What Percentage of Day Traders Lose Money? Every Count, Checked

You've probably heard that 90% of day traders lose money. It gets repeated so often that it sounds made up.

It isn't far off. But the real answer depends on who's counted, over how long, and what they trade. So we gathered every count we could check ourselves, from brokers, from regulators and from researchers.

Three ways to count

Nobody can count every day trader in the world. But three kinds of source get close, and each one counts a little differently.

• Broker warnings. In the UK and EU, every broker that offers CFDs has to print the share of its own retail accounts that lose money. It's usually right on the home page.
• Regulator counts. India's market regulator, SEBI, collects trading records from the biggest brokers, covering about 90% of individual derivatives traders. That's millions of people, after all their costs.
• Academic studies. Researchers with access to a whole exchange's records have followed every day trader in a country for years. Taiwan and Brazil are the best known.

What the brokers have to tell you

A CFD lets you bet on a price with borrowed money, and it's a common way to day trade in the UK and Europe. Since 2018, regulators there have made brokers print a warning like XTB's: "74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider."

It's the broker's own number, for its own customers. We read it on 16 brokers' websites on 2026-10-22.

Every one of the 16 says more than half its retail accounts lose money. The lowest was eToro at 55%, and the highest was markets.com at 81.9%. More than 70% lose at 8 of the 16.

The same broker can print two numbers. ActivTrades' UK firm says 69%, and its EU firm says 78% on the same page. Different customers, different products and different leverage limits give different results.

These numbers have a catch. A CFD account isn't always a day trader. Some customers hold for weeks, and some barely trade. So the warning describes a broker's customers, not day traders alone. That's also why a lower number isn't a promise about you.

They match what regulators found when they first looked. In 2018, Europe's markets regulator, ESMA, reported that national regulators found 74% to 89% of retail CFD accounts typically lost money.

The biggest count: India

India has one of the busiest retail trading markets in the world, and its regulator publishes what happens to those traders. SEBI's latest study covers about 90% of all individual traders in equity options and futures, using data from the 15 biggest brokers. Every figure is after trading costs.

That's about 9 in 10, five years running. It peaked at 91.5% in FY23 and dipped to 87.7% in FY26. SEBI itself warns against reading too much into the dip, because about a fifth fewer traders were active that year.

Count a longer stretch and it gets worse. Over the three years from FY22 to FY24 taken together, 93% of individual traders lost money. Only 1% made more than ₹1 lakh (100,000 rupees) over all three years, after costs.

SEBI also counted people who day trade ordinary shares, buying and selling within the same day. Fewer of them lose, but the share has been rising: 65% in FY19, then 69% in FY22 and 71% in FY23.

The studies: Taiwan and Brazil

Two academic studies used a whole country's trading records. In Taiwan, from 1992 to 2006, only about 13% made money after fees in a typical year. So about 87% lost. Fewer than 1% made money reliably, year after year.

In Brazil, researchers followed people who started day trading index futures from 2013 to 2015. Of those who kept going for 300 days or more, 97% lost money. Our guide to how much money you need to day trade goes through what the few winners actually earned.

Put them together and the picture is clear. The lowest count in the chart is about two in three. The highest is 97 in 100. In every one, at least two in three traders lost money.

Why the number changes

The loss rate isn't one fixed number. SEBI split its traders in several ways, and the same few things push it up.

• Costs. Before trading costs, 82.1% of India's F&O traders lost money in FY26. After costs, 87.7% did. Costs turned about 6 in 100 traders from winners into losers.
• Options. 87.7% of options traders lost, against 66% of futures traders. Options made up 92% of all the money individuals lost.
• Trading more. 71% of intraday stock traders lost money, but 80% of those making more than 500 trades a year did.
• Age. 76% of intraday traders under 30 lost money, against 53% of those over 60.
• Money behind you. 93% of F&O traders with no shares at all lost money. Among those with over ₹10 crore in shares, 58% did.
• Time. In any one year about 9 in 10 lost. Over three years taken together, 93% did.

Costs deserve a closer look. For India's losing intraday traders, trading costs added 57% on top of their trading losses. Even the winners paid 19% of their profits in costs. When you trade a lot, small costs add up fast.

Do people get better with practice?

Mostly, no. SEBI found that among options and futures traders who lost money two years in a row and kept trading, about 90% lost again in the third year.

Intraday stock traders who traded in all three years SEBI studied did better: 54% lost money, against 71% of everyone. But that group is only the people who didn't quit, and more than half of them still lost.

Taiwan tells the same story from the other end. Plenty of people had a good year. Fewer than 1% had good years reliably.

So, what percentage of day traders lose money?

Most of them. The fairest single answer is 70% to 90% in any one year, and more over several years. Brokers' own warnings put it at about 72%. The biggest regulator count puts it at about 9 in 10 for options and futures.

The famous "90%" is a fair rule of thumb, especially for options and for anyone who trades a lot. It's a little high for some products in some years. It's too low if you count everyone who kept trading for years.

If you day trade anyway

• Track every trade after costs. Commissions, spreads and fees are often the difference between a small win and a loss.
• Compare yourself with doing nothing. If an index fund would have done better, that's the real result of your trading.
• Trade less. In SEBI's data, the people who traded most were the most likely to lose.
• Be careful with buying options. They were behind most of the money India's traders lost.
• Decide in advance how much you'll lose before you stop. In India, more than 75% of losing F&O traders kept trading anyway.
• Only use money you can afford to lose without it changing your life.

What this can't tell you

• None of these counts is the whole world. India, Taiwan and Brazil are single countries, and their markets, products and costs differ from yours.
• A broker's warning covers its CFD customers, not only day traders, and each broker counts its own accounts.
• The counts cover different products and years, so they aren't directly comparable. Treat the ladder chart as a range, not a ranking.
• Broker warnings change over time. We read them on 2026-10-22.
• Other countries' figures for Korea, the US, the UK and Australia are as SEBI's FY26 study summarises them. We didn't re-check each original paper.