A search with the terms “day trade course” already gives clues as to how interest in these financial operations has grown, which bet on the volatility of the dollar and the shares of the B3 (Brazilian Stock Exchange) over the course of a day.
There are almost 8 million pages listed by the search engine, with online and in-person options, free or paid. The wave, driven two years ago by “market gurus”, reached its peak during the pandemic: the number of searches for these classes reached triple what it was at the end of 2019, according to Google data.
The expectation of profiting without leaving home — a condition imposed by the anti-covid isolations, and by the crisis that increased layoffs — increased the attraction of this type of operation, but the returns are far from expected, indicates a study commissioned by the CVM (Securities Commission), entity responsible for monitoring operations on the Stock Exchange.
The work, coordinated by professors Fernando Chague and Bruno Giovannetti, both from EESP-FGV (São Paulo School of Economics of Fundação Getúlio Vargas), analyzed millions of operations, comparing the results of investors with CNPJ and those of the CPF group, to the over six years.
Among the conclusions is that, in the daily arm wrestling, minute by minute, the professional trading desks, of banks and brokers, swim arm’s length, while only a minority of individual investors manage to obtain significant gains.
From a universe of about 20,000 investors, the researchers found that 8% (or about 1,500 individual investors) operated as a day trader for more than 300 days, a criterion used to indicate the intention to make a living from the activity.
In this group, 91% closed the analyzed period with a loss. Only 0.8% (13 investors) had a daily profit of more than BRL 300.00.
In the analyzed period, the loss of individual investors only increased: it went from BRL 11 million in 2012 to BRL 272 million in 2017.
The profit of legal entities with day trading, on the other hand, jumped from BRL 5 million to BRL 110 million in the same period.
Historian Geraldo Teruya, from Campinas (SP), is one of those investors who seeks to deny the statistics: after investing around R$ 8,000 in four courses, he dedicates an average of five hours a day to day trading.
Although it has been operating for a year, it is still considered to be in the learning phase. His Teruya tactic is often used by newbies: he places minimal bets as soon as the market opens, after watching a live commentary on a financial news site controlled by an investment bank.
Teruya’s goal is to earn R$100 a day, which is not always possible. “For now, I’m at zero to zero. But sometimes I prefer to trade using a simulator, so I don’t take risks and learn. There was a day I got to earn R$ 800, but I kept operating. 240. Then I saw that I needed to study more”, he says.
For Giovanetti, the expectation that luck will turn at some point is also a cause for concern. “In addition to the high probability of damage, they can lose years of life when they could be doing other things”, he evaluates.
In addition to creating their algorithms, banks and brokers pay to connect their computers directly to B3’s data center, gaining fractions of a second that can be decisive.
The procedure, known in the market by the English expression co-location (in the sense of sharing), is advertised on the Exchange’s website as a service, and is available to anyone who can pay to boost the chances of success.
“In this type of trade, speed is important. The faster the information arrives, the better. And as Fernando Chague says, the problem is that, on the stock exchange, individual investors do not know who they are dealing with. there may be 10 PhDs who know how to program computers”, evaluates Giovannetti.
In Giovannetti’s assessment, over the period studied, the PJs gained expertise and, by extension, reduced the chances of individual investors.
“Since 2015, 2016, the number of individuals operating has been increasing, at the same time that new technologies have been introduced, such as fast trading robots, called HFT [negociações de alta frequência, na sigla em inglês] and computers inside B3”, says the FGV professor.
Day traders can lose more than they invested
Another point highlighted by Giovannetti is that brokers have expanded the possibility for small people to “leverage” their daily bets, that is, to operate with values ​​greater than those they have.
With an initial value of BRL 50.00, for example, it is possible to buy or sell mini dollar contracts or Ibovespa for BRL 5,000, multiplying the chances of profit — but also of losses.
Based in Lençóis (BA), in Chapada Diamantina, designer Rilk Roger quickly gave up this path in his operations.
He has taken six courses since 2018, when he became interested in financial operations. After a year in the simulator, he began to trade dollar mini-contracts, accumulating some losses in the period.
From then on, he chose to buy and sell shares, without leverage, that is, he could lose, in the worst case, up to a maximum of 100% of the invested, no more than that.
“It was from there that I started to see that it was possible to follow this path. And being a day trader became my plan A”, says Roger.
It took its first reversal, as he says, in February 2021, when President Jair Bolsonaro made statements indicating that he intended to intervene in the management of Petrobras.
“That day I lost 25% of the equity I had invested. And it took me about 30 days to recover”, says Roger, for whom the balance so far is quite positive.
Another drop –of around 20%– occurred with the outbreak of the war. “At these times we feel the impact in the chest. But, as I do not operate leveraged, I can keep calm. I believe that the adrenaline comes from operating leveraged, running the risk of losing more than the equity invested”, he evaluates.
When looking at the performance of legal entities and individuals in the period studied, Giovannetti says it is difficult to separate the gains from new technologies and the losses because of the greater risk caused by leverage.
The FGV study, published last year, was based on data up to 2017 because information about investors and operations is not public.
The data were only available to researchers hired by the CVM, which was concerned about the growing risks of the small ones.
The issue has gained relevance in recent years as the number of people interested in making a living from these operations grew rapidly – ​​or at least in taking daily risks in day trading.
According to Anbima (Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Market Entities), the universe of individual investors, but not necessarily day traders, went from 500 thousand CPFs in 2017 to almost 4 million last year.
“Research shows that investors [pessoas fÃsicas] fail to obtain results because the market tends to be efficient. Average prices reflect the fundamental value of assets. What they are actually doing is a bet with something close to a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. No wonder they close the day, on average, close to zero”, evaluates professor Ricardo Brito, from FEA-USP (Faculty of Economics and Administration of the University of São Paulo).
Specialist in investment and savings decisions, Brito notes that, in general, it is the success stories that gain repercussion, which ends up creating a “cognitive bias” that leads amateur investors to persist in operations, even if the results are always frustrating. .
From the point of view of investor psychology, the FEA-USP professor considers that people often consider that they have a greater capacity for evaluation than others, particularly men. “There is evidence [cientÃficas] that men tend to be more self-confident, and that’s why they trade more and lose more money, even though human beings in general tend to be overconfident”, Brito concludes.
​Faced with the huge amount of online courses available, sold for around R$2,000, with professors in general without any institutional endorsement recognized by the market, Brito is categorical. “This ‘industry’ should be taken as seriously as the ‘industry’ of miracle regimes [para perda de peso] or something like that. They offer easy money or easy good shape, but that’s not how things are,” he says.
Day trading course omits risks, says entity
The president of Apimec (Association of Capital Market Investment Analysts and Professionals) Brazil, Lucy Sousa, considers that investment professionals need to qualify and pass exams, before going to the internet to sell courses and guidance.
“Many of these influencers have become celebrities of financial portals. And they attract people to give training and evaluate portfolios. [de investimentos]in order to make money, deceiving the individual investor without showing the risks”, considers Lucy.
With CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) supervision since 2010, when the entity issued a rule to regulate the activity, Apimec Brasil has around 1,300 accredited analysts, whose names can be found on the entity’s website.
These analysts underwent training and assessment, being recognized for having a National Certification of Investment Professionals, or CNPI, as the market prefers to call it, working in brokerage firms or as analysts at independent consulting firms.
“Nothing against these courses [oferecidos na internet], but you need to know who is offering it. If it’s an uneducated celebrity, the investor is being ripped off,” she says.
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