Proof that Day Trading is profitable?

Wasn't spreadbetting originally a hedging vehicle for the institutions and other professionals when it was started in the 1970's? And only really been available to retail (private) taders for the last 10 years or so?

No, not at all; it was in order to enable people to trade gold without buying the metal itself, since buying gold carried a large premium at the time. The '90s boom was more due to the rise of the Internet than anything else.

Yeah, very interesting and Ouch! Why did they let that lot go on for so long? Even before the end of the first page they should have realised something was wrong and called a halt to their operation to take a closer look at what they were doing. Just my view.

Neo,

Actually, as I recall, in it's original form, it was more to allow institutional traders to place side-bets for their own accounts whilst staying under the radar of their own compliance departments.

Later incarnations catered to the somewhat compulsive nature of many traders of the time with additions such as goldfish racing.

In all other respects Skill is obviously right. And whilst Goldman, et al. obviously don't have any interest, you'd be surprised by how many of their employess still do stuff for their personal accounts on the side. Only difference is these days they probably have to be a bit cleverer about it and use vehicles like binaries and companies like Tradefair.

This is a major red flag.

Ditch this guy or the chance of success comes down dramatically regardless of your strategy.

LOL, yeah actually he chose to pack it in himself after three months trading with me last year - he was between jobs back then but he got bored with trading 'small' stakes and said he could earn more money in his normal line of work.

Thread is dead. Thanks for replies.

Possibly because the object of the thread proves nothing.

Whether it is day trading or otherwise there will be consistent losers and consistent winners, that is the nature of the beast.

If the object is to set the day traders against the rest in terms of comparative success or failure it has already been done to death. Either could be right and neither could be wrong!

Better that we all get on with trading whatever style and those that succeed will hopefully continue to help those that don't.