That is so misleading! I have been day trading profitably for the last 6+ years. It is more than enough to cover my living expenses for a family of 4. But I also work (freelance dev), because it cannot cover my home EMIs.

My returns are not too high, but much better than bank interest rates and probably much below professional traders. The only thing stopping me from earning my EMIs or more income is the allocated capital, which is limited to stay in the game long term without losing my shirt. Even though I had a profitable strategy even before I started trading profitably, it took me 2.5 years to align my comfort/tolerance level with risk management. i.e. its not just about having a profitable strategy. I did minor tweaks on my strategy only 2 times in all those years.

I do not doubt that many fail with day trading. In my case, day trading is stressful and takes anywhere between 5-8 hours of my time daily including time spent outside market hours. It is stressful, exciting and frustratingly boring while waiting for opportunities. And to add to the stress I freelance too, mostly before trading hours and some after. Doing both feels like slogging everyday and on some days I have an internal struggle about increasing the trading risk. And there are times where other traders will (unintentionally) gaslight by telling me how their monthly returns are equal to my annual returns.