Well, I decided to find out by having this thread how much traders think they can make on daily bases. My thought. If you are day-trading equities. I suppose it is quite possible to make 1% a day. So, if you start of with 25,000. It is around 250 profit a day. For forex, I suppose it s possible to make 8-10 pips a day. Assuming you trade Eur/usd with 2 pip spread. With 26,666 dollars. Assuming the spread is 40:1. That would be only 20 dollars a day. Now for futures, Assuming you trade ES. Buying only 1 contract at a time. With commision being 5.00 a round turn. And profit of 12.5 a tick. Now in my view it is possible to have a return of at least 10+ ticks a day. Assuming that you trade frequntly to have that goal. You have 2 trades to make that goal. So thats profit of 125 with overhead of 10. Net profit would be 115. Now thats my believe. How do you do?
Why not ask the far more critical question - How much LOSS a day is possible. I think you'll find it a lot more than your upside predictions
What you make a day depends upon what you are offered a day. For stocks, the offer per day (for position or swing trading) is usually around 5% for quality stocks which are abundant and determined before open. So to be effective and efficient my target is 2 1/2% per day for the total capital in the streams I trade. The hit ratio is usually 7 out of 8 and the 1 in 8 is dumped really early into slush. Any slush in the accounts can be used to intraday trade "rockets" which really exceed the quality stocks by a factor of better than 2. The 1:15pm daily institutional reports (what's in the check book for big money) more or less restarts the day if you want to really go for it. For commodities indexes what is offered is shown by the daily range, market sentiment and market pace. Again this is generally known before open so you can take your performance measure easily. I generally set the % per day for intraday trading as a % of the range, leveraging varies, of course. The upper limit runs @ 300. For sector rotation, I would use a weekly. What is offered is 4% and 2% is the weekly for me. Consider this OT as to your query. I am an amateur and trading retail as determined by the NFA reporting regs.
difficult now to bank 2, 2,1/2% a day. few months ago was a doable thing...of course bouncing into losses some days. now i consider myself lucky if i can get 1% and take losses often. still learning to trade gyrations on those damn gappers and that could really add to bottom line.
I am confused ... you want to know how much "retail" traders on ET "claim" to make a day ( based on their recent or yearly perfomance ) or how much they think they can make if they go prop and have unlimited ( or much larger ) BP ?
The traders who babble on trading forums about what they make daily are the ones who couldn't produce a documented multi-year real money track record of success if their life depended on it. Check out the documented (albeit hypothetical) results of the best newsletter writers and timers per Hulbert or the real money results of the best hedge fund traders per various tracking services such as the Van Hedge fund database, or the real money track records of various money managers per MoniResearch. That may give you some insights into the realities of trading with real money.
What I mean is how much a person on ET makes a day...regardless if s/he is retail trader, professional, or trades for a prop firm. Also I am curious how much a person bags in on % basis. Not as much as how much. Although, my poll off-sets it. Hmmm...wierd.
Not sure where you got $26,666. If that's the account balance (to be comparable with your equity example), at 40:1 leverage that's actually around $850-$1,060 a day. The "8-10 pips a day" part (and more) is very realistic, at moderate leverage. The same combined with 40:1 leverage is anything but... that's a completely different ball game. You'd be nearly doubling your money every month. In forex, 0.5% a day over time is outstanding, in my book.
Maybe my calculations were wrong. I used Oanda to calculate it. based on 26,666 a trade, the result would be $2 a pip. Maybe the leverage was less. Have to re-do the calculation.