"We can say all we want about the good things active traders do, in whatever time frame they do it, but I have yet to hear any satisfying argument to suggest that what has been going on in the market the last few years has been good for investors."
I have yet to hear any satisfying argument that shows that "traders" are chiefly responsible for "what has been going on in the market the last few years." Intraday volatility means little or nothing to long-term investors, or should, and it's only after the fact of the great POP! that many would-be investors, including especially the fund manager stars of yesteryear, came to realize that they were really speculators, and, as it happened, in many instances not very good ones.
Of course, since we're broadening the definition of "traders" beyond the OLB-using types (to whom the 90% pseudo-statistic is intended to apply), all "investors" are also traders, even if they make only a handful of "entries" in their entire lives, and leave some number of "exits" to their heirs and assigns. In this sense, everyone in the market is a trader, by definition. |
