From my experience after 7 years what I would say is about 90% fail right away (within first 6 months) of the 10% who "make it" at least 30% of those will make juse more then the average income, 60% will make 75-150k a year and that last group which is 1% of all traders who start will have that income of 250k+ per year
Just a point of reference, over half our active traders have been with us 6 years or longer - many over 10, some 15 years. We all know it's tough, but for those who "have it" - it's a life long career.... and fun too, LOL. All the best, Don
trading is like professional sports. there is more to succeeding than learning or reading on how to play which the financial snakeoil salesmen lead people into thinking everyone can do it. how many people who try make it to Major league baseball? maybe 1%? but they did not succeed out of luck. richard dennis showed that a certain personality, emotional and intelligence profile can make a successful trader.
Don, Wow that is hell of alot of leverage, 20k for 500k of buying power! 25 times! So, in order to make six figures with 20k initial investment, you would need a strategy that makes 20% annual return without leverage. With 25 times buying power the return on initial investment would be (.20 x 25) 500% annually. So, $125,000 in earnings. You must have some great back-tested strategies if your able to generate 500% annual returns and without getting completely wiped out from draw downs. I wonder how much draw down do your traders experience to get that kind of return?
LOL, nah... the "use of" vs. "abuse of" capital is often misunderstood. Our traders don't bother "backtesting" strategies very often, they simply are able to engage in things that most retail traders cannot. We may enter $500k worth of opening only orders, knowing full well that we can't get filled on both buys and short sales... and will likely get a 10% fill rate.... just to make $500-$1000 in the morning. We "use" $500k, but that's not risk capital. Of course, our quantitative people can go up to 20 or 30 times equity (hedged of course) to make money... several things we can do... All the best, Don
Don, be honest, how many guys is that. Those numbers have to be put in proper context. You might have had 1000 traders come through your doors over the last 10 years and you might have 150 traders with accounts now of which maybe 20 are active and half them have been with you for 6 years or longer. So that could be 10 guys out of a 1000 or 1%!!!!
I did a quick sort, and with start dates from 2006 and back .. we show 130, with about 20 not trading much, just keeping account live... and we have about 300 traders currently, many new of course, about 250 or so are considered "active." A "nice thing" but not a super thing... and of course many have not made it over the last 19 years... but, nice to have long term career types.... Don
Don - Do you have any numbers on what percentage of your traders who have been with you for 5+ years are net positive?