Not gonna hate on day traders, if humans figured out a way to get to the Moon and how to cause unspeakable destruction with little Atoms, then there is definitely a way to figure out how to make money day trading... its probably not rocket science.
That being said though, go ahead and take a look at the Forbes 100 richest list, you’re not gonna find any day traders there.. instead you’re gonna find the likes of Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, and Carl Icahn who made their money through regular investing, (should probably add Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc. as well as I don’t think they’d be on that list if they’d be switching in and out of their own stock).
Is short, can you make money day trading? Yeah, with the right skill set, I guess. Is it the superior way to make lots and lots of money? No.
Agree, but the names you mentioned, 2 are hedge fund managers and corporate raiders, Warren Buffett made most his money buying companies. There are many like them Steve Cohen net worth $15 billion,George Soros $26 billion,Paul Tudor Jones , Stanley Druckenmiller, Bruce Kovner etc. These are in a league of their own, some of them are traders like Paul Tudor Jones and Bruce Kovner who trade the intermediate trend and others like Warren Buffet are very long term investors, they trade and invest billions $ of theirs and other people's money, they have hundreds of researchers, tech analysts, employees who can reach CEOs any day, statisticians , AI etc, which is not available to the average person.
As for short term traders, Martin Schwartz featured in the New Market Wizards ran his account day trading his own money from $40000 to $22 million, he trades his own money,not a hedge fund.Another is Ed Seykota, who stressed that his success came from strong money management and his ability to know when to cut his losses.
He also says that public market information is of little use, since this is already accounted for in the prices. Last but not least is the legendary Trader Vic, who made profits
18 years in a row using technical analysis. Over this period, he managed to generate an average annual return of 72%. He stresses that he only takes risk when he sees that the odds are with him.
As a trader, you might never make the millions these guys made but you may improve your performance by paying attention to some of the lessons they learnt about money management.