The reality is that no day trader in the world makes money every single day. In fact, many day traders who make money over the long term actually lose money on more days than they profit. Of course many prospective traders can not make money at all, and they rarely have profitable days.
The percentage of profitable days a trader has really depends upon the system being used by the trader. Some systems are designed to make a small amount of money with a very high winning percentage, other systems are designed with the intent of losing small amounts of money many days, but occasionally having extremely profitable days which more than make up for the money lost.
An example of a system designed to take small profits a high percentage of the time would be a scalping system, either by hand or more commonly, using a high frequency algorithm. Binary Options can also be used to leverage a scalping strategy. Compare brokers here. While using high frequency trading systems was extremely profitable when it first became in vogue, fierce competition has quickly eliminated many of the inefficiencies in this niche. Most of the profits are taken by large market making firms such as Getco and Citadel, as well as hedge funds that specialize in this arena.
A system that is designed to profit less often, but is also designed to take larger profits when correct may be an options trading strategy, or perhaps a tape reading strategy, or some combination of the two. If a trader can actually spot a large buyer or seller, or otherwise identify a time when a stock is likely to make a big move, they can take a large position with a tight stop loss, or take a position using options. The trader can then capture a portion of the move with a leveraged position, and take a very large profit. This recently seems to be where a high percentage of profitable hand traders are making money.
The lesson is that a trader can never believe a system that promises to make money 100% of the time, or on 100% of days. Markets are always changing, and a system that was extremely effective yesterday could be worthless tomorrow. The key is to always adapt, to use as many tools as you can at your disposal, and fiercely protect your account balance with a long term view in mind. Many traders will make the bulk of their entire year’s profit in only a hand full of days, and the key is to be ready when the opportunity is present. Find a system that works and exploit it as much as possible while it works, meanwhile always be testing new ideas and identifying future possibilities.
