this thread is hilarious if you doubt that it can be done then why waste ANY time on this board? seriously, find some other endevour if you haven't made it and are carrying doubts you might as well quit because it won't get any better for you
If the thread starter's point was too see if daytrading is a viable business, I would think that 10% rule is fairly accurate plus or minus (probably minus). My suggestion would be to make an investment in it, to see if you are in that 10%. If you lose your stake it's a rap. My plan, started with 60k, if I go down to 25k, I play poker, probably 10% rule there as well, lose that I work at Borders. I figure I have a 20% chance of making a living doing something I enjoy, if not ,uh...good health insurance.
10% chance from trading and a 10% chance from poker, you mean? I'm afraid I couldn't put money on you from that demonstration of your working out the odds. Don't you think that someone who fails at trading has a much worse chance of making a living at poker than "average", and that this should be taken into account somehow in the calculation? I wish you really good luck and success with the trading and I hope you don't need to try the poker!
I still don't see the point of Daytrading. 1. It's HARDER to learn and even more HARDER to maintain consistency! 2. You really don't have any less exposure to Risk of Ruin then you do with holding positions these days because of Options and spread hedging. 3. Obvisously the returns are NOT anywhere near the same as position and option trading. 4. The burn out and crazy factor are a lot higher do to ALL the STRESS. etc, etc.... Personally for me it was a person challenge that I set for myself out of boredom but I was financial able to handle it because of my position trading but it seems like that's not the case for 90% that give it a go. It seems like they are looking to get rich fast from it and my point is (that has been proven by others in this thread) that is the NOT going to happen so why even bother? To the original poster or others that read this thread my advise is to have some fun with Daytrading if you like but serious long term sustainable wealth comes through investing wisely long term or medium term as proven by the REAL players in the investing community. To those of you that are daytrading WELL my sincerest congratulations to you but this is my opinion and I'm entitled to it because I have worn both hats and the later is the most comfortable TRUST me.
So in summary, you find that daytrading is (a) hard work & stressful, (b) yields less returns than longer term investing, (c) has no advantages and yet you continue at it anyway for "fun". Uh huh. If you believed your own statements then you would not be daytrading at all (since you don't see the point) - you would focus your energy elsewhere unless your ego prevents you from believing what you are telling us. I suspect that you know daytrading successfully long-term is possible and you are disturbed that you haven't cracked the nut yet.
Actually winter I am essentially retired and I do find it to be fun and challenging but that's about it these days. Initially I was hoping that it would replace the income I was recieving from a company I sold that was keeping me busy during the days but sadly it hasn't. Lately the last few weeks, my online poker has been actually beating the income from Daytrading believe it or not ... lol. btw, I have been consistently profitable for the last 5 months.
There is a very simple reason that the daytrading community does not have any "Buffets and Soros's." Daytrading, by definition, is very active trading. I'm not as active as many daytraders, yet I typically have 'portfolio turnover' over 500+% per day. Now, let's look at someone like Buffet or Soros... With assets under management of $50B+, there is simply no possible way that they can efficiently trade $250B+ worth of transactions daily. Daytrading is a business where you try to capture small inefficiencies in the market. I believe that there are a large number of successful daytraders with accounts of $50k-$250k. It becomes a little more difficult (especially if not automated) to actively daytrade accounts of $250k to a couple of million. Beyond a few million, it is very very difficult to efficiently put all of that capital to work effectively. => I have tried, while managing a fund fund. Now I prefer to just trade for my own account. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it is much more difficult. Larger levels of capital typically require longer holding times for investment, which remove you from the 'daytrading' class. But, at the same time, longer holding times also typically mean less potential returns for the most successful of traders in that time frame. In other words, there will be a much higher percentage of daytraders with +100% annual returns, than there will be buy-and-hold investors with +100% annual returns. (more daytraders will blow up, as well) Anyway, this is why you will not find any daytraders managing $1B+ in the U.S. stock market. -Eric