is relative to your stop loss. If you win 2x what you lose, and odds are 50/50, you only need to be right 33% of the time to break even (1/1+n) where n=win ratio.


So even if you found a pattern that reliably wins 2x to what you lose, if it only happens 20% of the time you will lose money in the long haul.

So then it’s about knowing yourself. Can you take loss after loss repeatedly to execute a system with a 30% win rate even if your RR is 3 or 4:1? Can you stomach the drawdown? There’s a chance you may get 20 “tails” in a row with a coin flip and you go bankrupt.

Or do you want to be right all the time and win 80% of your trades? Typically to do so requires an inverse RR where you win a small amount a lot but when you lose it’s more than a single win.

All about the expectancy, your ability to execute it and stay consistent. Not as easy as it looks.