8 Successful Day Traders That Made Millions

Day trading is often viewed as a way to make fast money, sadly it’s incredibly difficult to be profitable over the long term. New traders might catch beginner’s luck but finding a reliable strategy to make consistent profits is challenging. To give you some inspiration we cover five success stories of day traders who managed to beat the odds and make millions in the market.

1. Steven Dux

Steven Dux is an Asian trader known for turning $27,000 in $9.3 million by following an analytical approach. He first came into the spotlight as a student of Tim Sykes and was banking huge money trading penny stocks. Everybody wanted to know his secrets to success.

What gives Dux an edge in the market is his obsession with tracking data to find attractive setups and chart patterns. Dux tracks data using excel spreadsheets and has a mountain of data to develop profitable strategies. For example Dux tracks a bunch of set ups such as dip buying huge morning panics, first day red days and shorting spikes.

Dux followed in Sykes’ footsteps and launched an educational business, selling trading courses along with a “freedom challenge” program.

2. Max Madaz

Max is a retired engineer turned millionaire day trader based out of LA, California. His favourite strategy is high percentage scalp setups at the opening bell for quick profits. He has popularized trading strategies such as the panic pop short, washout long and the halt and resume washout long.

Madaz believes psychology plays a key role in day trading and prioritizes minifying any stress while trading to calm his nerves. So far, it seems to be working out well for Max and has made over $15 million stock trading.

3. Tim Grittani

Grittani is a day trading superstar rated as one of the top traders in the world. A humble and easy going guy, he started trading penny stocks in 2010 with Tim Sykes as his mentor. Despite a slow start to his trading career, Tim has gone on to turn $1,500 into roughly $13.5 million! Absolute insane returns!

Similar to Dux, Tim Grittani is a highly analytical trader that uses data to track setups and chart patterns to gain a statistical edge. He made a killing trading crappy OTC stocks and now trades mid-cap to large cap stocks.

He also has released two trading DVDs – Trading Tickers 1 and Trading Tickers 2. Here he breaks down the strategies he uses and ways to use data to improve your odds of success.

4. Ross Cameron

Red-haired Ross is a successful day trader who has made nearly $7.5 million trading stocks. Despite his success, you won’t see him flaunting his wealth on social media.

In 2012 he founded WarriorTrading.com – selling trading courses and runs an active trading chat room. The business has been a huge success for Cameron and has thousands of students around the world.

Cameron’s main strategy focuses on day trading and swing trading small cap stocks under $20. The Vermont native is making a killing in the market thanks to the increased volatility. Ross alone banked $500,000 in trading profits (a personal record) trading GameStop.

5. Tim Sykes

The godfather of penny stocks, has been trading low-priced stocks for the past 20 years. He made his first million buying penny stock breakouts  during the dotcom bubble and got before the market collapsed.

In the early 2000’s he switched to short selling over hyped penny stocks, a highly risky strategy that he popularized. In 2006, he was featured in Wall Street Warriors – a reality TV series following up and coming traders on Wall Street.

Afterwards he published a book and launched a membership site dedicated to teaching others how to profit with penny stocks. Over the years’ Sykes has mentored multiple students that have gone on to become millionaires, two of them are on this list!

Sykes’ total profits now sits at just over $7 million, the figure would be higher if he wasn’t so focused on his teaching business.

6. Takashi Kotegawa

Known as “BNF” online, Takashi Kotegawa is a Japanese day trader who turned $13,600 into $153 million within eight years! Kotegawa came into the media spotlight around 2005 when an employee from Mizuho Securities misplaced a sell order on J-COM Holdings. Instead of selling one share of the stock for 610,000 Yen, they sold 610,000 shares for one Yen each! Kotegawa ended up netting a $17 million profit from the mistake!

Aside from that insane piece of luck, Kotegawa was a highly skilled day trader who wasn’t afraid to take big risks at the right time. His ability to analyse large amounts of data and recognize patterns made him a fortune trading the Nikkei 225 index. BNF acquired the vast majority of his money during 2000-2008 and is no longer an active stock trader.

7. Sang Lucci

Real name Anand Sanghvi, Lucci ditched a safe corporate job in 2006 and took his life’s savings to a prop firm (PTG Capital). Two gruelling years followed of trial and error but he discovered how options are more profitable than equities and tape reading is the best way to judge the market.

He became a self-millionaire at 25 going through some big highs and lows. The highs include growing his fathers retirement fund to over $2 million and the lows – losing $350,000 in 20 minutes. Currently he is the Head Trader and educator at the Sang Lucci Group.

8. Mike Bellafiore

Mr Bellafiore is the co-founder of SMB Capital, a New York based prop firm and SMB Training, its trading education business. Mike is the author of One Good Trade (a trading classic) and The Playbook.

SMB Capital’s training program also featured in Wall Street Warriors and across all the major US financial outlets such as Bloomberg, Fox Business, CNBC and CNNMoney.

As an international lecturer, Bellafiore creates trading programs for prop trading desks, hedge funds and personally coaches a limited group of elite traders. He also regularly appears on podcasts to share insights into becoming a six-figure trader.