DT-Waw: you should be commended for bringing this old thread back to life. This thread is so old that I got an e-mail notification of another post. I stopped the e-mail enabling probably around April, 2002...lol... I remember January, 2003 was the launch date. Seems everyone forget Sabena's mad claims... btw still laughing at the Darkhorse comment "I will let an aids infested gorilla...." LOL
Larry Williams made 100x his capital in a year ($10,000 to $1million)... Well all the ES daytraders who claim they are making 4 points per contract per day should have no trouble doing what Larry did, in around 2 years... Let's take an ES trader who uses $5000 per contract and who trades 250 days a year... so, like Larry, this trader is gonna start with $10,000... this equates to 2 contracts of ES when taking the $5000 per contract.... if the margin required is $2000 per contract, this trader is funding his account by a factor of 2.5x the margin (this is slightly more aggressive than the performance statistics used on futurestruth, which calculates returns based on 3 times margin)... our 4pt a day trader will generate $50k per contract in profits (the point value on ES is $50)... so the trader will have a total of $55k per contract at the end of the year in his account...this is a total of $110,000 for the 2 contracts, and assumes the trader was trading just 2 contracts throughout his first year... Next year, our 4 point a day trader decides to scale up to 22 contracts (cos he is still using $5000 per contract), and before the year is up he will be a millionaire (indeed, had he scaled up for every $5k in profits -- rather than at the beginning of the new year -- he would be a millionaire well before the 2nd year is up)... So, come on, all you 4pt a day, 2 contract traders... y'all gonna be worth $1million in under 2 years!! Just get together your $10,000 and trade your 2 contracts... up, up and away!! Crappy traders, like myself, who have a long-run daily average around a shitty 1-1.5pt a day will have to content ourselves with more modest returns... but we're right behind ya, you 4 point a day ET'ers!!...
If one has a true intraday edge that can be applied consistently, with daytrading leverage for futures being what it is, triple digit monthly returns are well within reach for smaller sized (5-figure)accounts. It's when you start to get buy signals at 12:45 on an August Friday and you have to buy a couple hundred NQs that things tend to get a bit sticky
Now and again, perhaps (e.g. during some of the bubble months)... but as a long-run average (i.e. through all market cycles over the years you are trading), no way...
That's the thing, with that kind of performance your account doesn't stay 5-figures for very long; however, I think it's very possible to continually turn say 20k into 40k month after month on intraday futures trading, you don't need anything near a bubble to achieve that.
He traded with a tad bigger leverage. With 10k he was trading 1 SP when it was 500xSPX. Like 10 ES today albeit about a third the price value. Also he didn't wait till year end to begin pyramiding to bigger size. Hell Candle, I don't think he waited till day end to jack it up a notch. The point being that using similar money management LOL techniques as Williams i.e. no fear of risk of ruin, one could theoretically duplicate his success on way less than an average of 4 ES pts a day.
You guys seem to be forgetting our newest trading superstar the Scientist... If Sabena cannot do it, I bet (1 YM tick of monetary value) that the Scientist can...
Precisely... our very many multipoint per day ET superstar traders should have no problems in emulating Larry Williams record... like you imply, frequent compounding of size and an average of significantly under 4pts can do it... Mere mortal crappy traders such as myself, however, who are so shit that we only average 1pt to 1.5pt a day, haven't a chance in hell of repeating Larry's record.... I will leave such a challenge to the 30% of us here (according to one ET poll) who are scoring a multipoint long run average per contract per day... Its great to be surrounded by some of the best traders in the world... ET is the place where they all seem to be at... Enough for now... I gotta work on a way to boost my long run average of a tad over 1pt per contract per day... apparently, I am one of the crappiest traders here, cos my average is so low I think I am gonna quit trading... I've been at this for several years, and all I can muster up is a pathetic long run average... I need to find out the secret strategies of all those superstars here who will soon enough (even with conservative compounding and margining assumptions) be at billionaire status...
Year 1987 was the easiest for trading in many many years - http://www.barclaygrp.com/indices/cta/sub/finmet.html Performance is highly correlated with market conditions. Take a look for example at Schindler: http://www.iasg.com/SnapshotPT.asp?ID=8 During 9 months of 2000 superior return +234%. During 7 months of 2003 down 9%