I think that most Specialist firms make something around 90% a year on their capital. They seem to have a pretty good edge (that they pay about $1million to have), and are happy with that. Brandon
Averaging 1%/day over a year or two is no big deal in the futures, provided you catch a good market. Hanging onto that money is the hard part. The style that made it in a good market will destroy you in a bad one. Someone also made a very accurate observation, namely that you will make the majority of that money on 20-25 days. The rest of the time you will basically be breaking even.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7149&perpage=6&pagenumber=10 Here is a repost of a post I wrote on basically this same topic.... BTW % return is so easy to distort... I did 10% in my futures account today... Woo freaking hoo. I risked about 3% It's always amount risked vs. amount gained that is important. Which is why I use risk "units" to track my room trades... -Bo
What? You didn't make that easy 1% of your account? What's wrong with you? Maybe you're just wasting your time trading. nitro. Disclosure: Long sarcasm
I lost today because I entered unfamiliar territorry full force. Well, I got creamed (in fact, I was down almost a K at one point.) Looking back, I had three good trades to make today and that is all I should have taken (which is a ridicoulously small number for me) Honestly, these days where the market opens up 200 points and continues to rally from there, with the spoos clinging to the high for hours, well, I can do without them. Once the spoos left the "safety" of the highs, I had all good trades...(too little too late.) nitro