Very good point. In my case as well, the opportunity cost was significantly larger, measured in multiples, than the maximum drawdown in account equity.
I believe I read where Linda Raschke(Market Wizard) said she felt like 30-50 k and 3 years was typical before turning it around. Have read where quite a few very successful blew out their accounts at least 1 or 2 times.Believe there is a book on this in particular..something to the effect "When Kryptonite...." I know it's on amazon. Maybe Art Collins is the author.
Of course, there's also the issue of how long they've been net positive. At least some who think they are may not be in a few months.
if it was in % then a good proportion of us would list 100% or more as a figure. I lost around 3000USD or 5000AUD before i became net positive. These where all small amounts because i was playing $1 per tick cfds, it was only until i had a net positive in index and commodity cfds did i venture out to full blooded futures. With a good level of confidence i did make it net positive with only a mere 30% ddown in the first qrtr. If i had started off with futures i suspect that the figure would be around 50,000 - 80,000 AUD
I assumed the poll wasn't just for full time traders, thus the opposite would hold true than as well. Can only speak for myself, but trading while having a career has allowed me to have a larger drawdown. In other words, salary has allowed me to stay in the game by funding the account and eventually make up for the drawdown to turn positive. dont' get me wrong - i still suck at trading and don't even consider myself a trader yet, just consider myself lucky. Without the career, I wouldn't have stayed in long enough to get lucky and pursue my ultimate goal of becoming successful fulltime trader.
God this thread makes me nervous j/k Anyway, I'm currently on net negative of $3K from $20K startup capital (not big I know, but decent enough to keep me hanging -- not playing too much on leverage). It's not that I'm on net negative all the time, sometimes I got a net positive of $4k sometimes less. Still learning my way to trade consistently
Yes, perhaps that may explain the numbers somewhat. Even so, I am quite surprised. Presently, of the 76 respondents, 22 claim to have become net profitable losing no more than $10,000 in the process! That's more than a quarter of respondents. Further, a total of 35, or 46%, claim to have done so on trading losses of no more than $20,000. I have read the stories of some fairly amazing traders in Jack Schwager's 3 Market Wizards books. How many of these "celebrity" traders claim to have become net profitable so cheaply? And yet, here at ET we apparently have a deluge of people with just the right combination of intelligence, smarts and luck. Hmm. What are the odds, eh? Could someone offer an explanation?