Why do most day traders fail?

Around 95% failure, yes, close enough. The short answer is conditioning.

No matter what you think about trading when you first start — it’s harder than you think, it’s not as simple guessing a direction, getting it correct, it’s position sizing, it’s managing your risk, its managing your emotions, it’s staying calm when your trade immediately start losing, it’s confidence in your strategy or strategies, it’s discipline to execute your plan.

Most people have told me, “how hard can it be to just push buttons”. THAT, that, that right there is why most people fail, they underestimate the difficulty level of managing themselves. Yeah, clicking buttons is the easy part, but that’s only 1% of it. The other 99% take years to master.