Apparently if you are a new male trader your have about 3.5% chance of success. Not so great.
Don’t despair just yet. With a solid mentor or putting one year of full time effort, the success rate increases to a range between 10% and 20%. Still not that great, but much more reasonable.
IF YOU ARE A WOMAN THOUGH, things get A LOT BETTER : 40% of women can likely become successful traders if they are serious, determined and willing to put in the time and practice.
In a male-dominated industry, the women who came to trade typically really wanted to do it, and were serious about it. Many of the men who try day trading are doing so with a “I will give it a shot…” attitude. Not a good start. Be serious and commit to the process–just as if you were starting any other business.
Also good to note, this came from a very small sample size. I still see how it can be true though just by the sheer dearth of women who want to trade.
True, it is not a formal statistical study with a large population and they say so, they don’t hide that fact.
The writer worked on a trading firm for several years that would offer trading courses to beginners and the core of his results come from this professional experience of observing the results of those courses.
Obviously not bullet proof, but I guess it is still fairly good indication.
In short, your odds are much better than mine. Congrats on picking the right sex
This appears to be an ABNORMAL claim made in the article. There don’t appear to be any VERIFIABLE statistics from credible sources to demonstrate such a HUGE claim.
@PipMeHappy runs a thread on female traders on this site, which has not made any such claims. And I’m sure it would have done, if this was an accepted statistic !
Don’t shoot the messenger: I am not the author, I just saw it, found it interesting and I am passing it on.
Although it is apparently not based on a bullet proof statistical study, it still has the good enough merit of coming from daily observations on a trading firm for many years, I guess. Take it with a big grain of salt, obviously.
It would actually be very interesting to know PipMeHappy thoughts on this claim or even get stats from other sources to either confirm or dismiss these results.
women are more risk averse and therefore
better at safeguarding traded profits;
traditional male-centred banking rewards
risky behaviours and leads to boom-bust
cycles.
There is a lot to be said about algorithmic/ automated trading that is worlds apart from the pit-trading days: however that male culture still exists in investment banking and it will still reward risky behaviours.
It seems that cultural attitudes in this field prevail over objective appraisal of women’s worth: this is why women are still ‘unattractive’ when a choice for the next CEO has to be.made…
In short: smart women are more level-headed with money than smart men, in the trading field. Of course there are plenty of examples to the contrary, but the studies do show this dissonance between investment/trading cultural.practices/norms and the actual value of women to trading/investing.
The discussion is very current and if cultural norms are slow to change then no amount.of studies will ever be proof enough if falling on deaf ears.
I know we’ve batted that ball about on your thread a few times but if 4% of males are succesful, twice as many would be 8% 4x as many would be 16% 8 times as good would be 32% - and this even goes further than that !
Apparently women are 10 Times as good as men ??? at trading ?
I’d have thrown in the towel on that one way back on your thread - if there was Any truth in it at all !
I think I have to call BS ! (unless we get a checkable “Back up story” which would enable us to see a “WHY” ! that anecdote is so different from the statistics !)
Here is a simple example of cultural versus objective worth: female vs. male hairdressers, nurses, and primary school teachers.
Culturally, we have been normalised in believing that the best people at doing those jobs are women, based on women being in the majority there.
If somebody came up with studies showing that the few male nurses/hairdressers/primary school teachers were on average better at these jobs than women, how effective would this be in helping to challenge the status quo? Meaning: no amount of sample studies can in itself bring about cultural change.
What I find most interesting about this article is that the trading world is usually perceived as a male world: Actually I also thought it was and never even stopped to think that women traders could actually reach much better results than their male counterparts.
Those results could actually be breaking a cliche so strongly embedded in our collective perception that no one really questioned them before.
Regardless, from now on I will be on the look for advice from women traders
Apparently they come to trading much more focused and serious about it, with the right mindset to make it work. While males try trading with a “let’s see if it works attitude”. That alone should make a big difference.
And the author gives a few more reasons why women achieve better results at trading than men. Those reasons make total sense to me.
Does that mean than women will succeed 10x more than men? Of course not. But they will probably succeed a lot more times than males.
Also, keep in mind that those results refer only to amateur traders that decided to go for a trading course. I am sure that if we study freshly graduated university students that managed to land a full time job at a trading firm, then the results would be very different as both (male and female) would probably be highly motivated. I am still willing to bet that women would achieve better results, though, but probably not such a big difference anymore.
Those are just opinions, though. Without the hard facts to back them, they are worth what they are worth…
I certainly would like to see the results of a serious statistical study on the matter.
Exactly: Those arguments make A LOT of sense, actually.
Besides, the whole website gives a ton of very useful and knowledgeable advice about trading. I would be very surprised if those results were there for just some sort of click bait. They rather appear as the summary of many years of observations in the work place.
Now when your ladies have a bad trading day and complain with you, the obvious comfort is that it could be much worse: They could be male Lol!
And I remember critiquing that particular article on your thread too !
We already know that the differences between carreer choices made by men and women is NOT a social construct. It is Biologically determined and the more “Equal” you try to make “Society” - the more those built in preferences become !
“New research by Financial Skills, a trading profiling company founded by a group of ex-traders from Merrill Lynch suggests that women make far better traders than men.”
“We found that men take more risk than women,” says Financial Skills COO David Hesketh. “That would be fine if they also made more money - but they don’t.”
We now have 2 articles claiming that women make better traders, from very reputable sources. Let’s wait for the third one…
Brokers are required by the Legal Regulators (in Europe anyway) to keep satistics on “Winners and Losers” - They would soon enough be Flagging up any noticeable advantage of one Sex over another
Picking trading as a hobby though, now that you can congratulate me for. 
