Although there are traders who are actually successful in trading short-term with or without leverage, it's not for PLEBS like US. I discourage fellow plebs from "trading", but if you truly believe that you could profit as a day-trader, then to measure your success rate, make a pretend purchase in Bitcoin with 100% of your trading capital. Check if you outperformed Bitcoin every year. Because if you didn't, then you merely wasted your time and probably shortened your life-span from the mental stress and loss of sleep.
I agree that trading which tends to be short term is not suitable for everyone - that's why some say that "10% of traders are successful" and that's the truth, because I've been in trading and I can say that it's riskier, more stressful, and you will lose sleep because you need to monitor the market and see if your position is right.
So it's more advisable to get involved in bitcoin investment which is more potentially profitable and recommended, especially for beginners, because everyone can get involved in Bitcoin investment, you don't need to learn technical analysis or whatever, all you need is to allocate your discretionary income and invest with DCA or lump sum. You can invest regularly and hold it for the long term. It's that simple - you don't need to sacrifice your precious sleep time just to monitor the market.
I doubt that profitable traders are even close to 10%, especially in something like bitcoin and especially if we might compare performance to traders versus investors into bitcoin.
I am considering that probably less than 1% of traders of BTC would have had been able to beat a straight forwards DCA strategy, especially if we were to be looking at 8-10 years or more. They fuck around and talk about profits, and yeah in the short term they might have some lovely stories, but carry out their strategy in the long term and it would be a pretty rare trader who actually were able to beat a straight forward BTC DCA approach. .and whatever system they used ended up being luck rather than replicable.. They frequently talk a BIG game, though.
10% is a more generalized estimate from what I have read from doing simple searches on the internet. But if it's actually a mere 1% or less, then that would truly be very surprising and makes the HODLers' debate more practical, and that would STILL be a very BIG understatement.
Those who truly outperform Bitcoin consistently every year, perhaps they probably also short sell Bitcoin during the bearish cycle?