Sabena I am fascinated by your seeming combination of understanding and irrationality. You seem to have a solid grasp of probability, expectation, variance etc. and yet your goal is, to put it modestly, insane. I would consider it comparable to a young software engineer deciding that through sheer hard work and determination he is going to build a company bigger than Microsoft. While this type of determination is admirable, it belies a complete and total misunderstanding of true probabilities versus right place/right time. If Bill Gates had lived out a thousand lifetimes, he probably would have been wealthy in most of them because he is a driven, brilliant guy, but became the richest man in the world in only one. I suggest reading "Fooled by Randomness" by N. Taleb. If you compare the track records of all the great traders you can think of or have access to, I think you will find that fewer than one tenth of one percent of them, if that, are able to compound their returns in the way Larry Williams did ON A CONSISTENT BASIS. Larry Williams basically played Russian Roulette with his account for a year (and didn't get a bullet until nine months in). How many good traders have done this but not had their records posted anywhere because they didn't have the run of empty chambers Larry did? Probably hundreds or thousands, but we won't know because the losers don't show up to the victory party. If you can do what Larry Williams did but do it consistently and only taking small risks, that would mean you have an edge that is exponentially better than the best traders in existence. You would have to be not just better than all who have ever traded, but ten times better than all who have ever traded. Good luck pal. You'll need it.
I will never take the risks that Larry Williams took. My background is engineering, so I do known better than 99 % of the people on this board what probabilities are and when I can extrapolate with high probability my results. I will give you an example. Suppose you can average 3 % each day with a standard deviation of .3 % that means that 68 % of your daily results will be between 2.7 % and 3.3%. The lower your standard deviation in relation to your average the more you can accurately predict future results. I will let do my former professor of statistics , Mr. Vander Waeteren the statistical analysis of my results and let him determine the part luck has played in my performance. This professor has graduated with the highest % ever achieved in the history of the university of Leuven, KUL as a civil engineer so his opinion could be maybe of some value....:0) Just look at Larry's equity curve, you would get for less pain in your stomach. My equity curve will look much, much better than his. I will try to approach as closely as possible the straight line from 0 % to 11000 % and if you can do that, then it means you can trade consistently. I have never played Russian Roulette but I am very good in poker, I invite you with this....
You can fill up five pages with math formulas if you want, but the simple fact is that you will never overcome the damning observation of observed reality. There are a) traders who have made a killing by taking big risks and b) traders who make modest percentages consistently (one hundred percent a year being 'modest' for the sake of my argument), year in and year out, without exposing themselves to big risks. There are no traders who have done both. To do such a feat would be akin to an athlete who can both deadlift 600 pounds and run a 4 minute mile. None exist. Math or not, You would be the first in history. With all due respect I doubt you will have that honor.
Only God can trade in a straight line up. Meaning you never have any drawdowns. Consistentie means how closely you can hover around this straight line in your way up.
Darkhorse, If you had a mathematical background, you would understand what I was saying... It just makes not much sense to talk to you on my level....
ROFL Thx Sabena, you just gave this backwoods country hick the best laugh he has had all week. You sound like one of those guys who ran Long Term Capital Management.
Your comparision with becoming Microsoft 2 makes no sense. Bill Gates was just a clever guy in the right place, the right time and with the right product , with right people around him. He was dependent from a lot of external factors around him. And that means that luck played a very big part in his succes. My trading is not dependent from the character of market. Satistically there is no correlation with the behavior of the market. The only thing I need is liquidity. I don't need to market or sell my product and be dependent from the economic climat. When your succes is not dependent from external factors, then that means you make your own luck, and not that you have to be lucky. Larry Williams came never anywhere close to what he did in 1987 that just the prove that he was lucky. My advice to you, follow a course probability and then maybe you understand me if you are smart enough...
I am, inter alia, a qualified actuary and have a modest understanding of probability theory. So you can talk to me. How do you propose achieving such a high expectation/variance ratio? What instrument(s) will you be trading? What is your expectation and variance per trade? From previous posts To reach Larry's record, I should do 2 % a day and compound my profits. I will start out with more than 2 % a day and as the capital starts to grow, I will have a decrease in % return because of the size. The formula I use to determine the number of contracts that I trade (Account size) divided by (margin requirement + 50*(largest drawdown in points)) This game is all about probability's and I can state that I have a chance of more than 90 % to beat Larry.