For active traders who may be trading tens of thousands of shares a day, can you tell me how much your profit goal is on each trade? IE are you trying to make 10 cents or $1 per share on average. Also, how many average shares do you take on each position and how many trades do you make in a typical day. Thanks
I think most of us are just focused on making money. Where you take profits is largely based upon experience and research. I bet that most on here who do this professionally net out only a few cents per share, and that is on the high end. (Again this is for volume traders who do 100k shares a day or more)
I have been researching this as well and it seems many would be quite happy and satisified with $0.03 a day net average on 30,000 - 50,000 shares per day (net meaning after all commissions, ECN's etc...). Since many trade 100,000 shares a day from what they have said, assuming they aint lying lol, a few pennies a day would add up quite nicely month to month. Losses probably round it lower.
Whatever each trade allows, could be .05, could be .30 could be .01, could be 2 pts. It depends, I try to analyze each trade individually to determine, very quickly, what I see and how to react. PS I tend to trade positions 500-1500 shares. When the market is slow I do btw 40K-80K shares a day, when its active 100k-200K shares a day.
I'd say if you can average 1 to 2 cents net per share traded you will do very very well. The more shares you trade though, the harder it is to keep that average up. However if you can produce good numbers all it takes is time and capital appreciation to scale up and make lotsa dough.
Heres a goal to go for. Forget pennies, forget shares traded forget avg size of winners. focus on % trading capital utilized. A professional trader should be able to make 1% of his trading capital per day. (not to be confused with margin allowed) e.g. 1000 shares of apple = $75, 000 us approx Xs 1% = $750 US $750 US = : 1- 75cent winner (maybe 500 shares at 50cent and the others @100) 3- 25 cent winners 75 - 1 cent winners (probably more like 150 after the thieves in the sec and such take their chunk)
Why limit yourself to just 1% per day. I have had days where I made 130% on my capital. Now that is a goal for professional traders! IMO, when you focus on your net per share, you soon realize that to make more money you need to trade more shares, and you begin to realize that your business can be scaleable. That's where the big $ are made.
.0499/ share profit (net) last year. 59% winners, 41% losers x a boatload of shares. Avg. % gain per day......less than 1%, but extremely consistent.
FYI: aqtrader has been posting every day on Trader P/L 2005 and 2006 threads with all the details. Here is summary. As per share profits, it is great. But the total dollar amount is quite disappointed. This may not be a typical case. Year 2006, so far earned average 10.47 cent per share based on total shares 18160 and average share price arount $30.00 dollars. Year 2005 earned average 4.96 cents per share based on total shares 109431 traded and average share price around $30.00 dollars. I think you may also find the answer by reading the posting from many other (typical) day traders there. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61514 For active traders who may be trading tens of thousands of shares a day, can you tell me how much your profit goal is on each trade? IE are you trying to make 10 cents or $1 per share on average. Also, how many average shares do you take on each position and how many trades do you make in a typical day. Thanks [/QUOTE]
Ii'd say the avg guy trading 100k or more shares a day is netting 1/2 a cent if he's lucky. thats still 10k amonth net or 120k a year which few traders make. the problem with huge high vol traders is massive slippage ecn charges and general churn and sec charges. i've been averaging 250k shares a day so far in 2006 and even though i've done well i'm finding the slippage grooss commissions after ecn fee's and sec fee's huge i've been averaging $1250 a day in commissions and fee's. not to mention the strees off being ina nd out of trades every few minutes. i prefer to find a horse and stay on it