The article is very good, but there is another dimension to be evaluated: There are two futures contracts that attract a lot of trading volume in Brazil: iboves

The article is very good, but there is another dimension to be evaluated: There are two futures contracts that attract a lot of trading volume in Brazil: ibovespa futures and dollar/real futures. Both contracts have two tickers each, the "full" and the "mini". So we have: INDFUT, DOLFUT, WINFUT and WDOFUT (those two last are the "minis"). The common lore (or myth) goes as follow: The average trader starts trading paper money in a demo account, then goes to the mini to "learn to feel the pain" and if successful migrates to the full contract. So, to really have the bigger picture, the study must be expanded to include the four tickers. Them we can really now if the "pros" playing on the full contract are really making any money.