What Kind of Returns do Day Traders Make on AVERAGE?

Trading can be tough, and most people fail because they are unable to bring the right strategies to the table or can’t control their emotions. It is common knowledge that 95% of traders fail, although there are exceptions like my survey of Tradenet where only 57% of traders failed. From the data, I gathered I was able to determine a more or less accurate average return rate for the profitable traders out there.

Returns can vary massively from day to day, but the average from all the traders that took my survey landed at $321 a day. Let’s take a closer look at some numbers and how you could achieve these returns yourself.

Realistic trading returns

When I did the survey, I wanted to have data of consistently profitable retail traders that have been trading for at least one year. Fifty profitable traders took the study having 1-6 years of trading experience. I asked them for their profits during a specific 3-month period and put their average per day in a chart, here is the result:

As you can see, daily returns spread between -$200 and +$900. Every trading day is different, and sometimes most of the traders tend to have a red day. Most of these traders have noted, that they are trading the markets more conservatively. They aim for consistent profits between $200 and $400 a day. The average from the chart above is $321 a day with a total return for the three months of $29,566.

Top trader returns

In my survey, I targeted retail traders to have a realistic expectation of what someone could achieve in the short term with trading. There are always exceptions, of course, that do exceptionally well with trading. Those people make multiple 6 or 7 figure incomes a year. I am listing a few examples here that are popular in the social media space that I am 100% confident that they show their real income.

There are many fakers out there that pretend to be successful, to push their social media or sell you a trading course. So be careful who you trust with their income figures.

Meir Barak ($263,859 in 2018)

Meir Barak is a professional day trader, author of the trading book “The Market Whisperer,” and a leading Wall Street expert who regularly appears on TV and in the financial press. He founded Tradenet in 2004 and serves as the company’s chairman, chief trader and professional mentor. His financial success mainly comes from trading the US stock market.

You will find him trading daily with all the education program participants, sharing his ideas and trades with you live.

Catching dollar moves with leverage

Meir is avoiding penny stocks at all cost. He is trading higher-priced stocks (above $10) with leverage with Tradenet. His average lies around $1042 per day (calculated with 253 trading days). I followed Meir for over a year now with his live trades and his trading certainly is very successful and 100% legit. He usually takes thousands of shares on the higher-priced stocks, catching 50 cents to a few dollars of a price move.

Ross Cameron ($499,853 in 2018)

Ross Cameron is a self-made millionaire trader that started in 2010 mainly trading penny stocks to the long side. He built up his own company, ‘Warrior Trading’ to sell day-trading courses. His company is very active on social media, especially on Youtube.

His trading style could be described as extremely fast, which means he gets in and out of trades at a swift pace. He mainly trades breakouts, so he has to take profits quickly as trading breakouts is extremely risky, especially on penny stocks.

Ross is famous for making his small account challenge. He has built up an account from $583 to over $300,000 in just one year. His average lies around $1975 a day in 2018 (calculated with 253 trading days). I followed Ross a few years now, and his trades are legit even though I am not a massive fan of his trading style. Trading penny stocks like this is more luck based in my opinion and can have a catastrophic effect on your account. Trading penny stocks with the size he does also bears massive commissions as you have to take a lot of shares to make this kind of returns.

How you could achieve the same results

Becoming a trader is easier than you think. Everyone can learn it as long as you are willing to learn. The key to getting the same returns, as mentioned above is to be consistent. You should not aim for crazy wins every day. It is much better and safer to seek a few hundred dollars a day and increase your size once you get more confident.

Here are a few tips on how you can start yourself and get profits within a reasonable amount of time.

Trade safer, higher-priced stocks with leverage

Leverage helps you to reach your daily goals of a few hundred dollars much easier and much safer than trading penny stocks, for example. It allows you to trade higher-priced stocks with enough shares to make a decent profit.

Leverage is simply an increase in buying power, which means that you can buy more stock than what your account size would allow. Let’s say you have a 6:1 leverage and $1,000 in your account. That would mean you can buy stock worth $6,000.

To give you an idea of how far leverage could go: Tradenet’s smallest package fir example gives you a 35:1 leverage with a $399 investment. So that means you can buy stock worth $14,000 with very little money.

To make it even more clear how leverage works, I made an illustration down below.

You can learn more about Tradenet and leveraged trading on my Tradenet review here.

Conclusion

A lot of individuals and companies on the internet advertise trading as a get rich quick method. Although you can become a millionaire with trading, the vast majority of profitable traders have consistent small profits and trade the markets more conservatively. If you plan to hop into trading yourself, you should take a safer route with higher-priced stocks and trade them with leverage. Aim for a few hundred dollars a day rather than thousands and keep your losses small.