Barry Ritholtz Profile picture
Jun 12, 2021 13 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Study:

• 1992-2006, >75% of all day-traders quit w/i 2 years
• Negative Aggregate performance of all traders over 15-years.
• Only 1 out of 100 day traders earned profits over time

Are ya feeling lucky?
bit.ly/3gquFDX Image
What's so pernicious from a trader's perspective is: YOU CAN MAKE MONEY DAY-TRADING!!! but the odds are you will give it back plus most of your starting capital. Greed only sees the all-caps teaser while ignoring the lower-case reality.
See this US example:

Individual investors pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. From 1991 to 1996, of 66,465 household with discount brokerage trading accounts, those trading the most earned 11.4%/year vs 17.9% for the market's returns

faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers%2…
"When Day Traders Do Well, It’s Probably Just Luck"

There are exceptions, most notably, Jim Simons + the Medallion Fund, whose returns since 1987 are 2,091,747%

wsj.com/articles/when-… Image
Here is the thing:

You Are Not Jim Simons (Neither am I)

ritholtz.com/2020/04/you-ar…
Nope, you are not Bill Ackman either. Or Howard Marks, Ray Dalio, Stevie Cohen, or Ken Griffin.

Maybe you are a good or even a great trader, but before you try to find that out, you should at least know how much the odds are stacked against you.
Criticisms of trading as all luck are off base; It is very hard to consistently make money

I believe the odds of becoming a high schooler becoming a professional athlete are similar to that of a day trader becoming a successful professional trader.

ritholtz.com/2011/07/how-ha…
"Free" trades are not free.

There are myriad costs built in. Just because you don't see the $7 cost for trade execution does not mean it's not built-in.

Think about wider spreads, paying up to the ask or selling to the bid.

Free is expensive
You can pay a premium + get privacy, elegance + a premium solution

Or you can get the product for free & they figure out a way to monetize you as a user

via @profgalloway

"There is a basic, fundamental foundation upon which all economics is built: everything has a cost. There is no free lunch. Everything has a cost, at times, it can be hidden from view."

ritholtz.com/2018/10/cheap-…
Trading firms earn money generating trades (duh). But of all of these, the one I would least call a "passive trading outfit" is Robinhood . . .

nypost.com/2021/06/12/how…
Note: many of the ideas here have been detailed by lots of people who have thought long and hard about this.

See e.g., @safalniveshak (I linked to this in my daily reads last week); he pointed me to that research paper referenced up top.

safalniveshak.com/is-day-trading…
My colleague @dollarsanddata addressed the topic as well -- his thoughtful approach to using data to tell a story is ever-present.

ofdollarsanddata.com/is-there-a-bet…

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More from @Ritholtz

Aug 27
A few quick thoughts about yesterday's discussion on how we got here...

FOMC seems 2b always behind the curve, historically, going back to the 1990s under Greenspan.

They are a big + boring conservative institution & are fearful of error. They tend to be less aggressive when making decisions, with significant ramifications.

Consider the errors of just the past 2 decades and you can see the biggest mistake they make is either arriving way too late to the party or once they are there, overstaying their welcome: Image
Read 11 tweets
May 19, 2023
FinTV comments I keep hearing:

1. Only 5 stocks driving markets
2. Recession is inevitable
3. Breadth is terrible
4. AI is a bubble
5. Debt ceiling = disaster
6. Problematic new lows
7. Consumers running out of money
8. Earnings will fail THIS Q
9. HH Debt!
10. Rally faltering
Let's see if I can find something to undercut each of those 10 items:
Only 5 stocks driving markets?

Then why are Equal-weighted indices doing so well?
Read 12 tweets
Mar 11, 2023
.@baldassarreted Congrats on picking up Certina as a brand -- they are wildly underappreciated.

My PH200M is a favorite daily wear -- it has a great retro flavor to it, and a wonderful mesh bracelet Image
One of the very best dive watches you can find for under $1,000. It just feels great on . . .

I always smile when a random stranger asks about it, in a way they wouldn't with a Rolex, Omega, or Tag Heuer.
I am a fan of Teddy's Youtube channel -- he avoids the overhyped stuff and has a deep knowledge of brands from Nomos to Glashutte to Junghans.

Check out:

youtube.com/@TeddyBaldassa…
Read 4 tweets
Mar 10, 2023
The Fed is Breaking Things (and it could get worse) dlvr.it/SkhPB7 Image
I interviewed Greg Becker, who was CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, in 2021...

ritholtz.com/2021/08/mib-gr…
The full transcript is here:

ritholtz.com/2021/08/transc…
Read 9 tweets
Jan 11, 2023
What drives market returns? These rolling 10-year total returns going back to 1909 (via Crestmont Research) show an average ~10% annual total return over any 10-year long period.
Ed Easterling (of Crestmont) breaks down those returns into these components: EPS, Dividend Yield, and P/E Increase (or decrease).

Note how cyclical P/E expansion/contraction is...
This is why it is important to include whether P/Es are expanding or contracting in any definition of a bull or bear market.

ritholtz.com/2017/08/redefi…
Read 7 tweets
Jan 3, 2023
Observations to Start 2023 dlvr.it/SgJkSr
It takes the Earth 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes + 9.76 seconds to complete 1 orbit – to return to the exact same place relative to the sun. Our planet has done this about 4.54 billion times.

What does this unit of time have to do with investing?

Alas, utterly nothing...
This is an example of the irrelevant nature of the calendar - I'd be curious to see what the data looks like for successive rolling 12-month periods rather than calendar years; it might also be more useful than using January - December periods

statista.com/chart/28401/an…
Read 4 tweets

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