See... he's got it! The people that are choosing 500 and not posting in this thread... Do you guys make that much? Are you making anything? Makes me wonder!
Fifty pips per week will make you really rich in a fairly short period of time. I'd say 150 pips per week is "killing it." Of course that's for an average week; some weeks you should be happy to make far less and occasionally you should only be happy with making more. Cheers, TRADERguy
At this point in time there are 13 votes for 500+; remember that it is very possible that all of the votes came from Coinzy aka FXsKaLpEr, etc.
500 net pips a week is insane. you could also double your money in the stock market every week if you bought the right calls/puts (actually much more), but come on its just stupid, 500 pips a WEEK?
think about it, if you could just earn $10.00 per hour trading FX. 1 pip. 240 dollars a day X 5 days a week--1200.00 per week --62400.00 per year. surfer
A lot of people are swing traders/trading on multiple pairs. Also, for SOME reason, there are a lot of people who multiply their true pip count by how many lots they were trading... which is ridiculous. Lol.
Thanks for the replies guys. Some of the sharper cookies on this thread have pointed out that without certain common underlying assumptions, the poll doesn't mean too much. To clarify: Pips attained on a single pair (assuming only one pair is traded) or its equivalent*** on a per lot basis (net pips/units traded) ***If you trade a basket of 10 currencies you could add each currency's net profit/loss then divide that by total units traded to get about the same number. The poll was designed to skew toward unrealistic expectations. But then again this is ET! My own opinion is actually very similar to this one: (I would add that in the real world of trading it isn't possible to trade every day let alone every week and it isn't possible to lever up to infinity. Also, systems don't produce profits linearally. ) While I agree with late_apex that with "only" 27 pips a week on decent leverage one can make a fantastic annual return. By my calculation on 5:1, at his 27 pip rate you make 70% uncompounded and 99% compounded annually. However I don't understand how he can derive a 10% drawdown from the 27 pip net unless he is just musing with regards to this percent to beat the big hitters? late_apex (and a few others in this thread) is right in that drawdown is a very important part of the picture. One other point is that returns are not linear on a weekly basis - the lower the drawdown the lower the relative roller coaster effect. I derive my maximum safe leverage amount from average max weekly drawdown. By average I mean the max weekly DD of the past 3-4 weeks, which for my system seems to be indicative of future weekly drawdowns. If I have a 120 pip average weekly drawdown on a EUR/USD system, and I wish to risk up to a 10% monetary drawdown in my account and I start with $20,000 then at most I can trade: (20,000 * .1)/.0120 = 166,666 units of EUR/USD. But I admit that as a result of Lon Eagle's approach to gearing and comments on capital risk, and in light of the Refco bombshell, I have taken to gearing up and keeping fewer funds at risk, at least in uninsured accounts.
They've also displayed their own brilliance in the fact that with using mathematical approaches to the market. You can succeed quite easily without ever killing yourself.
Actually, I don't think any approaches have been discussed in this thread. To get back on topic, what weekly result would you consider "killing it"?