IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fgv/eesptd/525.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Day trading for a living?

Author

Listed:
  • Chague, Fernando
  • De-Losso, Rodrigo
  • Giovannetti, Bruno Cara

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Chague, Fernando & De-Losso, Rodrigo & Giovannetti, Bruno Cara, 2020. "Day trading for a living?," Textos para discussão 525, FGV EESP - Escola de Economia de São Paulo, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil).
    • Handle: RePEc:fgv:eesptd:525
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repositorio.fgv.br/bitstreams/0f00dd78-6909-4f91-84d5-aef8803e6436/download
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kuo, Wei-Yu & Lin, Tse-Chun, 2013. "Overconfident individual day traders: Evidence from the Taiwan futures market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3548-3561.
    2. Hyuk Choe & Yunsung Eom, 2009. "The disposition effect and investment performance in the futures market," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 496-522, June.
    3. Barber, Brad M. & Lee, Yi-Tsung & Liu, Yu-Jane & Odean, Terrance, 2014. "The cross-section of speculator skill: Evidence from day trading," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 1-24.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philip W. S. Newall & Leonardo Weiss-Cohen, 2022. "The Gamblification of Investing: How a New Generation of Investors Is Being Born to Lose," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-10, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fernando Chague & Rodrigo De-Losso, Bruno Giovannetti, 2019. "Day trading for a living? Fernando," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2019_47, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    2. Liew, Ping-Xin & Lim, Kian-Ping & Goh, Kim-Leng, 2020. "Does proprietary day trading provide liquidity at a cost to investors?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    3. Chuang, Yi-Wei & Tsai, Wei-Che & Weng, Pei-Shih, 2020. "The impact of weather on order submissions and trading performance," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Fung, Scott & Tsai, Shih-Chuan, 2021. "The price discovery role of day traders in futures market: Evidence from different types of day traders," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 53-77.
    5. Mohamed S. Ahmed & John A. Doukas, 2021. "Revisiting disposition effect and momentum: a quantile regression perspective," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1087-1128, April.
    6. Park, Keun Woo & Jeong, Seong Hoon & Oh, Ji Yeol Jimmy, 2019. "Foreigners at the gate? Foreign investor trading and the disposition effect of domestic individual investors," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 165-180.
    7. Matthew C. Chang & Chih‐Ling Tsai & Rebecca Chung‐Fern Wu & Ning Zhu, 2018. "Market uncertainty and market orders in futures markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(8), pages 865-880, August.
    8. John A. List, 2011. "Does Market Experience Eliminate Market Anomalies? The Case of Exogenous Market Experience," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 313-317, May.
    9. John A. List & Michael K. Price, 2016. "Editor's Choice The Use of Field Experiments in Environmental and Resource Economics," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(2), pages 206-225.
    10. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    11. Ormos, Mihály & Joó, István, 2014. "Are Hungarian investors reluctant to realize their losses?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 52-58.
    12. Forman, John & Horton, Joanne, 2019. "Overconfidence, position size, and the link to performance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 291-309.
    13. Baltzer, Markus & Jank, Stephan & Smajlbegovic, Esad, 2019. "Who trades on momentum?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 56-74.
    14. Fernando Chague & Rodrigo De Losso, Bruno Giovannetti, 2017. "The Price Tag Illusion," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2017_31, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    15. Ahn, Yongkil, 2022. "The anatomy of the disposition effect: Which factors are most important?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    16. Paulo Pereira da Silva & Victor Mendes & Margarida Abreu, 2022. "The disposition effect among mutual fund participants: a re-examination," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(12), pages 1237-1256, August.
    17. Barrot, Jean-Noel & Kaniel, Ron & Sraer, David, 2016. "Are retail traders compensated for providing liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 146-168.
    18. da Silva, Paulo Pereira & Mendes, Victor, 2021. "Exchange-traded certificates, education and the disposition effect," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    19. Hayley, Simon & Marsh, Ian W., 2016. "What do retail FX traders learn?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 16-38.
    20. Ang, James S. & Ismail, Ahmad K., 2015. "What premiums do target shareholders expect? Explaining negative returns upon offer announcements," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 245-256.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fgv:eesptd:525. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Núcleo de Computação da FGV EPGE (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eegvfbr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.