It should be clear to anyone with a brain that profits can be made. It should be equally clear that asking someone to tell you what they take home in a year is a pretty direct (not to mention rude) question, and one which most professionals, I would imagine, would choose not to divulge.
Knowing what someone else makes in a year trading your market has no bearing whatsoever on what you will make. None. If people would spend as much time in front of their markets as they did on T2W asking other people how rich they were, they might get there a little quicker.
I thought I had a brain(yet to be proved or disproved) but that aside there are many schools of thought out there for day trading from 99% make a loss, its a zero sum game and its only a matter of time till you reach zero, you cant beat the market, there are professionals with far more information than yourself....etc.
Hence you begin to wonder if this is a zero sum game.
When I first started I was not sure.....I've been equity trading for years (but just buy and hold).
Now doing full time trading, I've been making consistent profits and good ones but there are still some days that you doubt whether it is a zero sum game or not.
I suppose the newbies or who ever asks the question is looking for reassurance that their chosen path, given hard work and some intelligence would lead to rewards.
Its not really about 'how much people make' but more so do people consistently make a profit. We all have different resources at our disposal and different perceptions of risk and therefore comparison of absolute values is useless. But if someone say they make a grand a day, then you know in the long term if you accumulate sufficient capital this is not an unreasonable target to head for.
A grand a day may or may not be a lot of money to some people on this board.
Certainly my wife doesn't think a grand is a lot of money.
For those that are new to trading, it at the very least provides motivation that consistent profits can be achieved.
We should follow the Italian approach and allow everyones earnings and tax records to be viewed.....then you could just go and look it up on the Internet.
