You wouldn't need to make 20 points a day in order to get ahead really quickly. You could simply average "2" points a day for each contract and double your position size every 3 months. Within 2 years, you would be set. Also, return on capital is different than return on leveraged capital. If I return 50% a year on a 10x leveraged position, I would probably suck as a trader.
>>What Im saying is that to start out and expect that is stupid. [/B][/QUOTE]<<< Fine, but what was your point for stating the obvious?? Those that truley need to hear it, aren't worth the words.... -momo
Secco- excellent post. Valid points through and through. >>you can't win at this game without exploding myths and breaking through limits that your own mind sets........most people are so fucked up in the head they can't see straight in the markets and in life.........SET YOUR MIND STRAIGHT.......that is the REAL EDGE << Any newbies or veterans for that matter reading the above. Take heed, raw written words, however so very very true. I seem to at some point each and every trading day, come to this realization. Although, to a lesser and lesser extent than when I first started almost 2 years ago. -momo
Averaging 20-pts per day is not as difficult as you think, but NOT trading one contract. 20-pts per day is about $250k/year, and there definitely are people doing that trading eminis. tom, we already talked about this. we are talking 20pts per contract. i stand by my statement that to AVERAGE this figure would be extremely difficult, to put it mildly. no doubt that there are people making 250k/year with eminis, and some probably much, much more, but that has nothing to do with pts per contract per day. and my point about 50%/year wasn't so much to compare private emini traders with investment funds, only to say that 50% per annum compounded, any way you look at it, is absolutely topnotch performance. i'm not sure how much money these funds have under management, but if they are doing this 50% pa with starting with more than $5MM, and keeping it up for more than 5 or 6 years, my hat comes off to them.
Once again, visit this site http://iasg.pertrac2000.com/mainframe.asp? Michael N-trading Financial Futures - 71M under mgmt ; 54%/year Quadriga AG - 132M under mgmt ; 31%/year Beach Capital-Discretionary - 426M under mgmt ; 24%/year World futures market's volume grows fast, so probably there're no problems with trading tens of millions of $. The most liquid futures are: S&P, NQ ( minis + full-size ) [ http://www.cme.com/prices/delayed_intraday_quotes/futuresandoptions.cfm#index ] DAX, Eurostoxx, EuroBund, EuroBobl [ http://www.eurexchange.com/index2.html?dq&/cgi/eurexDQ ] Eurodollar [ http://www.cme.com/prices/delayed_intraday_quotes/futuresandoptions.cfm#interest ] T-Notes, T-Bonds [ http://www.cbot.com/cbot/www/page/0,1398,12+410+415,00.html ] plus futures on FTSE100, CAC40, Nikkei225, Kospi, Hang Seng.
not sure whether your post is to agree with me or not dt-waw. but regardless, those statistics confirm the difficulty of keeping up high annual returns (30%+) year after year once you get into account sizes in the millions. that Michael N's is pretty neat! only 6% max drawdown!
I agree with you, daniel - "50%_pa_return_is_great". Of course, liquidity is not infinite but its huge. Funds can trade not only financial futures: currency futures, spot forex, stocks, options, etc. Liquidity is growing, 6 years ago there was no e-minis, dax, volume significantly lower than today. I wonder how other side of the game looks like: funds which lose money... Arbitrage funds, how are they perform? Hmmm 5 pts / day on average trading 1 mini ES? With 10k acct, your return would be 620%/year! Be happy if you make ANY money trading. Killing competition, everybody wants to win, many traders are smart, they know everything you know, or even more...
I would think 3 to 5 points per day, on average, would be really good. I have a friend (used to work with him) who traded 200 lots in the S&P pit and he probably didn't do any better than that. I know of a guy who's made about $2 M this year to date trading 30 e-minis at a whack. Is that about 5 points per day? I would say that he's an exceptionally good trader.
well, let's not go too far now... trading isn't THAT hard. you don't seriously think that the competition is THAT much more sophisticated do you?? they know "more" than you do? maybe someone with inside info might, but those types constitute such a small percentage of traders we can safely ignore them. other than that, there's not really very much more for anyone else to know..