To Whom it may concern,
My name is Gary. I am not a school student. I am a student of life. Here is my question. My friend is a professional day trader on the stock exchange. He claims that he can take a $24,000 investment at 5% daily interest and at the end of 3 years have approximately 34 million dollars. Can this be correct?
Thank you.

Sincerely,
Gary

Well this is either really silly (you can't get 5% each and every day - if you could you'd be a trillion-trillionaire and more) or someone who doesn't understand compound interest giving you advice. Either way I'd avoid his advice.

Typically when we say 5% interest compounded daily we mean 5% is an annual rate and that you get 1/365 of this each and every day so that in three years (1095 days) your $24000 would grow to

$24000(1+(.05/365))¹⁰⁹⁵ = $27884

(about 16% on your money), not millions to be sure. If you did this with 5% a day you'd get

$24000(1+.05)¹⁰⁹⁵ or about $3.82 x 10²⁷

- I don't know if there's that much money in the western world.

Cheers,

Penny