How do famous swing traders like Dan Zanger size up so fast?

excrypto · Nov 18, 2023

Laissez Faire said:
I remember Quallamaggie said in an interview that where other traders may scale down as their account grows he would simply keep increasing size while maintaining the same % risk, i.e., compounding profits.

Also, I'm sure he traded way more aggressively than 1 % per trade in his early days and would also scale into a trade for a bigger position size while keeping initial risk small and risking unrealized profits for a larger win as he increased his size. This works well when the market is in an extreme bull phase and stocks are making substantial one way moves.

Example:

5 % gain per week per $10 000 of capital in your account. You start with $10 000. As you hit $20 000, you double your position size (while keeping the same risk %). At $30 000, you add one extra unit for a total of three and so on.

After one year (50 weeks), you have $72 500 in your account gross.

After two years (100 weeks), you have $782 500 in your account gross.

Idealized example, of course, but it shows the potential of increasing your size as your account gains more buying power. Of course, you need to be a consistent winner to accomplish this. Initially, growth is slow, but at some point it starts snowballing.

Substitute 5 % gain per week with 0.5 % if you want. Over time, it will still yield an impressive result.

At the end of the day, there's only a few Quallamaggies and Zangers per every generation of would-be traders, though.

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My fav post in this thread so far. I suppose if you keep doubling up then yes, only problem I see is if its a long time before maturation on your first trades.

excrypto · Nov 18, 2023

tomkat22 said:
Yeah I saw that and I take him at his word. A little amatuer investigative work on my part I feel he had no more than 10mm in his trading account as of feb 2020. Which means he made 90mm from trading in the following 21 months. Quite impressive.
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I know he absolutely killed around the GME/BB era. Thats where he said he made a lot of money.

excrypto · Nov 18, 2023

M.W. said:
Who are you? Who are those guys whose names you mentioned? Just because you came upon the scene a few years ago and watched some YouTube videos means little to nothing. Those guys were harvesting extremely lucky lottery wins during maximum insanity in the market. I and peers generated 30-100 million each single year professionally, year in year out. And there are way bigger guns out there. The rats you mentioned got lucky but have never proven their skills, long term.
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If you dont know those guys who literally speak at things like T4AC then youre literally a nobody. NGMI senpai.

excrypto · Nov 18, 2023

M.W. said:
Yes that deserved a fuck you. Just because someone does not follow some schmucks on YouTube means nothing. I bet the 10 richest hedge fund managers have never heard of those names either. Only poor folks who watch this crap in order to keep the dream alive.

Retail or not, anyone with 5 or more brain cells knows that you can't emulate other traders. And no successful trader shares his/her approach EVER. Hence, whatever they post is utter crap. Which makes those, who put any credence into such content, the product.
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Roppel is literally a hedgie. Quite literally.

zghorner · Nov 18, 2023

excrypto said:
When you have pocket aces you know what you have. When youre trading you dont know that you had pocket aces until after. Its a different game. You follow your plan but like Mark Douglas said you treat every trade the same and just put on the trade because you never know what the future will yield. Pocket aces you can see in hand and know your chances with that hand are outsized.
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Very true, its much easier to spot them in hindsight than live, no way to know what you are holding until you are balls deep. even scaling into winners is much easier said than done as it requires more follow-through than not scaling (instantly cuts your cushion in half). Higher chance of taking a scratch for me at least because I cant tolerate letting a decent winner go red.

Probably better to scale based on skill: An example for an intraday trader-> Start at 1 Unit -> Add 1 Unit after a green day -> conversely, subtract one unit after a down day -> Set # of Down Days then Paper trade until Profitable or something idk

taowave · Nov 18, 2023

Have you read Momentum Masters??

excrypto said:
I have tried to follow how all these (Kristian Kullamaggie is another) massive traders took sub $10k accounts to $1mm+ all while keeping good R:R? I hear the whole trading community arguing to keep your risk <1% of your total account. If thats say a $5000 account then thats $50 risk per trade. No matter how I try to extrapolate an insanely profitable trade (lets say buy stock at $20 and sell at $180 risk $50 and buy 25 shares for $2 stop=$3989 profit) its still hardly any money (in relation to time and traders like Zanger doing it in 23 months). Now the above outlined fringe case is exactly that. Super hard for most people to land a stock like that once let alone multiple times. My question is, is it more likely that guys like him are far exceeding 1% and going closer to a kelly,half kelly,optimal f etc. to attain these gains? Anything im missing?

Please refrain from commenting that the gains possibly weren't audited, that CANSLIM/momo swing trading doesnt work,that your trading system is far better blah blah blah. Above is just an example of these kind of traders saying they do it in this short amt of time and how they do it.

Thanks and godspeed for some tendies fellow netizens
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longandshort · Nov 18, 2023

excrypto said:
Lol someones clearly new to trading if you dont know these names. Thanks for adding meta related commentary. Always helpful.
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Or maybe we’re just in different circles.

excrypto · Nov 18, 2023

taowave said:
Have you read Momentum Masters??
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Yes sir. Twice at least.

ironchef · Nov 18, 2023

longandshort said:
Or maybe we’re just in different circles.
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A Tale Of Two Cities.

mikeriley · Nov 18, 2023

And no successful trader shares his/her approach EVER. Hence, whatever they post is utter crap. Which makes those, who put any credence into such content, the product.
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This woman is an idiot.

Successful Traders who shared their strategies.
1. Toby Crabel
2. Mark Fisher
3. Mark Minervini
4. Trader Vic
5. Welles Wilder
6. John Bollinger
7. William J O'Neil
8. R.N. Elliot
9. J.M. Hurst
10. Tom Hougaard
11. W.D. Gann
12. Linda B. Raschke
13. MY MENTOR!

Beware wanna-be traders who continue
to put out that mantra.