How Much Do Day Traders Make? Employee Wages and Independent Results

There are two very different answers, depending on who pays the trader. An employee of a trading or investment firm earns a wage, and official statistics measure it. An independent day trader earns whatever the account makes, and the large studies of real accounts find that most lose money. Below are the dated figures for each, with what they include and leave out. The wage data are U.S. statistics; the studies and regulator analyses of independent traders' accounts come from Taiwan, Brazil and the European Union.

Employed traders: what the official statistics show

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a "day trader" occupation. The closest is occupation 41-3031, Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents, defined as workers who "buy and sell securities or commodities in investment and trading firms, or provide financial services to businesses and individuals" (BLS occupation profile, archived copy captured March 28, 2025). It mixes traders with brokers and advisers, so it is a broad proxy, not a trader's pay slip.

The latest Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, for May 2025, were released on May 15, 2026 (BLS release, archived copy captured October 2, 2026). From the BLS data service (BLS OEWS data search, series OEUN000000000000041303104):

The occupation counted 489,570 jobs nationwide. Inside the securities and commodities industry itself (NAICS 523000), where trading firms sit, the same occupation had 173,040 jobs, a median of $103,030 and a mean of $146,090 (BLS OEWS data search, industry 523000). For comparison, financial and investment analysts (13-2051) had a median of $102,740 and a mean of $116,800.

Two limits from the BLS technical note matter here (archived copy captured August 19, 2026). The wages include "incentive pay, including commissions and production bonuses," but exclude "nonproduction bonuses." And "the survey does not include the self-employed," so independent traders are not in these numbers at all.

Independent day traders: what studies of real accounts found

For people trading their own money there is no wage survey, only studies of brokerage and exchange records. The ones we found, on three markets, point the same way.

• Taiwan, 1992 to 2006. Barber, Lee, Liu and Odean studied day traders on the Taiwan Stock Exchange over 15 years. The 500 best day traders of one year earned, the following year, 61.3 basis points a day before fees and 37.9 after; the bottom group lost 11.5 before fees and 28.9 after. "Less than 1% of the day trader population is able to predictably and reliably earn positive abnormal returns net of fees" (Journal of Financial Markets, 2014).

• Taiwan, quitting. In a 2017 working paper, the same team with Zhang found that "the aggregate performance of day traders is negative, that the vast majority of day traders are unprofitable," and that more than 75% of day traders quit within two years, poor performers more often than others; the paper also finds evidence of learning among those who stay (Barber, Lee, Liu, Odean and Zhang, 2017).
• Brazil, 2013 to 2015. Chague, De-Losso and Giovannetti followed the individuals who started day trading equity futures in those years and kept at it for at least 300 days. "97% of them lost money, only 0.4% earned more than a bank teller (US$54 per day), and the top individual earned only US$310 per day," with no evidence of learning (FGV EESP working paper 525, 2020).
• European Union, 2018. When ESMA restricted CFDs for retail clients, it cited analyses by national regulators across EU jurisdictions showing that "74-89% of retail accounts typically lose money on their investments," with average losses per client ranging from €1,600 to €29,000 (ESMA, March 27, 2018).

What an independent account can make: the arithmetic

An independent trader's income is the account's net gain, which comes from three numbers: how much is risked per trade, the average result per trade, and the number of trades. Here is a hypothetical, with round numbers chosen for clarity, not as a forecast:

• Account: $20,000. Risk per trade: 1% of the account, $200, the loss taken if the stop is hit.
• Expectancy: +0.1R, an average gain of 10% of the amount risked, $20 per trade, after costs.
• Activity: 250 trades a year.

That gives 250 × $20 = $5,000 a year, 25% on the account, before taxes, which depend on where the trader lives (see the best countries for day traders on tax and trader status). With the same rules and an expectancy of −0.1R, the result is a $5,000 loss. Turning $5,000 into a living wage would take a much larger account or much larger risk per trade, and larger risk raises the chance of a drawdown that ends the account; see risk of ruin. The expectancy is the number that decides everything, and the studies above say that for most day traders it was below zero. How to compute it is in trading math.

Employee or independent?

The two paths carry different risks. An employee is paid a wage, in the range above, and the capital at risk is the firm's. An independent trader keeps all the gains, pays all the losses and costs, and has no floor. For who retail traders are and what they face, see retail trader; for setups used on short horizons, day trading strategies.

More on who trades and how markets work is in trading concepts.