I think he made his money when margin was only 2-1....before PDT rules and other high leverage "deals".... He is smart enough to take what the market gives him.... SteveD
I don't think anyone can argue though that it was still very impressive to make that kind of gains, bubble or not. Lots of us traded thru the bubble years and I certainly am not sitting on 50 mil.
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Well said, figure out if you want to be entertained or you want to gain some real information on how to improve. If what you thought was meaningful was how he dresses and his sober look than thats fine, American Idol will be on in half an hour and you can watch that next. For the others and me, we will be working on trying to figure out how to add that type of thinking into our bottom line.
you guys crack me up... you are all still searching for the right way to act and dress... but that doesn't matter... if you spent half this much time figuring out your own trades..your own set ups.. then maybe just maybe.. you can be successful.. i have a lot of repect for this guy dan zanger... he has made a lot more money than i ever have, but i do not need to learn trading from him or anyone else.. this is a solitary game my friends and enemies.. Dan is not going to reveal to you how he does what he does? and dressing drab and being unemtional isn't going to do it for you either.
He claims to have turned 10,000 into 10 million or whatever, but if you go to his website http://www.chartpattern.com/cf/index.cfm he only gives examples of charts of stocks that may have doubled or tripled, and only if you held for a year or longer. Obviously merely doubling your money won't yield those kind of 1000x returns. He's using options of some short, but that caries the high risk of losing the initial investment and the upside isn't 1000x unless you perhaps you get inside info on buyout and buy calls, which would be illegal. The whole thing is BS. If making these huge returns were so easy or intuitive why do most funds and individual traders underperform the indexes?
Dan is legit. He started trading in 1976. Between 1976 and 1998 he had blown accounts 3-4 times. He had many failures and had given up quite a few times. He worked in construction for 20 years and studied the time he was off. The amount of study time was 60-80 hours per week on top of his regular job. In 1998, he was in the right place at the right time. At that time, technology stocks had multiplied many times over in very short time. There are many people out there that turned in thousands of dollars into hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, I had turned 7000 into about 62000 around that time in a few months without margin. It wasnt that difficult considering how the technology stocks were trading. I believe the S&P500 had made a 50% move from 1000 to 1500 within about 16 months. If I was as bold as Dan and had his experience/education in trading in 1998, then I would have made a lot more. Dan was very bold and used all the margin that the brokerages would provide to him (2x). Take into consideration that in 1998 Dan was in his 40s and had blown accounts in the past. He had been studying the markets since 1976. He made it to that point through many years of experience and studying the markets never giving up. The stocks on his website are what Dan typically trades which are larger cap high growth stocks (i.e. Apple, EBAY, RIMM, etc.) Only the solar stocks are close to what he traded back in 1998-2000 (i.e. high growth, low float, small cap) The type of returns that Dan made in 1998-2000 are no longer possible in my opinion. Im not certain if we will ever get to a time again in my lifetime where you find stocks going from the single digits to the triple digits within a few months or when placing your money in the SPY would give you a 50% return in a year. Remember EFUT last year going from single digits to 50 dollars within days? Thats how it was back in 1998-2000 with tech stocks nearly every other week. Thats how Dan made his cash and he was using 2x leverage. Dan's strategy today is to go in at maximum leverage on breakouts. Remember that this is a guy that religously studies 400-800 charts each night and has done so for many years. I dont think he even has a family. He knows what he is doing. He'll get in on a breakout of first solar, for example, when it gaps up 10-15%, but since he used margin then his return is 20-30% within a day. Then he'll move on and find another stock that will do that same thing the next day. Compounding gonzo returns from day to day is what he does best. Just do your research on the man and read all of his interviews. He is very open and you can meet him in-person when he does a seminar in NYC. The guy is very analytical and his words should be strongly considered, if not followed.
Here is one of the best examples I can think of. Broadvision. In 1998, traded around 8 dollars and then traded at around 800 dollars in 2000. Another example is SCON which traded at around 30 dollars in December 1999 and hit 1150 by April of 2000 (4 months!!!). That is how you turn 11000 into millions of dollars. Imagine being a prop trader during this time with so much leverage.