Research
What the research says about trading without engineering.
Peer-reviewed studies and regulators’ own figures, from millions of trades across four markets. Each finding is stated exactly as its source scoped it.
Part 1
Who is on the other side
74%
of equity-index futures volume is automated
Automated trading systems accounted for 73.7% of volume in CME equity-index futures, and 84% in FX futures, from 2016 to 2018.
$18bn
a year on technology, at a single bank
JPMorgan Chase’s technology spending outlook for 2025, as presented to its investors.
Source 6: JPMorgan Chase & Co., 2025 Investor Day presentation, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.2, May 2025.
Part 2
What trading without measurement costs
Under 1%
of day traders earned reliable returns
Across fifteen years of every day trade in Taiwan, 1992 to 2006, fewer than 1% of day traders could predictably and reliably earn positive returns after fees.
97%
of persistent day traders lost money
Of the people who day traded Brazil’s equity index futures on 300 days or more, starting between 2013 and 2015, 97% lost money.
74–89%
of retail CFD accounts lose money
The range of retail CFD accounts that typically lose money, according to the analyses of EU national regulators cited by ESMA.
6.5 points
a year behind the market
US households that traded most earned 11.4% a year against the market’s 17.9%, from 1991 to 1996.
Source 4: Barber & Odean, “Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth”, Journal of Finance 55(2), 2000.
Unknown
to the traders themselves
Investors in one study could not reliably estimate their own past portfolio returns.
Sources
Every source, in full.
- 1Chague, De-Losso & Giovannetti, “Day Trading for a Living?”, working paper, FEA-USP / SSRN 3423101, 2019 (rev. 2020).
- 2Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean, “The Cross-Section of Speculator Skill: Evidence from Day Trading”, Journal of Financial Markets 18, 2014.
- 3European Securities and Markets Authority, “ESMA agrees to prohibit binary options and restrict CFDs to protect retail investors”, 27 March 2018.
- 4Barber & Odean, “Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth”, Journal of Finance 55(2), 2000.
- 5Haynes & Roberts, “Automated Trading in Futures Markets — Update #2”, CFTC Office of the Chief Economist, March 2019, Table 1.
- 6JPMorgan Chase & Co., 2025 Investor Day presentation, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.2, May 2025.
- 7Glaser & Weber, “Why Inexperienced Investors Do Not Learn: They Do Not Know Their Past Portfolio Performance”, Finance Research Letters 4(4), 2007.
Each figure is reported for the market, period and sample its source studied. Research on past results does not predict any individual’s future returns.