You asked a question and I gave you my answer. I also noticed that one poster was posting 90% failure from commodities accounts and that I can believe. The key here is leverage, I do not think you can make it in stocks without having min 100 k and using 4 to 1 margin intraday or without going to a prop firm.
Hello there Tdog, I will disagree in part with you. One may achieve returns of 10% on capital monthly trading futures. The difficulty would be in doing so on the compounded return. Reason being after a time the amount of contracts traded would grow substantially as account size grew to continue to accrue such rates. The mental edge would also be quite difficult to keep as the account continued its ascent. One at some point could would be facing increased risk of ruin due to the sheer increase in size over time, and the increase in the mental aspect, unless one was purely using a mechanical system. It is much easier to make consistent rates of return in that area on 50k and upwards. I don't know where a reasonable cutoff point may be. However, if one had trading capital in excess of say 5 million, the return becomes increasingly more difficult. I know of a few succesful traders who do just what was stated. They have a set amount of funds in their account, they trade a fixed amount of contracts that is not exceeded for their high probability setups, and a lessor portion for the lower probability ones. They sweep the excess cash every month to another account, and repeat. They are happy with the size they can trade comfortably, and consistenly. It provides more than enough income for living, allows substantial savings, and is still an enjoyable endeavor. There are times where less is more. Success is determined by ones satisfaction in what is deemed to be enough according to the individual, and not as in comparison to other individuals. There will always be the lessor and greater than ourselves in whatever we desire to do. Should'nt it amount to being happy with what we have and who we are, not with what we don't have and who we're not? I would agee there are those that would have us believe differently and claim they are doing as good or better than this. The truth would be how many really have accomplished it, and it would more than likely be far fewer than the claims, IMHO. Enough from me. I see you are still at it, so you must have discovered that which allowed you success. Take Care Trade Well, and have a Nice Evening! Kelly
Just a quick note to say that I may have been a bit abrasive in my earlier comment, and I regret that. My only point of contention, was that I think that the idea of one-third of respondents to this poll making those kinds of returns is simply not believable, even accounting for the possibility that a higher than representative proportion of successful traders may have decided to respond to the poll. I realize that the compounding argument only goes so far in the real world, but I just wanted to express my disdain with exaggeration. It is downright annoying. Therefore, please disregard my last post, volente. And it's good to hear from you, Kelly/glassinc. To respond to your parting comment, I seem to be managing, but apparently nowhere near the level of the top third of this poll's respondents on a consistent basis. (Maybe that's why I'm peeved. )
To pick your brain, Say 2 % of the population in the US are doctors, not sure what the actual number is but it is irrelevant, if you go into a hospital and do a survey will there only be 2% of doctors out of the enitire hospital staff ? Now say 90% fail at trading, if you go to Bright trading in LV, will only 10% of the traders there be profitable ? Also to be fair when you say 10% return is that on just the capital in your account or is that 10% return using 4 to 1 margin or is that 10% return using 100 to 1 margin in futures?
I understand your point. I just don't think that this "hospital" has as many "doctors" as some would have you believe. Judging by a lot of the posts I read, my own guess is that ET's membership is representative of the broad spectrum of traders. Therefore, any aggregate statistics that may apply to all traders out there can probably be applied to ET's membership as well. Just my opinion, of course.
To be clear, I'm not the one who said 10%(+). Rather, the initiator of this thread mentioned it, and a disproportionate number of respondents flooded to it. My own assumption is that the poster meant 10% monthly return on account equity.
Thunderdog set aside only 25k, which he would allow to compound at the suggested rates of return, that 25k would compound to well over $7 Million after a 5-year period. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Those figures are so far off it's hard to figure what you are using as interest, and where would you get this high interest? You would could not even triple your money if you could get 20%. How the heck did you figure? don
I believe he was using 10% a month from the poll choice , and assuming 120 % annual to get the number. The number that results is $7,612,040.99 at the end of 5 years from a 25k start.
Why is it always assumed that profits are compounded? Why can one not take his 100k earn 10k on it and take the profits out of his account? Then do the same thing month after month? This idea that those who say they make 10% or more monthly are simply discredited because YOU do not see their names in lights because YOU assume they made that 214% percent each yr, is in and of itself simply BS. There is so much truth in the idea that we must knock down someone else to make ourselves feel better. Make 'em pretty, Chris