What a sorry bunch of schmucks to even think you can turn $5K into $100K in today's market! Yeah, you can also win $300million playing the lottery but, so what? The chances of that happening are very, very close to zero.
I would guess that less than 0.5% of the people on this board have ever managed to generate a 2000% internal rate of return on their money. So before concerning myself with the question of how long it will take, I would first try to figure HOW to create such superior edge.
True. I will be ammending the article and placing a link to this thread in it. I will try and include a pre-article on where/how to create edges.
5 months Man those were the days.....I took $12,000 (I know its not 5000) in just under 5 months. Took TRAC from 3 to over 30, BIDS (this pos still around lol) from the Toronto exchange to Nasdaq from 3 to 32, KTEL from 7 to 70, 265 points from QCOM, 125 pts from YHOO. Ok some of those were after the initial run, but those were the days when you could buy calls on an SDLI and catch a 1 day 100 point run. Now its more about risk management....limiting loses, riding the "truetrend." If you trade 10 ES, pull 4 pts a day, which is doable, you make $2000 a day. 500 days or 2.5 years without increasing size. If you wanted to max out and use one of the brokers who only ask for $500 performance bond/ES on $5000. Its about lasting, not hitting the home run. Stay the course. Home run hitters either adapted or got a job. Those of us that have lasted the last decade did so by adapting our styles and being risk-adverse.
Those nice days when you could hit 100 points homeruns will be back eventually. The trick is to stay alive and be in the market when that day finally come.
How long do "those days" last for. There was a period during the roaring 80s when you could stick a pin in the paper and pick out any stock and it was a winner and we've more recently seen that with NASDAQ stocks in the late 90s. I wonder if anybody has measured the period of time (as a percentage of all time) when these sorts of markets exist? For example as a percentage of each decade? That would be an interesting study if not done already. Thanks for all the comments.
Just read this which I thought was topical and relevant: Ryan Jones is considered one of the trading industries "most complete traders". Starting his trading career at the early age of 16, he had traded nearly every major market and strategy by the age of 21. At the age of 26, Ryan signed a book deal with John Wiley making him one of the youngest authors ever in the field of futures trading. His book, The Trading Game, Playing by the Numbers to Make Millions is still considered to be the authority on the subject of trading and money management by many leading traders. Ryan's advanced experience and knowledge across many trading fields such as Technical Analysis, Option Trading, Money Management and the S&P have lead to several trading feats, including turning a $15,000 account into over $107,000 in less than 90-days short-term trading the S&P (real money).
I could see this being possible within a year if investing in equities, but it would involve being leveraged, so you could just as easily blow out your account if your capital and risk management strategy isn't sound.
This was an interesting thread. It looks like there is quite a bit of risk-taking behavior by using a pyramid style of trading. I have scalped the ES a couple of years ago and had a really good win ratio but it was always for .25 to .50 point, seldom more. Also, I used one contract. I think this would be hard to do in any short time frame without more leverage. I will give it some thought, though, because my goal for a long time has been to make $100k in one year. This is my best year so far but I'm about $30k short of $100k for the year. Also I haven't traded very frequently, most of my money has come from other investments. I have, right now a little over $6500 in my IB account and a little over $63,000 in CD's, savings and checking accounts. If I could do this using T-notes and the EUR/USD contract it would be easier because leverage is greater but I would just try for the extra $30k I need for by year's end. Thanks for the inspiration to give it one more go this year.
Contest accounts are not traded in a way that a rational investor would trade a real money account (either his own or OPM). Anyway, if you develop a tradeable edge, then indeed you can compound your account in an exponential way.