Someone who sticks around for years is not necessarily successful. Someone who is trading part time is not necessarily successful. The truth of the matter is the success rates in this industry are pretty much the same across the board regardless of product traded or the firm where one is at. There are lots of traders who have been trading for more than 5 years who are not successful. Hell, there are guys that have been trading for 10 to 15 years who are not successful. You need to define what a successful trader is. The failure rate is about 80% to 90% across the board when accounting for survivorship bias in the data. But that number needs to be broken down more in terms of long term viability. Long term success is probably under 10% due to changing market conditions, volatility levels, liquidity, etc. The numbers have been pretty constant over the last 100 years. A successful trader is someone who earns all their income from trading and trades full time. No other jobs. And someone that can pay all their overhead and living expenses and still build equity in their account for 3 consecutive years. Trading can be broken down into 3 levels. The level 3 is what is defined as a successful trader.
Level 1: net negative trader
Level 2: scratch trader (someone who makes only enough money to cover commissions and maybe their expenses month to month.
Level 3: Someone who is both net profitable and earns enough money to not only cover all their expenses and monthly bills but also builds their account equity at the same time.
Level 1 and 2 have a burn rate. They have a finite amount of time before they run out of money. Level 3 is a trader that has the ability to completely support himself and continue to build his account balance year after year.