THE EVIDENCE — WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS

Five studies, five populations, one pattern: the default outcome for beginners is losing. Think of these studies as crash-test results. A car can be driven safely, and some drivers are genuinely skilled — but when you buy the car, you deserve to see the test footage first, not just the advertisement. This lesson is the test footage for trading.

EVIDENCE · FIVE STUDIES · SOURCES ON PANEL

THE TAKEAWAYS

• Taiwan (complete exchange records): more than 8 in 10 day traders lost money in a typical six-month period; fewer than 1% predictably earned profits net of fees. (Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean.)
• Brazil: of futures day traders who began in 2013–15 and kept going for at least 300 days, 97% lost money; 0.4% earned more than a bank teller, about $54 a day. (Chague, De-Losso & Giovannetti, 2019.)
• United States, 1991–96: the most active traders earned 11.4% a year while the market returned 17.9% — trading more made it worse, not better. (Barber & Odean, 66,465 households.)
• Leveraged CFD accounts: regulators found 74–89% of EU retail accounts lose money (ESMA, 2018) and 76% of UK retail clients lost money in Jul 2015–Jun 2016 (FCA).
• India, FY2022–23: 71% of individual intraday equity traders lost money — 80% among those trading 500+ times a year — and losers paid an extra 57% of their losses in trading costs. (SEBI, 2024.)

WORKED EXAMPLE — STEP BY STEP

1. Take the Brazil number: “97% lost money.” First question — 97% of whom? Only of traders who persisted at least 300 days. Most starters quit earlier, so this is the survival-filtered group — the most committed learners — and 97% of them still lost.
2. Second question — over what period, in what market? Futures day trading in Brazil, traders who began in 2013–15. Not SPY options, not you: adjacent evidence, labelled as such.
3. Third question — what does the top look like? The single best earner made about $310 a day with a daily standard deviation of $2,560, and the study found no evidence that traders improved with practice. Even the winner’s income swung wildly.
4. Now the habit: whenever anyone quotes you a trading statistic — including in a sales pitch — ask: of whom, over what period, in what market, from what source? If they can’t answer, it’s marketing, not evidence.

WHAT THE CHART CANNOT SHOW YOU

Notice what the chart has no bar for: a US SPY-options loss rate. It doesn’t exist in the research — nobody has published a headline figure for the exact thing this course teaches, and anyone who quotes you one is inventing it. The honest statement is narrower: in every adjacent market researchers have measured — stocks, futures, CFDs, intraday equities — most retail traders lose. SPY options add leverage and an expiry clock to that picture; they do not repeal it.

COMMON BEGINNER MISTAKES

• Quoting “90% of traders fail” as if it were a finding. It is a slogan; no study supports it.
• Reading the Brazil 97% as “97% of everyone who tries once” — it covers only those who persisted 300+ days.
• Assuming your market is the exception because a figure came from a different one.
• Skipping from “most lose” to “so I’ll definitely lose.” The studies describe populations and defaults, not your destiny — they describe what happens without an edge, a plan, and cost control.

CHECK YOURSELF

DO IT — CHECK ONE CLAIM

Find one trading statistic quoted anywhere — a video, an ad, a forum post. Run the four questions on it: of whom, over what period, in what market, from what source? Write down what you could and couldn’t verify. This is the exact skill Stage 0’s gate will test.