Apologies if there are similar threads out there. I'm trying to figure out what would be the top 10percentile of traders? Are these the guys doing 80% + return on capital per year? Is 120% per year top 2% of traders? Curious on what everyones thoughts are here. I would imagine some people just look to make X $'s per year, but I'm curious what peoples thoughts are from a percentage return.
How would anyone other than the IRS know that answer? Besides, what others make is not really relevant.
I would much rather have a conversation about trading with a trader who makes 40% per year but finishes every trading day profitable than a trader making 120% per year with all sorts of wild equity swings over the course of a year. Just my opinion.
Rank? Depends on how long I've been trading and the heat of the day. It all relates to capital which makes it impossible to get sound figures in terms of % returns. Someone in futures, very experienced, might do hundreds/thousand(s) have happened, of percent with 2-10k (if they had to) but will do less with 2-10 million.
Traders don't talk in terms of %ages. It's average $ per month. Most short term strategies are going to be capacity constrained so %ages aren't really relevant. Those which aren't won't be publicly discussed. In the old (London) futures 'prop shop' model (they provide a desk and clearing in return for commission split and sometimes they'd back you) 100-150% per month on the notional balance was _common_, back when markets were a lot less efficient. When people talked P&L it was usually money, not percentages. If you had 50k up with them you'd be doing 40-70k most months in e.g. German bonds (early 2000s). What you can make is very product and strategy specific, and what I understand from speaking to people at trading companies who still manually trade, around half a tick profit per contract traded means you're pretty good.
So I guess based on that greater than 80% per year on average you are in the top 2% of traders. Possible answer to the orignal post... There is no right answer just curious on thoughts out there.
There isn't a way of knowing, collating information or even estimating, and the turnover (in participants, I mean) of the bottom 20-30% is so huge and quickly changing that "percentiles" don't really mean anything anyway. It would be pretty easy to guess an answer intelligently, on the basis of perfectly reasonable information and assumptions, and still be wrong by a factor of 10 or more. Godel's undecidability theorem applies: some things are just unprovable.
I would just focus and think about the Top .5% of Traders only, ...Being in the top 2% may sound impressive...but I bet...it's not even that much, I'll assume being in the Top means the biggest % gain, not $ gain, That being said, it will generally be a small retail guy with a relatively small acct only, In a near Perfect Storm scenario of basically going all in, and compounding...it's easy to Surpass everyone's average return, I have grown paper trading options accounts by more than 1,000% in less than two weeks, But in the interests of full disclosure, I have blown some too, -- or greatly minimized their value,