Let's get one thing straight when people talk about "great traders" (as measured by being on Forbes list). Steve Cohen is on the Forbes 400 MAINLY due to OPM -- like every other single "great trader/investor" also on the list eg Soros/PTJ/Kovner/Lampert/Druckenmiller/John Henry... (Ya, i know being good helps to attract OPM...) Yup I guess if he were trading his own $5M a/c he would benefit from "information arbitrage" PLUS all the other freebies - just like other funds do. LOL. Being the shit in trading don't mean jack unless you utilize serious OPM. Even 20% compounded over the years on sizeable capital => big $$$. I still wait for the day when someone strictly trading their own a/c gets on the Forbes 400. LOL
Well of course hedge funds - the few successful ones, that is - can trade for extremely short periods, be it intraday or for a couple of days at most, why not, provided they trade in markets liquid enough for their respective size. Soros was famous for moving serious size both intraday and seldom longer than a few days at most. Paul Tudor Jones is a very short term player with his billion dollar fund. Crabel's billion dollar fund is in the markets for only very short term periods. As for Cohen, a " 7/21/2003 article in Business Week states that his firm "routinely accounts for as much as 3% of the NYSE's average daily trading"... http://www.beatthestockmarket.com/pages/news/stevecohen.htm In the book "Trading to Win", by Ari Kiev, based on Cohens fund, and who was pulled in by Cohen to improve his traders performance, a lot of the featured traders are actually daytraders, talking about what kind of targets they want to set themselves for the day. James Cramers 300 mil hedge fund day traded when his wife was there doing what she did best, earning money on a daily basis, a lady termed the "Trading Goddess" by a WSJ article. Read Cramers book on details. Either you can trade, or you can't. If you can you can maximize gains by increasing trade frequency as long as your personal style and liquidity permits it. RE daytrading in general: Looks like the always quoted 95% losers wasn't quite accurate. According to this here some 20% are supposed to be profitable: http://www.aimrpubs.org/faj/issues/v59n6/toc.html
"If this is so true then why is it all the rich peope I know are long term investors and all the poor people I know are daytraders? Also, why is the Forbes 400 full of long term investors and not one single daytrader? Hmm, interesting. Btw, you don't have to answer the question, I already know the answer". How about Pinky Green worth about 1 billion, Marc Rich also about 1 billion, Paul Tudor Jones (if his philanthropy hasn't widdled his net worth below 600 million) and my guess Bruce Kovner probably does a lot of "day trading" also worth more than a billion- probably closer to 2B.
Here's some interessting info about Richard Dennis: http://www.streetstories.com/rd_finan_trader.html Anyone know how he did/does since 1998?
If you think PTJ and Kovner made billions by day trading then you're an idiot. Caxton Associates is one of the largest hedge funds in the industry at around 10 Billion, now imagine that he uses leverage aswell. Now try to imagine day trading with $15 Billion dollars.
How anyone can possibly mention marc rich, soros, cohen et al within the context of daytrading is silly. They have nothing to do with day trading as is usually understood in ET.